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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?

#51

Post by tmtvl »

CydeWeys wrote: post #36
hutzlibu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Didn't Rome still use the "eat, shit, and sleep on your seat" system used by the Greeks before them? I don't think rowers had anything that could reasonably be described as "fresh" air.

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

#52

Post by nemo »

bragr wrote: post #2

My understanding from historians answering similar questions about ancient Romans is that we really don't know much about the average Roman because almost nothing was written down about them and even less survives to this day.

While literary sources were always produced by aristocrats, they still give a window into their times even if it's biased, so we know some things about some jobs. But also since the mid 20th century there's been a movement in history to learn about the daily lives of everyday people of the past in every period including Rome. Combined with archaeology, we can learn some things, so while we don't have a perfect picture of life for the many free Roman citizens packed into their insulae doing their jobs, there's been work and progress on filling that in, esp. using archaeological sources like Pompeii.

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

#53

Post by gattilorenz »

baron816 wrote: post #28

If you’ve ever wondered what would’ve happened if Nazi Germany had won the war and had become a Thousand Year Reich, Rome is basically your answer. Militarism, War, Genocide, Slavery—it’s all right there.

Not sure what the point of your post is.

Rome (and Greeks before them) did certainly see the difference between Romans and Barbarians, but they also integrated the newly conquered tribes into the army, and eventually society. At some point there were even “barbarian” senators, and Roman citizenship was granted to everyone residing in the empire. They clearly didn’t have the same idea of race that the Nazis, or most of the western world until not long ago, had.

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

#54

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #49
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes those bankers were disrupted by Judeans coming in an smashing up the nice open plan lending atriums. Really need the firm hand of government to prevent repeat offending

Not to disrupt some good humor with boring factual accuracy, but worth noting the "temple money changers" were not Romans or bankers. Historic academics is of course rarely conclusive, especially biblical exegesis, but it's generally accepted by scholars that the "money changers" were Jews, likely volunteers, who provided a service required by Jewish law: exchanging Roman coins for Tyrian shekels to purchase animals…

What's interesting is Matthew 22:19, where Jesus has asked someone to show Him a Roman coin, and his questioners manage to produce it, no problem. Well, the Jews were forbidden to possess those denarii, because it made the person ritually impure (Matthew the Apostle, aka Levi, would know). So whoever produced the coin on request was probably rather embarrassed about it.

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

#55

Post by gumby »

BirAdam wrote: post #48
gumby wrote: post #40

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.)

Ancient punishments were insane. Death was usually just a side effect of whatever the actual punishment was. Bothered me for weeks after reading about that stuff.

For the teen-aged students of my boys-only school that kind of stuff was always worth reading, and the Greek and Latin teachers knew it so made sure we got a good supply of such stuff. Much more interesting and worth translating than Caesar marching around.

One of the most thumbed books in the library was "Pompeiian Graffiti". I learned some sexual terms that don't exist in English.

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

#56

Post by alephnerd »

3r3rni9 wrote: post #50

At this juncture I must heartily recommend the very silly and good natured anime/manga Thermae Romae [1][2]. It's about a Roman bath architect who secretly discovers a way to time travel to modern Japanese baths to steal ideas (though he is slow to understand them). The original run is a little more pure than the Netflix reboot, where the humor / seriousness balance is off (it's never too long of a slog). https://en.…

It's one of the few animes where you HAVE to watch both the Dub and the Sub - there are different jokes in both.

Also highly recommend Bessatsu Olympia Kyklos by the same creator for the Tokyo Olympics

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

#57

Post by laverya »

BirAdam wrote: post #45

Mining and military service are definitely worse than groveling, especially since Rome did have the bread line. The military definitely had a pay advantage (and it got better over time in the imperial era, so much so that it began to bankrupt the state), but Rome was always killing people, either Romans or barbarians. The warfare was absolutely horrifying by modern standards, and I imagine that even the best warriors…

> The warfare was absolutely horrifying by modern standards, and I imagine that even the best warriors of Rome would have had severe PTSD.

I'm not actually sure this was the case. We don't actually really hear of things like PTSD for anything before the Great War - and we do have veterans of prior wars saying something was different about WW1.

It seems that the constant, unending chance of combat or death really might be different than what came before.

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

#58

Post by anthk »

baron816 wrote: post #28

If you’ve ever wondered what would’ve happened if Nazi Germany had won the war and had become a Thousand Year Reich, Rome is basically your answer. Militarism, War, Genocide, Slavery—it’s all right there.

No. Romans assimilated any race into their empire. They were practical.

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

#59

Post by NoPicklez »

laverya wrote: post #57
BirAdam wrote: post #45

Mining and military service are definitely worse than groveling, especially since Rome did have the bread line. The military definitely had a pay advantage (and it got better over time in the imperial era, so much so that it began to bankrupt the state), but Rome was always killing people, either Romans or barbarians. The warfare was absolutely horrifying by modern standards, and I imagine that even the best warriors…

> The warfare was absolutely horrifying by modern standards, and I imagine that even the best warriors of Rome would have had severe PTSD. I'm not actually sure this was the case. We don't actually really hear of things like PTSD for anything before the Great War - and we do have veterans of prior wars saying something was different about WW1. It seems that the constant, unending chance of combat or death really migh…

I read the same thing somewhere on here many years ago.

The concept of war and killing was "more normal" during those times than it is now and the alternative to war still wasn't sunshine and rainbows for most.

I think what I also read was from the side of the wives. Deaths due to war were much more normalised and were a higher occurrence, therefore there were better support networks of wives whose husbands had been killed in battle.

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

#60

Post by EMCymatics »

_-____-_ 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.

Are you sure Quora's purpose is to create large language models?
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