Bread and Circuses

Hello Again…

It’s Friday and most people are not thinking about work they are thinking about the weekend. So I thought that we could talk about work, or the lack thereof, for some people.

How many people recognize the phrase “Bread and Circuses”? I said that to my wife a couple of days ago, and she didn’t recognize it. She is a very smart, well educated and well read lady, so I would be willing to bet that most people don’t recognize it. The phrase comes to us from Rome, the original Latin was Panem et Circenses. It was a metaphor for the Roman policy of providing bread to the populace to make sure that everyone had food to eat. This policy was called Anonna (grain dole), and was started by Gaius Sempronius Gracchus in 123BC as a grain subsidy in Rome. In 58BC it was made into a free distribution by Claudius (Julius Caesar was actually the person behind that, but used Claudius as the front) and after that it was taken over by the Emperor.

It was also a method that was used for pacification of the newly conquered lands. If you provided food for them, they became dependant on you, and right after a conquest they didn’t usually have the men to work in the fields, and would have had a few very lean years until they had gotten the population built back up and the stores rebuilt. The Romans came in and provided grain/bread for all. This was a populist movement by various politicians to get the people to like them, and to vote for them… They didn’t have the FEC to supposedly look over things and prevent people from buying votes.

This method of getting the people to like then worked pretty well for the politicians, but then after a while, they needed something else and along came the entertainment industry… In Rome, this was in the form of the Gladiatorial Games initially, and later became the bigger and bigger things that eventually gave rise to the building of the Colosseum. The people kept demanding more, and the politicians gave it to them… More and more. It got to the point that the people, the Roman Citizens, were not doing anything but living a life of leisure, getting the bread on the dole, and going to the shows. That was it.

Then, in the late first century and early second century AD along came a satirist named Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis (Juvenal is the English) who wrote some WONDERFUL satires, 16 of them actually. They are written about the excesses of Rome, the vice, and he is the one who coined the phrase “Bread and Circuses”. It’s in Satire X –

… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses

I started thinking about all of this a few days ago, when I was talking to a friend, who has been out of work for over a year now (part of the massive corporate fall apart). This friend has been working part time, when work was available, and trying to start a business as well, and is a single parent. Working hard and trying to make ends meet. When the benefits ran out this friend received a letter from the Employment Security Division so went in to the office and found out that they were filing a new claim and the payments were being raised. During this conversation I found out that people on unemployment don’t receive a check any more, they have a debit card. So… Since they have a debit card that means that they have a bank account. That bank account shows regular deposits coming in, which means that they can get credit cards, and loans and all sorts of other financial things, which a lot of them do. Then when the bill comes due, they just file bankruptcy. Now… Before many of you turn off on me, I am not talking about EVERYONE who is on unemployment or on some other sort of government giveaway program… But there are a lot of people who do these things.

While we were talking I was told about another friend that had been at the unemployment office recently. When leaving, this friend was stopped by the person who had been in the next cubicle over, and was told, "I have information that you can use, I can tell you what to say so that you will never have to work again. You can keep getting the unemployment benefits for the rest of your life, until you get Social Security."

Bread and Circuses…

The titles, and descriptions, from Juvenal’s Satires are:

Book 1

– Satire 1 - Programmatic satire in which Juvenal states that his purpose is to write satire in a world where sinners are men of power.

- Satire 2 - Satire on homosexuality and the betrayal of traditional Roman values.

- Satire 3 - Contrasts corruption of modern Rome with the older simple way of life still found in the country.

- Satire 4 - Farcical political satire about the meeting of an imperial council to determine how to cook an outlandish fish.

- Satire 5 - Dinner party at which the patron continually humiliates his guest client.

Book 2

– Satire 6 - A wonder of misogyny, a catalogue of evil, eccentric, and depraved women.

Book 3

– Satire 7 - Without patronage in high places, intellectual pursuits suffer privations.
- Satire 8 - Aristocratic birth should be accompanied by noble behavior.
- Satire 9 - A dialogue in which the author assures Naevolus, a male prostitute, there will always be work for him in Rome.

Book 4

- Satire 10 - What should be prayed for is a healthy mind and body (mens sana in corpore sano)
- Satire 11 - Epistolary invitation to a simple dinner.
- Satire 12 - Description of sacrifice to be made for the safe escape of a man named Catullus from a storm at sea because he jettisoned his treasures.

Book 5

- Satire 13 - Consoles Calvinus on his loss -- of money.
- Satire 14 - Parents teach their children the vice of greed by their example.
- Satire 15 - Mankind has a tendency towards cannibalism and should follow Pythagoras' dietary recommendations.
- Satire 16 - Civilians have no redress against military assaults.

Is it just me, or does that read like the headlines from the paper, or the lead from the nightly news, or maybe the descriptions of a number of the shows on TV these days? I don’t know, but I do know, as Friedrich Hegel said “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history”. Or as George Santayana put it “Those who cannot learn from History are doomed to repeat it”. I don’t think that very many people have learned that much from history, ‘cause we sure do seem to be repeating it these days.

Bread and Circuses, think about it…

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools talk because they have to say something -

Plato