Just how these persons survived at all is not clear. Sometimes, as Holmes reported above, they begged, sometimes they stole, but much of their time appeared to have been spent hanging about waiting to involve themselves in whatever was happening. Surely their numbers provided much of the manpower for the preindustrial city's many riots. In Rome, under Tiberius, for example, "the mob came to blows over the comparative merits of rival actors and the riot became so serious that several soldiers, a centurion and a tribune were left dead on the streets."

XREF: Connects to discussion of preindustrial urban poverty and how idle populations become political combustibles — echoes themes in other urban history sources.

XREF: Connects to the broader theme of preindustrial urban poverty and the social origins of crowd violence.

Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order a…, loc. 220