Bret Devereaux

@bret-devereaux · 25 positions · On ppll ↗

Ancient and military historian specialising in the economy of the ancient Mediterranean, who writes the long-form blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry on pre-modern economies, logistics and warfare, and on what popular history, film and games get wrong about them.

Bret Devereaux did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

What Bret Devereaux says most about

Europe 9

Handing an ancient society a modern machine would have achieved nothing: the Romans could neither have built a steam engine nor found a profitable use for one.
Roman economic growth came from institutions rather than from technology, which is why it did not outlive the institutions that produced it.

See all 9

government 5

Sparta is a cautionary tale rather than a model: an over-militarised, paranoid state that added only oppression to human experience.
A heavily centralised state is the most fragile kind: when Rome’s centre failed, its successors were left without the resources or administration to do what it had done.

See all 5

war 4

About six weeks of supply is the most a pre-railway army could buy itself by adding carrying capacity, however many wagons it brought.
Before railways an army could not carry the food it needed: anything longer than a few days in the field forced it to live off the country it was in.

See all 4

innovation 3

An invention only matters when the principle, a workable design and an economically viable use for it all arrive together; the idea on its own changes nothing.
Long-run GDP charts hide what matters: technologies are contingent and path dependent, so the same number can describe economies that work in entirely different ways.

See all 3