Well, given that it was an accounting unit and not actual currency (to the best of my knowledge, there has never been a stamped talent of silver), I'm sure there will be a debate about the exact size.
> A 3750 kg chunk of silver coinage is about 125-170 talents. From
reading things
> like Tacitus and Gallic War, this seems to be about the right
amount of silver
> to run the operation - assuming it doesn't run itself on plunder.
I doubt it - the occupation does not generate that much plunder (cows, sheep and grain) and the plunder from the initial invasion probably barely covered the cost of assembling an army that included the Emperor himself. Fazzur probably made quite a bit off quashing Starbrow's Rebellion though - that may have generated as much plunder as the initial invasion (maybe more).
Caesar's main source of plunder during the Gallic Wars were slaves - hundreds of thousands of them. Although the Lunars are slaveowners (then again so are some Sartarite tribes), I doubt slavery is as important a source of wealth to them as it was to the Roman nobility in the late Republic. Although we've never explored the numbers, I imagine that the Lunars took a few thousand slaves during the initial invasion, a few thousand more during Starbrow's Rebellion and then thousands more after each subsequent rebellion. Average it out over the period of Occupation (1602-1625) and maybe it comes out to a thousand or so slaves a year. Maybe more.
Jeff
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