Did the Romans Have a Future

Abstract

In analysing matters as diverse as state financing, strategic planning, public benefactions and long-term credit in private business transactions, the historian is faced with an underlying problem about the perceptions of time. One aspect of this problem is the manner in which pictures of a complex future are reflected in the behaviour of agents engaged in these activities. The manner in which actions were (or were not) taken by them suggests a peculiar configuration of future time in the Roman world. It is speculatively argued that perspectives on the future had analogies with the different ways in which a sense of depth was created by artists working on a two-dimensional space and with the contextual ways in which spatial perspective was employed.