> In Rome, "poets" were craftsmen, not "authors" in the modern sense of the term. They worked for hire. Memmius, who was an extremely important man from one of

> In Rome, "poets" were craftsmen, not "authors" in the modern sense of the term. They worked for hire. Memmius, who was an extremely important man from one of the most famous families, placed an order for an epic poem to Lucretius, in order to appear more gracious and to advance his political career. I wonder if we'd go back to mostly having this if copyright as we know it went away and no alternative way of paying artists (think Patreon-like platforms, governmental support, or unconditional basic income) existed. For example EVE Online has plenty of poets-for-hire and I sometimes pay one to write me a poem commemorating the loss of one of my ships. Makes you feel better about your loss and also looks good in your character bio... There's obviously still "contract" work being done by artists in the real world today as well, though probably proportionally less so. With US artists often signing away the rights to their works completely to their labels and publishers, which is technically the same, we're not even too far off I'd think. But this is not possible in some other legal systems. How "creative" were ancient cultures, where probably only the well-off or people with patrons/customers could spend meaningful time on art, in comparison to today's culture?