Violence in west-europe roman and medieval times

Would people get into random beatings a lot in roman times? What about medieval times?
Was it actually common to be assaulted in normal social situations? What about weapons, would they always be used?

I understand people are violent in wars and against other civilizations. It also makes sense that to me that a lot of historic deaths involve violence of some sort because somehow that person made into the history books, so they were probably playing with high stakes and high risks in life: e.g. roman emperors getting stabbed.

Sorry if this has been discussed a lot before, only discovered this board about 2 days ago.

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Casual violence was drastically higher. Crossing the wilderness was like walking through Detroit on steroids.

Violence was much more common but "random beatings" would still be pretty rare, unless you were a slave or a legionary or something.

>Sorry if this has been discussed a lot before, only discovered this board about 2 days ago.

Start a thread about Anne Frank and enjoy the show.

Violence was relatively common in Roman society. I mean, you have a densely packed city without any kind of police force, you're going to have incidents. Generally speaking, regular people were basically on their own. If you had a problem with somebody, you could try pursuing them in court, but we know that the court system was insanely overburdened; it couldn't address even 1/10 of complaints being made, and it didn't even try. Basically, if you weren't rich enough to make the system care about you, it just isn't going to happen.

For this reason, most disputes were ultimately settled through vigilantism. If you thought somebody had wronged you somehow, usually your only option was to get together with your friends and hope that you collectively outnumber him and his friends when you go to beat him up. It's a very different picture than we often get from highly-ordered disputes of the upper-class, who usually were content to insult each other in impromptu speeches without actually coming to physical blows.

This imagine serial killers without DNA evidence and cameras, it was basically pray to God every time you went into the forest by yourself.

I recall reading that rich bored Roman sociopaths would sometimes walk around beating & harassing folks, and then would toss the fine money on their battered bodies

>when you realize that German barbarism has been genetically ingrained since the Middle Ages at the very least

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christman_Genipperteinga

Many historians think that the really weird and gruesome murders attributed to monsters & wild beasts were probably ancient/medieval serial killers

wow that made everything I was pondering about make sense suddenly. Totally forgot to think about the lack of reliable justice system and what that does to culture. Thanks user

Hot damn

What an edgelord

Its the same for us user, the rich has exempt from the law unless they piss off one of their own with better legal leverage like say a US politician while we non rich must always be arrested.

U wot?

In roman times, everything in firm Roman control would have been relatively peaceful. I can’t imagine daily life for most people would have been much more violent than for most people today. Romans were pretty strict about the rule of law, and penalties for a lot of things were much harsher than today. Random violence wouldn’t have been tolerated. Politics were certainly much more violent, though, especially in periods of instabilities, and corporal punishments were accepted.

Medieval times, that would really depends. In normal situations, I don’t think things would have been much more violent than today, no more than a fist fight over a disagreement, maybe a dagger or knife if things really got out of hand. The law was there, enforced by local rulers or their representatives, with militias or professional soldiers/guards keeping the peace. Just like today, if you got into a fistfight someone might call the nightwatch, they would separate the parties and possibly throw you in jail for the night. Even in small villages there would have assembly of head of families and a militia (which might be like 10 guys with gambesons and spears, but still). Criminality was high in cities though and outside of it outright banditry wouldn’t have been uncommon, especially during harsh times. The law would have been much easier to escape, much slower to respond and much harsher, even sometimes arbitrary at the same time. There was a real risk of getting robbed on a forest path on your way to the market a few villages away. But I’d argue these aren’t normal social situations. Day to day life would have mostly been as peaceful as it is today.

>In roman times, everything in firm Roman control would have been relatively peaceful. I can’t imagine daily life for most people would have been much more violent than for most people today. Romans were pretty strict about the rule of law, and penalties for a lot of things were much harsher than today. Random violence wouldn’t have been tolerated. Politics were certainly much more violent, though, especially in periods of instabilities, and corporal punishments were accepted.

You're really over-estimating how much the Roman elite cared about policing the slums. A good chunk of Rome's population lived in packed, overcrowded apartment buildings that had an alarming tendency to catch fire without warning. The streets were constantly covered in literal human excrement. There was nothing that would fill our modern understanding of a "police force." If you get attacked, or robbed, or raped, there is no 911 to call. The laws much prescribe harsh punishments for such acts, but good luck getting the courts to actually listen to you unless you have the $$$ to make them care. As Adrian Goldsworthy puts in, Rome was simultaneously the cleanest and filthiest city in the world. And it isn't any better in the provinces. It has been speculated that a Roman provincial governor could receive over a hundred separate complaints, PER DAY. Even if he actually cared enough to read all of them, there simply wouldn't be enough time in the day.

Lad, soldiers existed just to chop down crazed mobs. They couldn’t care less about Quintus raping Flavius unless they were patricians.

apparently in the city of Rome a real danger was being caught out at night by young nobles carousing with torches. They'd just kick the shit out of you because it was fun and they were out on the town having a night.

