Talk:Tribune of the plebs

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plebs burdened by "unemployment"?[edit]

"unemployment" is a very modern concept, one that I suspect would've been utterly strange to Romans. the core problem with regard to poverty is not the lack of paid work, but rather the lack of food, clothing, shelter, etc, or money to buy them. "employment"

employment is paid work, so a self-sustaining farmer would not have it, that is, he and his family would eat what he grew or raised.

and in the past, the vast majority of people were self-sustaining farmers.

the same was true of herders. the same is true of hunter-gathers.

in hunter-gathers societies, hunting and gathering are not paid professions.

the fundamental problem is applying our categories to the past, or to other societies.

2601:18A:8101:B470:D5C9:2E:11EC:AF26 (talk) 03:49, 15 July 2016 (UTC) Michael Christian[reply]

Not sure where that came from; recently reread Livy's account and don't remember anything relating to unemployment. Removing the word until it has some sort of justification for being there. P Aculeius (talk) 05:00, 15 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To complete my incomplete response. Aculeius removed the word in this edit and was absolutely correct in doing so. However, "unemployment" is not merely a modern problem. It affected Roman Proletarians in the Late Republic. However, it was not part of the original conflict between Patricians and Plebeians, 400 years earlier. Proletarians and Plebeians were not the same. Str1977 ^(talk) 07:21, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What does "proletarian" mean here? - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 22:36, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Proletariat means the poor. Some plebs were not poor. The proletarii in Rome were the lowest property class. The prevailing view is that they were exempt from taxation (tributum) before it was abolished in 167 BC. Their voting power in the centuriate assembly was also relatively low.Urg writer (talk) 22:47, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Right, but I think you'll find that "proletarians" is not a term much used in modern scholarship, except in that narrow, census-related sense. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 23:11, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is anyone going to talk about Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus?[edit]

Is anyone going to talk about Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lerong Lin (talk • contribs) 00:52, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]