Cicero

Cicero was a pompous git, but even he was above the toil of the wagecuck.
There is a strong comparison to be drawn between the great orators, philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, politicians and warriors of the ancient world and the NEETs of today.

t. NEET

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHAA

He was right, deal with it

He's not wrong.

All any revolutionaries want is for everyone to have the same deal with the government as very rich people always and already do.

He didn't have hands to perform manual labor.

Bakers aren't paid a wage. They sold what they produced. Most of the people produced something and sold it to others. Only complete nobodies had no skill or trade inherited from their father.

underrated

This view dates back even further to ancient Greece and survives in a much diluted form today. The medieval concept of the "liberal arts" which are suitable for free men and the "mechanical arts" or "servile arts" which are for the unfree, serfs, non-citizens of the polis or whatever.

This is why being a professor is more high status than a plumber, even though the latter might make more money.

In terms of republican virtue and dignity, working your own land >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> being hired by someone to work their land > hiring other people to work your land. So I'd say he's basically correct.

>even though the latter might make more money
In what universe?
>he thinks people like Cicero ever worked their own land
What do you think they had slaves for?

Except he did idiots. Cicero wasn't speaking about hard labor. He himself owned an estate and worked on it himself. The self-reliant landowner who diligently worked what he owned to the best of his ability was still the Roman ideal. He was talking about WAGE LABOR. The urban proletariats who owned nothing of their own. Produced nothing of their own. Had no useful skill of their to make their living, but sold their mere labor making themselves dependent on others for their bread.

The foundation of republicanism was FREE & INDEPENDENT citizens and the dependence and poverty that characterized wage labor was antithetical to that idea.

Yes, such freedom, such independence
*relies on slave labor*

Slaves aren't citizens idiot.

And?

>On Antony's instructions his hands, which had penned the Philippics against Antony, were cut off as well; these were nailed along with his head on the Rostra in the Forum Romanum according to the tradition of Marius and Sulla, both of whom had displayed the heads of their enemies in the Forum.

How can you miss such a good joke man? I spent 2min in the toilet to think about it. Fuck.

Romans arent republicans, they are a military oligarchy.

So it doesn't matter to the virtue of the republic when slaves are reduced to dependence because they're not part of the polis. Citizens, the people who formally ratify the laws, who are ultimately responsible for the health & well-being of the society at large being reduced to the same state of slaves actually does because instead of a backbone of independent self-reliant landowners to rely on you have a rabble of easily manipulated proles whose dependence makes them susceptible to demagoguery.

>self-reliant landowners
No such thing. Can you read? Roman landowning system was DEPENDENT on slave labor. People like Cicero weren't "free" because of their own work and toil, they were so because of other people's work and toil. But when you're in the position of power it's easier to just degrade everyone below you to less than people.

And you know who also worked there besides slaves? Impoverished farmers who were kicked out their farms to make place for latifundias. They would work for some pitiful wage with no means to survive. Read a bit about agrarian crisis of 2nd century BC. The rise of latifundia system and emerging of equites class that Cicero belonged to is what effectively destroyed Roman farmer-soldier society and paved the path for all future unrests, wars and bloodsheds, tyrants like Sulla and Marius. That's in short your "virtue of the republic"

>In what universe?
There are probably better examples but an untenured professor makes sweet fuck all and tradies can earn a fuckload.

> Roman landowning system was DEPENDENT on slave labor.
Most landowners were not slaveowners.

Before latifundium system? I agree. From its founding to roughly mid-2nd century BC Romans were essentially a nation of small-estate farming communities where farmers owned enough land to feed themselves AND to pay for military equipment when they went to war.
Post-latifundium? Hell no. Entire land in the Republic passed into hands of so few land owners that they also became slave-owners by default.

user, plumbers make a ton. And teachers make very little.

Where?

In America.
Maybe it's different in Italy.
Think about it. Everyone needs a plumber. But nobody wants to be a plumber. So the few plumbers there are can charge more.
It's supply and demand.

Are teachers and professors in the US really that underpaid? How much does a high school teacher or a university professor make, compared to a plumber with some level of experience?

THAT IS A TRUE STATEMENT; WAGE IS COMPENSATION FOR EXPLOITATION, NOT YIELD OF ONE'S LABOUR; WAGELABOUR IS EXPLOITATION, BECAUSE THE LABOUR IS FOR OTHERS, NOT FOR ONESELF; ONLY LABOUR IN PARTNERSHIP, FOR A SHARE OF THE TOTAL YIELD, IS FREE LABOUR.

READ "THE GREEN BOOK".

philosophers were basically neets

This. They used all arguments they could think of to justify their own lifestyle. The world would be a lot better off without philosophers.

>>Land ownership is important.
only to a liberal

You people are such braindead morons it's insane

What do you live on, Ray. Charity?

>Africa itself is the parent of Sardinia, which has waged many most bitter wars against our ancestors, and not only in its kingdoms which were loyal to their native monarchs, but even in our very province, it kept itself from all alliance with us at the time of the Punic wars as the case of Utica proves. The further Spain ennobled by the de[ath of the Scipios, and by the funeral pile of the Saguntine loyalty, has the city of Gades joined to us by reciprocal good offices, by common dangers, and by treaty. I ask now whether any city of Sardinia can be mentioned which is joined to us by treaty? Not one. With what face, then, can a Sardinian witness dare to come before the Roman people]
powerless in resources, treacherous by descent?

racist fuck

The truth is that he was heavily butthurt because Tigellio (a sardo-roman poet) was best buddy with Caesar and liked to mock him in his componements
We have letters in which Cicero is going mad because he can't take the banter

KEK the virgin orator vs the chad poet

>Out of the sweat of wage cucks of course.
Ah, mankind's finest achievement:

Using other humans for profit

>We're all going to burn in Hell forever

>the world Cicero lived in was anything like the world we live in today

That was 2000 years ago. The modern world is a capitalist consumerist based society in which slavery doesn't make any sense nor is it profitable long-term.

That opinion of wage labor would have been accepted widely even at the turn of the 20th century. It's entirely in line with what Syndicalists were saying even just 100 years ago.

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