Roxana Cooper Wrote:
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> It was an idle *urban* population that had to be
> constantly entertained by Roman Emperors lest they
> get into mischief. A peasant population is rather
> a different matter.

Well... yes, and no, I think. I'm with you on the Roman mob being urban, whereas a peasant population is much more widely dispersed and less volatile...

But, in a heavily centralised agrarian society, the peasants and farmers may build up greivances if all the wealth they create is continually sucked into the cities for the glorification of the Pharoah, with nothing in return for them.

Country people may be less quick to anger as a collective whole, but peasant revolts have not been unknown - look at Watt Tyler, and look at the resistance to collectivisation the Communists encountered in early Soviet Russia from the peasant population which had to be brutally supressed. And here in the UK, one of our most vocal, militant pressure groups in recent years has been the Countryside Alliance, which has given the Government a few bloody noses in the past ten years. So I think peasants would have had to have been kept as "on side" as much a city dwellers, especially in an agricultural age.