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What were the worst jobs for poor Romans in Ancient Rome?

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Re: What were the worst jobs for poor Romans in Ancient Rome?

#31

Post by bombcar »

rurp wrote: post #21
explaininjs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was arable land easy to come by for a poor Roman or would you be more likely to have a landlord requiring some cut?

In general no, it wasn't easy for poor folks to get their own farm land, and it became harder as time went on. A plot of land was a common millitary pension; soldiers would retire there and work the land after putting in enough service time. This worked well while there was plenty of decent land in Italy, but became a worse deal over time. Once the prime land was taken up soldiers had to settle for plots of varying q…

The poorest would likely “sign on” to an existing farm as a farmhand - the story of the Prodigal Son implies that concept was known in antiquity.

Re: What were the worst jobs for poor Romans in Ancient Rome?

#32

Post by antognini »

jcranmer wrote: post #10
htag wrote: post #7

One thing, it's ambiguous if they are speaking of only jobs inside the city, or any job in the republic/empire. It's also ambiguous if this is limited to jobs only performed by free individuals. Some things that didn't make the list. * Free individuals sometimes became Gladiators * While very clean for ancient standards, their sewage system required a lot of manual maintenance. * We know sailors we subject to scurvy,…

You've omitted the mines, which were a pretty notorious place to work, and I'd personally rank it the worst job of the lot. My understanding is that the miners were almost all slaves because of the poor working conditions.

People convicted of certain egregious crimes would commonly be sentenced to hard labor in the mines.

This was the punishment that astrologers received for violating certain regulations around astrology. (Their clients were executed.)

Re: What were the worst jobs for poor Romans in Ancient Rome?

#33

Post by CydeWeys »

htag wrote: post #7

One thing, it's ambiguous if they are speaking of only jobs inside the city, or any job in the republic/empire. It's also ambiguous if this is limited to jobs only performed by free individuals. Some things that didn't make the list. * Free individuals sometimes became Gladiators * While very clean for ancient standards, their sewage system required a lot of manual maintenance. * We know sailors we subject to scurvy,…

One particularly unpleasant job (I believe often performed by slaves) was making charcoal. More man-hours went into making charcoal than went into the actual blacksmithing, as it was so coal-intensive. Entire regions were denuded of trees. And then of course you had lumberjacks.

Honestly, following around some rich person in Rome sounds easier than the hardest manual labor jobs.

Re: What were the worst jobs for poor Romans in Ancient Rome?

#36

Post by CydeWeys »

hutzlibu wrote: post #12
htag wrote: post #7

One thing, it's ambiguous if they are speaking of only jobs inside the city, or any job in the republic/empire. It's also ambiguous if this is limited to jobs only performed by free individuals. Some things that didn't make the list. * Free individuals sometimes became Gladiators * While very clean for ancient standards, their sewage system required a lot of manual maintenance. * We know sailors we subject to scurvy,…

Mining was among the worst types of work with very little chance of doing it for longer. Which is why it was allmost only slaves doing it, like most of the other hard work, which is why there allways needed to be new wars to get new slaves to keep the system running.

I do think this is the actual answer. Brutally backbreaking work (literally breaking rocks with simple tools for 12+ hours per day every day), in poor conditions, and constantly inhaling dust that destroys your lungs to the point that you're constantly coughing up black mucus.

Being a rower on a ship was a terrible job too, but at least you had fresh air to breathe.

Re: What were the worst jobs for poor Romans in Ancient Rome?

#37

Post by Eumenes »

jcranmer wrote: post #10
htag wrote: post #7

One thing, it's ambiguous if they are speaking of only jobs inside the city, or any job in the republic/empire. It's also ambiguous if this is limited to jobs only performed by free individuals. Some things that didn't make the list. * Free individuals sometimes became Gladiators * While very clean for ancient standards, their sewage system required a lot of manual maintenance. * We know sailors we subject to scurvy,…

You've omitted the mines, which were a pretty notorious place to work, and I'd personally rank it the worst job of the lot. My understanding is that the miners were almost all slaves because of the poor working conditions.

People are still working in mines like that today and for a long time, I'm guessing.

Re: What were the worst jobs for poor Romans in Ancient Rome?

#39

Post by lph »

_-____-_ wrote: post #19
Aperocky wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complete downfall of quora is surprising tbh. Trying to cash out before they reached critical point? At one point about a decade ago through my spotty memory they are pretty on par with reddit in terms of adoption and reputation.

Quora has fulfilled its purpose of generating training data for large language models, by answering the majority of questions people have ever thought to search for on the premise of "I wonder if anyone's asked this question before." Now that ChatGPT has read all the answers, Quora can fade into the sunset while ChatGPT regurgitates its answers with precision as part of an ad-free conversation.

Seems like only a matter of time before LLM-powered search is also injecting ads. "Ancient Romans had a difficult life with a variety of unpleasant jobs. But after work, they liked to kick back and enjoy all-new garum-flavored Doritos!"

Re: What were the worst jobs for poor Romans in Ancient Rome?

#40

Post by gumby »

Not a terrible job, but uncertain was parasite. Basically you were paid to accompany someone and say how good they were. One of the few things I remember from high school was translating some plays in which a parasite was part of the cast.

(Another thing I remember was the supposed punishment for parricide: to be sewn into a sack with a rooster, a cat, and some stones, and then be tossed into the Tiber.)

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