The Poor in the City of Rome
The Politics of Roman Poverty
George Bernard Shaw's observation on almsgiving: While necessary to prevent hunger riots and revolution, it's an evil. Giving the unemployed a dole is not out of love but out of fear of the consequences if they were left to starve.
Shaw's comparison to ancient Rome: The unemployed demanded bread and gladiatorial shows, leading to a society of playboys fed and amused with money from the provinces, which Shaw saw as the beginning of the end for ancient Rome.
Shaw's prediction: "We may come to bread and football (or prizefights) yet."
Historical Perspectives on Poverty
Late 18th and early 19th-century writers on political economy often used examples from classical history, especially Rome, to support their arguments.
Rome was well-documented and perceived as sufficiently similar to contemporary society.
David Hume's view: Roman evidence suggests the inherent idleness of the poor and the harmful effects of poor relief.
Hume’s example: The sportulae (presents from lords to clients) led to idleness and decay, similar to the parish-rates in England.
Contrasting Analyses of Roman Society
Adam Smith's perspective: States devalue coinage in response to financial problems caused by unwise expenditure.
Smith's analysis of Rome: The poor were constantly in debt to the rich, who used loans at exorbitant interest to secure votes. The senate-ordered distributions of corn furthered this cycle.
Smith's point: To escape debt, the poor demanded abolition of debts or 'New Tables'(a law entitling them to complete acquittance upon paying only a certain proportion of their accumulated debts).
Smith’s comparison: Unlike the modern world where poverty may be alleviated by economic growth and limited political action, Rome exemplified a state managed for the benefit of the rich leading to idleness and corruption, with the wealthy always fearful of redistribution demands.
The French Revolution's Impact on Views of Poverty
The French Revolution shifted the focus to how societies should address the grievances of the poor.
Radicals like Thomas Paine advocated for social measures like subsidised education to ensure the poor have a stake in government.
Conservatives like Edmund Burke saw such proposals as a threat to monarchy, religion, and private property.
Burke's comparison to Rome: He evoked the fall of the Roman Republic to caution against redistribution of property and the seduction of the army, believing that French Revolutionaries would stoop to Catiline's level.
Burke: Romans only confiscated property from 'enemies of the state,' not all property rights in the name of the 'rights of Man.'
Burke viewed the poor's existence as a given and believed relief efforts would encourage laziness.
Malthus and the Inescapability of Poverty
Thomas Malthus argued that population growth would always surpass agricultural productivity, making poverty inevitable.
Malthus used the Roman Republic as an example, stating that the destruction of equality and the influx of slaves cut off the free citizens from selling their labor.
Malthus: The distribution of free corn was a strange custom that was required due to the unnatural state of the city.
Malthus believed poverty could only be avoided in the short term, and could result from slavery, economic stagnation or overpopulation.
Malthus saw a danger that talented, dissatisfied men could persuade the poor that their distress was because of the established order, leading to revolt.
Malthus urged moral restraint, deferment of marriage, and accepted monarchy might sometimes be justified in restricting liberty and employing force.
Liberal Perspectives and the Role of War
Jean-Baptiste Say analysed the indebtedness of the Roman poor, linking it to their unwillingness to undertake 'slavish' employment.
Say: This led to unrest and demands for equal property distribution, pushing leaders to military action to distract and bribe the masses.
Say described the Roman impoverished population, stating that they fell into poverty the moment they had no one to pillage.
Say contrasted Rome with the contemporary situation, arguing that modern economic development had made war uneconomical and clientelage obsolete.
Say: Poverty that led to the fall of governments should be confined to the Roman past.
Common Idea of Rome
Writers across the spectrum shared an idea of Rome as the archetypal image of a mob, with alienated poor susceptible to manipulation.
The poor were seen as a potential threat to social stability, requiring appeasement through indulgence at the empire's expense.
This view echoes Roman sources like Sallust, Cicero, and Juvenal.
The material is reinterpreted with new understanding of economic and social structures.
