Was being a Praetorian Guardsmen the best job in the ancient world?

Egyptian priests - old kingdom to be specific.

Also I don't think traveling the world back then was seen as too awesome. A lot of the travel and colonization was simply due to limitations on agriculture due to Greece's landscape. Often, if a few ships went out and came back several years later - their former town would view them as invaders / outsiders for that reason.

Oh - second post made me think it was greece - I don't get into Roman history too much. But still feel like Egyptian Priest was cushiest without being a ruler or something.

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You get massive bribes every year just to not kill your boss.

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I like this part the most.

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Also I don't think traveling the world back then was seen as too awesome. A lot of the travel and colonization was simply due to limitations on agriculture due to Greece's landscape. Often, if a few ships went out and came back several years later - their former town would view them as invaders / outsiders for that reason.

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What?

Greece did grow most of its food outside of Greece. For Athens, most of the food was grown on the Black Sea. But travel was absolutely common. Otherwise, Athens would have starved. That was a major portion of several of these wars was controlling shipping patterns.

Greeks did have complicated ties with some of their colonies but they did get around.

Greeks colonized the Black Sea, Turkey, Italy, Scicily, France, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and according to some reports, even as Far East as India.

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Also I don't think traveling the world back then was seen as too awesome. A lot of the travel and colonization was simply due to limitations on agriculture due to Greece's landscape. Often, if a few ships went out and came back several years later - their former town would view them as invaders / outsiders for that reason.


What?

Greece did grow most of its food outside of Greece. For Athens, most of the food was grown on the Black Sea. But travel was absolutely common. Otherwise, Athens would have starved. That was a major portion of several of these wars was controlling shipping patterns.

Greeks did have complicated ties with some of their colonies but they did get around.

Greeks colonized the Black Sea, Turkey, Italy, Scicily, France, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and according to some reports, even as Far East as India.

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Ya they got around and colonized, but it certainly wasn't an easy task or pain free task. The reason they were compelled for such widespread colonization was often limited food supply in the surrounding area which limited the population that could be supported. At least that is what the audiobooks and lecture courses I've listened to have said, it seems reasonable.

And there are certainly records of people who left to colonize, after several years attempted to come back and were basically told "tough shite" - although food supply wasn't the only reason for this reaction.

Also - going back to original OP, definitely wouldn't want to be in a job where i could take a sword to the gut and die a painful death. Egyptian priests also kept themselves very, very clean - which likely lead to them not having painful illness as a cause of death as much as other duties.

Certainly on their roads, i was more thinking about ancient greek sea travel at first. Roman sea travel was probably a little better, but for the most part - only the ultra wealthy could afford the limited cabin space on merchant ships. Plus with the unpredictable weather patterns in the Mediterranean, was probably a pretty rough trip more often than not.