When the first formal police force in Europe was created, everyone initially hated them and saw it as paramilitary/authoritarian.

There was an Athenian club for lawless youths that styled themselves based on the Thracians

I recall seeing somewhere that 18th century Paris had a crime rate worse than the worst places in South America. I can't imagine medieval/late Roman times were much better, if not worse.

Communities would police themselves.

When you live in the same corner of the city, eat, shit, sleep and piss with the same circle of people since childhood, wash your clothes using your neighbor's piss, depend on that 1 baker who doesn't mix sawdust in the flour and collect water from the same pipe it is difficult to fuck with people too much and not see repercussions.

The economy depended on poor tradesmen so officials would care about crime at this low level and work with collegia to deter different kinds of theft and other problems that could stop the flow of commerce, it was not quite as grimdark as some posters made it out to be.

>without any kind of police force
There were still guards and slaves whose job was to enforce law and (public) order, but you're right about the last part. A lot of the crimes brought before the Athenian courts involved the families of dead criminals and adulterers charging people for using excessive force against the deceased. In fact the Athenian law for adultery said you could either go to their house and make them pay a fine for cuckholding you and if they refused you were perfectly in your rights to kill them.
The problem arose when people would offer to pay money, but the wronged party would just go "fuck it, I'm going to kill you instead."

im from the Netherlands

>>people got killed for cucking classical greece
We need to go back.

Wew lad, a fucking barbarian meeting an equally barbaric end, assuming he even did any of that and wasn't just some mental retard who got all the random murders in the woods pinned on him when they found his edgelord fan fiction

They weren't supposed to be killed, it was just your within your rights to kill them if they refused to compensate them. Most people would have to gather up their friends and neighbors to make sure they had the drop on the adulterer, which was probably just as humiliating to them as being cuckolded in the first place.

Yes, because police were and still are an unnecessary authoritarian occupation of civilian life.

Killing adulterers was perfectly legal in Rome too

Back when I studied Latin we translated texts which talked about conditions in Roman streets at night, during the Republic.

The author complained that rooftiles could crush your skull if they fell because of poor masonry, or if someone threw them. He also advised to never go out without at least a couple of slaves or bodyguards armed with clubs and torches to fend of beggars, cutthroats or drunks, which he also warned against for their tendency to cause brawls.

You do realise that this was a folk tale right?

>germanics in the early middle ages were sophisticated enough to have laws against falsely accusing others of being shape-shifting man-eating bird monsters
I really doubt past societies were 24/7 murder orgies.

Yes, it was common. The fact that there was 50~ years period where not a single roman emperor died due to natural causes should tell you that.

Yes thats talking about a literal emperor of rome. Stakes are very high and probably the only way to get a ruling emperor gone when he doesnt want to go is to kill him.

“The Negroes possess some admirable qualities. They are seldom unjust, and have a greater abhorrence of injustice than any other people. Their sultan shows no mercy to anyone who is guilty of the least act of it. There is complete security in their country. Neither traveler nor inhabitant in it has anything to fear from robbers or men of violence. They do not confiscate the property of any white man who dies in their country, even if it were uncounted wealth. On the contrary, they give it into the charge of some trustworthy person among the whites, until the rightful heir takes possession of it. ”

-Ibn Battuta

Put it this way OP: upper class Roman houses in urban areas had a protective wall with no windows facing the street to prevent unauthorized entry to the compound. This was intended to withstand an angry mob. People avoided going out at night as much as possible, and you had to rely on your family, your slaves, or your patronage network for protection. Commoners had to rely on the fact that they were client to someone more powerful than them for protection.

>africans producing sugar before the 16th century.
What the fuck kind of anachronistic pic is this?

>I am retarded and don’t know what trade is either

Does anyone have a source for this i heard that Norway in the 1500s i thnk had a much higher murder rate than 1980s NYC.

That's almost certainly true.

washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/06/why-living-in-some-u-s-cities-is-literally-like-living-the-middle-ages/?utm_term=.4cf8ab977a51

Cheers it was interesting to see Englands murder rate was much lower than on the continent even though it was much higher than modern standards, i wonder what Scotlands murder rate was like in those days i assume it was much higher than Englands and more similar to the level in mainland Europe considering we still had clan feuds and massacres up till the 1700s i think.

you may wanna check out the germanic iron age

>There was nothing that would fill our modern understanding of a "police force."
Wasn't it because every time someone tried it, they did it to enact marshal law?

martial*, I'm dumb

>They do not confiscate the property of any white man who dies in their country, even if it were uncounted wealth. On the contrary, they give it into the charge of some trustworthy person among the whites, until the rightful heir takes possession of it. ”
Isn't that because islam says you have to do that?

It's a hell of a lot better than what we had before.

Damn Italy, you going for a record there?

Same as modern London with sword-wielding maniacs and carriages mowing people down.

No

So were bandits just fucking around in the woods when not mugging travelers?

Well Islam has some tenants in it that are similar (have to be charitable, if someone loses something and you know who it belongs to it's your duty to return it to them) so I thought that was too.