Learning history from PDX games is paradoxical to say the least...
So true
Sorry to disagree, but I consider that important.
Lots of people and kids learn history by playing Paradox games, so it feels wrong to give them a misleading representation of what was implying the citizenship in Ancient Rome.
The strenght of the Roman Republic was coming for a good part from the fact it had an army of CITIZENS defending their patry and home, they were not just "Freemen".
Well, I don't want to be rude, but even if
you consider it to be important, it doesn't mean it is..
Let me explain better
First of all, games should not teach history, they should just ignite that little spark inside little kids... That was the role that, for example, Age of Empires II had on me as a little kid: he made me start asking questions about the Ferocious Salaadin or the Emperor Friderich Barbarossa.
Secondly: this "
The strenght of the Roman Republic was coming for a good part from the fact it had an army of CITIZENS defending their patry and home, they were not just "Freemen"..
Excuse me, but this is false.. I mean, is such a generic statement that is false.
Citizen: do you mean Cives Romani?
Or Cives sine suffragio (without the right to vote)?
Or, moreover, Peregrinii who, despite being "not citizen" by definition, could be granted many of the proper-citizen rights (such as tax exemptions and the right to marry under the latin laws).
Or by citizen you mean the plethora of different italian people (like those living in the city where I live today) who were not latin, were not citizen, but lived in Coloniae o Municipia which granted not citizen-rights, but a variety of legal instruments to defend themselves in front of roman institutions like a normal citizen could have?
Or what about all the allies of the Roman People, who fought not because citizen, but just for the sake of political convenience?
My point is: there was no such thing called "citizen" back in the day, if not in the way of "belonging to a specific city". But it was by no mean so critical in defining what people could or could not do, or if they would fight along side the Romans or not.
Human society, and by extension, history, is far far more complicated than a label..
I'm sorry my friend, but your sentence is way more generic and disturbing than a game calling an icon "freemen".
My two cents, no resentment
P.S.
Also consider that there is no general agreement among historians about the very concept of Plebs. We are still today unable to define them etnologically, sociologically or else. It's just a "topos" in roman literature used to describe different "groups of people"... commonly in opposition to some other group..
