For thousands of years humanity has been recording more than we realise. Whether it be Linear B tablets showing trades in Ancient Mycenae, extracts of epic poetry in Byzantium or a shopping list on the back of a receipt, the written word is an intrinsic part of the way our society functions. The key question when considering this is then, how do we still have records of these texts from over 2 millennia ago, and where do they come from?

Virgil’s epic, ‘The Aeneid’, tells the story of Aeneas; the dutiful Trojan hero who (after several sorrowful episodes) founds the city of Rome. It makes sense, therefore, that Virgil, writing under the first Roman emperor Augustus, creates links between the characters of his foundation myth and the powerful figures of ancient Rome which his readers inhabit.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic both share the same land, located in the Caribbean, yet a striking difference in prosperity can be explored between the two. As a starting point, let’s take 1960 – where both countries had virtually the same real GDP per capita (Sancak and Jaramillo, 2007), stripping out the distorting effects of inflation. However, by 2005, the real GDP per capita for the Dominican Republic had tripled whilst Haiti’s GDP had halved. Alongside differences in each country’s wealth, there is a vast contrast in the unemployment rates. Haiti’s unemployment rate stands over double that of the Dominican Republic (O’Neill, 2023) sitting at 14.84% as of 2022 compared to 7.12% for the Dominican Republic. Now, we cannot be sure as to whether the unemployment is the cause, effect, or even a pure correlation to their wealth, however this leads us to question, what has occurred in the past 60 years that has resulted in such clear differences in the countries success and growth?