Smith and Malthus attributed social disorder to Rome's leaders and their responses to poverty.
Problems with Historical Material
Political economists used historical material to support their political arguments about poverty, but these sources were already politicised.
Cicero's descriptions of Roman society (assidui vs. proletarii, populus vs. plebs) are not neutral accounts of social reality, but elite world-views.
Elite stereotypes of the poor as idle legitimized wealth and reinforced social structures.
Attendees of contiones were encouraged to identify with the loyal populus and oppose the sordida plebs.
Poverty was pathologised and associated with envy and sedition.
References to the Roman poor were intended to incite fear of upheaval to justify actions and sway debates.
Identifying the Subject
Political economists treated Rome's 'poor' as identical to the plebs or populus, overlooking that the poor were a subset of the population.
Following Juvenal, they assumed the Roman population was primarily destitute and dependent on the corn dole.
Consideration of a group defined in political terms as coterminous with one defined by economic or social criteria.
'Poverty' is a problematic term, easier to describe than define, with no agreement on how to identify the poor as a social group.
Definitions are criticised for ideological assumptions.
Commentators differ on whether poverty should be defined in absolute or relative terms, and whether it is primarily an objective or a subjective state.
Different systems of classification produce radically different perspectives.
It could be argued that there were no poor in Rome if one follows modern practice in taking the term to refer to a social group whose lack of resources and/or way of life is regarded as a problem for ‘society’ as a whole, an unacceptable state of affairs.
Conversely, one might argue that everyone or virtually everyone in antiquity was poor, in material terms, in comparison with the modern era.
“Mass structural poverty”, it is suggested, has been the natural state of humanity for most of history, an inevitable feature of life in a society that was wholly dependent on “organic” sources of energy – above all, human or animal muscle, which had to be supported from the land and therefore placed strict limits on how far productivity could be increased.
Attributes indicative of poverty (high infant mortality, low literacy, subsistence diet) were common in the classical world.
This global comparison is of limited use in understanding the place of poverty within any particular pre-industrial society.
Distinctions Within Poverty
Structural vs. Conjunctural Poverty: Structural refers to being born into poverty and remaining so, while conjunctural poverty results from misfortune.
Poverty vs. Destitution: Destitution is the lack of any significant income and likely results in death without social provision, which may be the result of extreme circumstances.
Purcell suggests that economic poverty at Rome was not a state that an individual is likely to have endured for long, let alone a family; it was, if at all extreme, usually rapidly fatal
Purcell questions did the majority of the inhabitants of the city of Rome (and indeed of the empire) live so close to subsistence level that any deterioration in one’s condition could only mean destitution, not mere poverty?
Elite Perspectives and Modern Interpretations
Elite sources often treat the population as undifferentiated and apply the vocabulary of poverty indiscriminately.
The distinctions that they sometimes draw between different groups within the plebs are vague and contradictory.
Modern historians have often implicitly adopted such an approach, empha- sising that the plebs was not completely homogeneous but then analyzing the politics of the Republic as if it was.
Where divisions within the ‘mass’ are highlighted, these are often understood solely in terms of social status; the distinction between free-born, slave and freedman is taken to overshadow other criteria of differentiation.
In economic and social history, too, there is a tendency to pursue the idea of ‘ancient diet’ or ‘the Roman family’ rather than acknowledging the possibility of variation outside the elite as well.
It is as misleading simply to assume homogeneity as it would be to take Juvenal’s account as representative of the life of the average Roman citizen.
Archaeological Biases
Elite sites are more likely to be found by archaeological survey.
Reliance on fine wares for dating creates bias against poorer sites.
Interpretation of the poorest sites rests on prior assumptions about social structure.
Small, poor sites can be interpreted as slave dwellings, shepherd huts or sheds.
Assuming a hierarchy among non-elite farmers allows interpreting such sites as homes of poorer peasants.
The Problem of Silence
The vast majority of inscriptions from the city commemorate freedmen and slaves; the free-born (including the offspring of freedmen) are conspicuously absent.
