Did the general population give a shit about politics back in

dude i don't even know how to read lmao, let alone keep track of royalty, although I can probably tell you who the current ruler is though

t. peasant

>>1803872
Literacy didn't really matter.

That's what tribune of the plebs were for.

>>1803857
No. Popular politics as we think of it wasn't possible before the invention of printing. the ancient world had a much smaller population, and its democracies were limited to a certain privileged group within each city. The great majority of the population either lived from the land outside the cities,where they couldnt even hear about whats going on, or they were slaves and women and werent allowed to participate. The cosmopolitan political life we hear about from the greeks and romans was not the situation of the majority as it is in a modern democractic society.

>>1803892
What about the Greek Polis?

>>1803892
What about the eras following the printing press? Renaissance, industrial, early modern, ect.

>>1803857
>>1803892

Politics were more than a thing on the background for Rome, it was of almost religious importance who was leader, commander or magistrate, or all at the same time.

File: 500px-Political_chart.svg.png (18KB, 500x544px) Image search: [Google]

18KB, 500x544px

>>1803857

I think they did but I think the big different between then and now is that modern people expect to have their opinion matter when it comes to political decision-making thanks to the explicit principles of "democracy" and is therefore surprised and disappointed when that isn't the case.

In ancient times people took it for granted that the elites were in charge and, barring some massive uprising, they had very little or nothing to say about it.

I also think that the bigger split is between literate and illiterate rather than modern and pre-modern. Literate people will always have something to say about politics, whereas illiterate people will never be anything more than pawns in politics.

>>1803892

This is idiotic. The Greek states were regularly rocked by political upheavals. Participation in politics was extremely widespread among those with the right to vote (all native males in Athens, smaller groups in other states but even the most oligarchic of Greek states was a "limited democracy" at its core).

In Rome, politics was less important for most because of the Roman state's peculiar structure. But even here, movers and shakers routinely tried to win the approval of the plebs in order to leverage their political power.

>>1805856
In the case of the roman republic the population was fairly content being ruled by the senate, no one really cared about politics very strongly because for the most part things worked
That's why the senate even allowed (mistakenly) to let the plebeians pass laws with the agreement of both tribunes and majority rule simply because this tool was not going to be used. It was left unused mostly until the time of Scipio africanus and the gracchi

>>1803857
>>1805841
I think they did care about politics, they were just spooked by different things.

>>1803892
>Who are the Grachii