Replication package for "Commitment Failure and the Fiscal Costs of Great-Power Rivalry: The Roman–Seleukid Confrontation, 200–188 BCE

This is the replication package for the article "Commitment Failure and the Fiscal Costs of Great-Power Rivalry: The Roman–Seleukid Confrontation, 200–188 BCE." The article reconstructs the fiscal and mobilisation costs of the war between Rome and the Seleukid empire of Antiochus III and of its settlement in the Treaty of Apamea (188 BCE). It treats the fifteen-thousand-talent indemnity not as a diplomatic curiosity but as a structured fiscal shock, and argues that its burden is mismeasured when set only against gross Seleukid revenue and is correctly read against discretionary, or free, fiscal capacity. The reconstruction is source-graded: every quantity is tied to a cited ancient passage or to identified modern scholarship and is assigned an explicit verification level, and the fiscal denominator is built as a bounded expenditure-side envelope rather than asserted as a point estimate. This package contains the data and code required to regenerate every quantitative value reported in the manuscript's tables. It comprises: data/ — CSV inputs: model parameters (metrology, pay rates, ration masses, campaign lengths); Seleukid gross-revenue scenarios; attested army sizes by engagement and side; comparative Roman war indemnities of 241, 201, 197, and 188 BCE; Polybian grain-ration components; a preliminary geodesic route-control index; indicative campaign-cost scenarios; and the coded sequence of commitment episodes. regenerate_tables.py — a Python 3 script (standard library only) that reads the CSV inputs and reproduces the table values, printing both exact and manuscript-rounded figures where they differ. source_register.csv — every figure mapped to its primary or secondary source and an assigned verification level. codebook.md — variable definitions, the verification scheme, and the derivation formulas. README.md — package documentation and a source-rights note. CHECKSUMS.sha256 — SHA-256 checksums for all files. To reproduce the results, run: python3 regenerate_tables.py. No third-party dependencies are required. The printed values match the manuscript tables to the rounding shown there. All quantitative inputs derive from public-domain ancient texts (Polybius, Livy, Appian) and from cited modern scholarship by figure only; no copyrighted text is redistributed. The Seleukid fiscal figures are drawn from G. G. Aperghis, The Seleukid Royal Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2004), with the underlying figures page-auditable in the author's open-access doctoral thesis (G. G. Aperghis, The Seleukid Royal Economy, PhD thesis, University College London, 2000; UCL Discovery), specifically the gross-revenue range and the small-surplus conclusion at pages 199 and 247–249, military and army pay at pages 198–199 and 213, the handling of commodity surpluses in kind at pages 202–204, land grants to military settlers in chapter 6 at pages 88–110, and regional provincial revenue at page 241. This Zenodo deposit is an archival mirror. The primary replication archive is deposited with openICPSR in accordance with the data-availability policy of the Journal of Economic History. Subjects Economic history; Ancient history; Fiscal and financial history; Public finance; Hellenistic history; Roman history; International relations; Quantitative ancient history