Purcell takes this as grounds for rejecting the idea (influenced by Juvenal’s complaints) that the city included a sizeable group of the poor descendents of pure-blood Romans.
He argues instead, supported by some inscriptions from other parts of Italy, that free-born urbanites tended to die and be commemorated outside the city, while the majority of the population were new migrants or freedmen who failed to reproduce themselves.
Purcell's argument is implausible, the level of migration to Rome assumes a significant number of births annually amongst the free population, if never enough to compensate for high urban mortality levels.
Underestimating the degree to which large cities can support large populations with no obvious regular employment.
Comparative evidence from early modern and modern cities shows, it is generally possible to survive, if not to live well, living from hand to mouth, through casual labor, prostitution, crime and begging.
Rather than assume their non-existence, we might define the poor precisely as those who, in unknown numbers, failed to leave any significant mark in the historical record.
The Historian's Task
Identify the empty spaces, the gaps and cracks in society, in which those noticeably worse off even than the average Roman must have existed.
Establish the extent of economic differentiation within the Roman empire.
Characterise the condition of poverty in social and cultural terms.
Vulnerability
To be poor was to be vulnerable, above all to food shortage.
Ubiquitous risk of food crises had the greatest impact on those closest to subsistence.
Urban dwellers were almost wholly dependent on the market.
Intervention in the market becomes necessary during times of crisis.
The use of state grain to provide a regular dole must have helped to stabilise the market, but not everyone had access to it – and recent immigrants, already vulnerable, were least likely to get on the lists.
The poor were the most likely to be victims of crime as well as its perpetrators.
The poorest were the most susceptible to infectious diseases due to poor nutrition and crowded living conditions.
Exclusion
A certain level of wealth to play a full social role, the poor are denied the opportunity to participate fully.
Stratification of the citizen body by wealth. Political influence and the weight of one’s vote were determined by wealth; so too the opportunity to play a role in the defense of the state.
Ideology: the poor were incapable of developing their full potential as human beings.
A further barrier stood between citizen and non-citizen, and it is clear that the wealthy Italian or provincial stood a far better chance of obtaining citizenship than the poor immigrant
Citizenship offers privileged access to largesse and legal protection.
Many social activities required some measure of surplus wealth to gain access.
The emperor offered occasional access to resources (at least for citizens) and entertainment but no social interaction or recognition.
Integration into Roman society through involvement in the social exchanges.
High levels of urban mortality imply that not even family life would necessarily have offered a stable, dependable social framework for the most vulnerable.
The countryside may have offered a more reliable and inclusive network of relationships with kin, neighbors and friends, even for the poorest.
Shame
'Poverty is not basically an economic problem. Rather, it is a particular state of social, political, psychological and existential being that defines the human condition at a given point in history.'
Juvenal: 'there is nothing in the calamity of poverty that is harder to bear than the fact that it makes men ridiculous'.
Juvenal's character speaks of the 'ambitious poverty' of those who wanted to move in polite society.
Whether a man felt himself to be poor because of a lack of slaves, because of his clothing and shoes, because he was compelled to work his farm himself or had insufficient money for a proper dowry, or because he was genuinely destitute and desperate, the sense of shame, and envy against those who enjoyed better (and undeserved) fortune, may have been the same.
To be poor was to be incapable of any virtue besides that of enduring poverty.
Poverty left one all too close to slavery, whether in occupation or appearance.
Attitudes to poverty were often ambiguous or contradictory.
The specifically rural poverty of the peasant yeoman, was idealised and assimilated to the landowning class, while urban poverty was pathologised, associated with rebellion, crime and disease.
Towards a History of the Roman Poor
Poverty is not an independent variable; it is the consequence of the combination of a particular level of economic development, a particular size of population relative to available resources and the particular social and economic structures that determine the distribution of wealth within society.
Changes in any of these variables will affect the incidence and severity of poverty.
Smith and his successors argued that increasing affluence would in due course alleviate poverty; Malthus retorted that this would not be the case unless population growth could somehow be checked; Paine and later Marx pointed to the need to transform the institutions of society in order to obtain a more equitable distribution of wealth.
