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[TempAcc]

[citation needed]

Romans had way more lead in their system then normal modern people, but it still wasn't enough to cause significant issues.

Senicide may have been a thing during a certain period in ancient rome, but nobody knows for sure. Suicide as a whole was very much acceptable in Roman society, though, unless you happened to be a soldier, a slave or someone accused of a capital crime, since the state was more interested in keeping these people alive.

The part about lead contributing to the lower number of people who reached old age was just speculation :v

[redwallzyl]

it was vary much a Japanese style suicide honor system and forced suicide/execution.

[ChairmanPoo]

My point is that the whole lead thing was a theory blown out of proportion. And senicide? Highly dubious, considering that there are plenty of accounts of elderly romans, or even elderly slaves (and furthermore, of how kicking out sick or elderly slaves was frowned upon).

In fact your very article source puts it in doubt

[TempAcc]

When ":v" is put on things, it usualy means the text that includes it is not an academic thesis :v

[Teneb]

When ":v" is put on things, it usualy means the text that includes it is not an academic thesis :v

[citation needed]

[GiglameshDespair]

When ":v" is put on things, it usualy means the text that includes it is not an academic thesis :v

[citation needed]

Source: 1

[Shadowlord]

You'd expect, by analogy with modern experience, that it would cause serious mental and emotional development problems. To put it simply, making anyone who drank the water as a child more impulsive and less intelligent than if their water wasn't tainted with lead.

100x more lead than naturally occurring sounds like a lot, but I know nothing about how much lead was in their water sources initially, and there's no safe level of lead.

Citations: Dog God ate my citations Wait, I cited the CDC

[Reelya]

Actually, the lead from water piping was minimal, compared to the lead from distilled grape juice, which was used by the Romans to sweeten and preserve foods, and to mix with wine. This was distilled in lead pots, after they noticed that those gave a sweeter taste than other metals. The culprit was lead acetate, perhaps the first "artificial sweetener" known to historians. This was a much more important source, because people were basically seeking it out to deliberately consume it (even if they didn't know what it was). Sapa, the distilled grape juice, is estimated to be 1 part per 1000 lead.

So, while it's still debatable, any debunking of the "Roman decline from lead" theory is very misleading if they only tell you about the effects of water piping. Call me cynical but any time someone conjures up a lesser problem and debunks that, then claims the whole theory is debunked, are either misinformed or they're trying to strawman you.

[Truean]

Lead's chemical symbol on the periodic table of elements is Pb, "Plubum." In other words, "Plumbing." Flint MI, and sadly other less famous areas in the US, have serious lead problems. John Oliver did a rather good show on it recently.

Moreover, the romans couldn't have been as advanced in chemistry and metals as modern peoples are, and WE screwed it up. So, I can only imagine how it messed with them if we, having more knowledge, screwed it up as bad as we have and do.

It explains some things, like the crazier of the Roman emperors, Nero, Caligula, etc, etc. Who knows.

Point being, lead isn't a good thing when you're talking about it getting into the human body, water, paint, gas, etc.

As for the Roman Empire's downfall, there are tons of reasons, and I think lead was one of them.

[Frumple]

Don't ask me to find it again, but I remember seeing an article or two noting a fairly distinct correlation between levels of violence (among other things) and the phasing out of lead paint/leaded gasoline. Something like within a few decades of the reduction/removal there's just a noticeable drop in such, that's fairly consistent across cultural/geographic boundaries. Interesting stuff.

Though yeah, the Flint thing. Clusterfuck and a half, blighters that basically caused that problem probably deserve to be shot considering the effects of it and how preventable much of it was. Remember someone noting pretty aptly that there's terrorist groups out there that would give their left nut to be able to poison that much of a US city, heh, and probably would have gotten a few countries leveled if they managed to. Instead, the politicians did it and it barely makes the news~

[Loud Whispers]

The Romans did take note of lead's health effects and made moves towards ceramic and stone plumbing after observing what havoc it wrought upon their slaves in the lead-mines. The likes of Caligula and Nero's particular tyranny can rather easily be explained by their childhoods. Caligula was young and went on campaign with his father when his father was poisoned to death for the crime of becoming too popular, and a threat to his rivals. Caligula learned the ruthlessness needed to survive Roman politics young. Eventually all of Caligula's family would be murdered, executed or imprisoned, all but him - he alone would be invited to Emperor Tiberius's island of Capris, where there would be no escape and Caligula would be inundated constantly by an excess of worldly pleasures and the daily threat of execution/witness of those being executed by being thrown off the cliffs of Capris. Caligula would be raised in such an environment of life, death, sex, politics and absolute power by the one man he hated most in the world that he nearly murdered him, acting as if he was a loyal servant. Eventually the Praetorian guard would murder Tiberius/help him die, and whether or not Caligula had his hand in this, he became Emperor. Off to a good start as a competent and just Emperor, he would quickly begin to after a few months of rule, begin to act like a more cunning Tiberius, with an even greater appetite for personal gratification and absolute power. Nero, nephew of Caligula, was in turn a refined product of his times.

[ChairmanPoo]

Its not enough to say "lead is poisonous and therefore Romans were going crazy because of lead". Nobody is actually saying lead is not bad for your health (even the Romans knew this!).You need to actually prove it was causing significant widespread problems (more to the point, one which was having an impact in the specific way which was mentioned). And there is scant evidence of that. In the end, most of thr theory relies in circumstantial evidence and a lot of assumptions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Historiography_of_the_fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop#Criticism_of_lead_poisoning_theory


TLDR:  the "Roman Empire decline because of lead poisoning" gets quoted over and over  but IMO its close to the level of evidence of "vitamin C cures colds" or "hebrew slaves built the pyramids"


Edit: Ninjaed by Loud Whispers.

Would like to note  that a good deal of the stuff said about Nero and Caligula might well be posthumous character assasination. Roman biographers were prone to dress up stories to extremes that would make your average yellow press paper blush

[scrdest]

What is it with the Roman Empire discussions lately? It's a pretty fun read, don't get me wrong, but it's an odd thing to pop up randomly both here and in Europol.

[Teneb]

We all want to be romans, like the germanic peoples of old.

[TempAcc]

And drink their delishus lead wine and ban silk.