Modern explanations for the persistence of poverty even after the industrial revolution follow similarly diverging lines.
The political, economic, social and legal structures of the Roman empire favored the dominance of the wealthy elite.
The Roman economy was predominantly agrarian, under-developed and severely limited in its capacity for growth.
It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that structural as well as conjunctural poverty should have existed; the questions that need to be considered in order to begin writing its history concern incidence, severity and location, and changes in each of these areas.
In Italy in the last two centuries of the Republic there is evidence that overall wealth may have increased.
There is evidence for the development of a more inequitable distribution of wealth, as property became concentrated in fewer hands.
If the free population stabilised or even declined at the same time as resources increased, then we might imagine a situation where the countryside became more prosperous (or less poor) while poverty was concentrated in the cities, especially the city of Rome; the capital’s demand for fresh bodies relieved Italy of a surplus population that might otherwise have put a strain on resources and reduced living standards.
If, on the other hand, the Italian population grew to the level implied by the ‘high’ interpretation of the Augustan census figures, it implies widespread impoverishment in the countryside as well as the city; such a population was, arguably, sustainable, but only if the majority lived at subsistence level.
Impact of Military Service
The army predominantly drew on young unmarried men at a stage in the life-cycle of the average family where their labour could be spared.
Rome’s military enterprise did not directly lead to the impoverishment of peasant farms, therefore, but the lack of surplus labour might have prevented them from taking advantage of opportunities for expansion and improvement.
Partible inheritance would then leave many farms in the next generation too small to be fully viable, increasing poverty and creating conditions that might incline people to migrate to the cities.
As Rosenstein has argued, the army predominantly drew on young unmarried men at a stage in the life-cycle of the average family where their labour could be spared.
Rosenstein interprets the problems of the late second century, misinterpreted completely by Tiberius Gracchus, as the result of a population boom and consequent pressure on resources and competition for land in many areas of Italy.
Urbanization and Poverty in Rome
Urbanization and poverty went hand in hand; Rome’s problems were the problems of success.
The number of poor increased over the last two centuries bc, and the proportion of the urban population which could be classified as poor may also have increased, as the city became ever more dominated by immigrants.
Urban poverty is in general likely to be more severe than rural poverty; the city poor had no direct access to the means of subsistence, no source of food other than the market, theft or charity.
Traditional social structures such as kinship and patronage were severed by the decision to migrate.
The shame of poverty might be aggravated by being cut off from the traditions of rural life.
Factors Aggravating Poverty in Rome:
Concentration of a large population made feeding them more expensive and difficult.
Longer distances for grain transport and logistical problems near the city added to the price and increased vulnerability to supply disruptions.
The size of the city made traditional face-to-face social interaction virtually impossible outside the elite and a small number of their dependents.
Traditional networks of patronage were ceasing to operate effectively, as ties of dependence and civic patriotism were replaced with relationships based on the cash nexus.
Political Discourse and the Poor
The Roman state was only just beginning to come to terms with the existence of a problem, and only just introducing measures to relieve the worst of the vulnerability of the urban population to food crisis.
Pressure ‘from below’ may have influenced Roman politics and won concessions from the elite.
The practical importance of the corn dole for a major part of the city population should not be underestimated, nor the ideological significance of the concession that all Roman citizens should have the right to demand a share of the spoils of empire.
Measures relieved the worst effects of poverty without doing anything to reduce the number of poor.
Other reforms to the organization of the food supply, and the advent of peace across the empire, proved effective in reducing the vulnerability of the city as a whole
Late Republican political discourse appears to have successfully pathologised poverty, and persuaded the audience at the contiones to identify with the values of their rulers and to regard ‘the poor’ as a threat to their own well-being.
The text echos remarkably similar discourses to that found in nineteenth-century debates on charity and the Poor Laws – except that those writers were able to draw on the traditional account of the violent and rebellious Roman poor to reinforce their arguments. .