The Poor in the City of Rome Comprehensive Study Notes

The Poor in the City of Rome

Historical Perspectives on Roman Poverty

  • George Bernard Shaw's Observation:

    • Almsgiving is a necessary evil to prevent hunger riots and revolution.
    • He draws a parallel between ancient Rome's bread and gladiatorial shows and modern-day doles and entertainment, suggesting it leads to idleness and societal decline.
    • Shaw fears a future of "bread and football (or prizefights)" mirroring Rome's decline.

  • 18th and 19th Century Views:

    • Political economists often used Rome as a case study due to its well-documented history and perceived similarities to contemporary society.

  • David Hume's Argument:

    • Roman sportulae (gifts from lords to clients) encouraged idleness and decay, similar to the negative effects of parish rates in England.

  • Adam Smith's Analysis:

    • States devalue coinage due to financial problems caused by poor governance.
    • In Rome, the poor were indebted to the rich, who used this leverage to secure votes.
    • Candidates bribed citizens with handouts and corn distributions, leading to a cycle of dependence.
    • The poor demanded debt abolition or "New Tables" (debt restructuring).
    • Smith contrasts this with his view of modern poverty, which he believed could be alleviated through economic growth and good governance.
    • He advocated for higher wages as an incentive for the poor to improve their situation and enrich society.
    • Rome exemplified a state managed for the rich, leading to idleness among the poor, political corruption, and fear of wealth redistribution.

  • Impact of the French Revolution:

    • The French Revolution shifted the focus to addressing the grievances of the poor.

  • Radical Perspective (Thomas Paine):

    • Advocated for social measures like subsidized education and grants to create a government in which the poor and rich are both invested.

  • Conservative Perspective (Edmund Burke):

    • He saw proposals to help the poor as a threat to monarchy, religion, and private property.
    • Burke used the fall of the Roman Republic and Empire as a warning against the French Revolution, quoting classical authors to highlight the dangers of redistribution of property.
    • He believed any attempt to provide relief would encourage laziness.

  • Thomas Malthus's Justification:

    • Population growth would always outstrip agricultural productivity, making poverty inevitable.
    • He cited the Roman Republic as an example, where slavery and economic stagnation led to a decrease in free citizens.
    • Malthus argued gratuitous distribution of corn was required in Rome to sustain the poor citizens.
    • He warned of the poor being incited to revolt by dissatisfied individuals.
    • Malthus advocated for moral restraint and accepted the need for restrictions on liberty.

  • Jean-Baptiste Say's Analysis:

    • He similarly analyzed the indebtedness of the Roman poor, attributing it in part to their unwillingness to do "slavish" work, resulting in non-proprietors' unrest.
    • Which drove Roman leaders to military action for distraction and bribery with booty.
    • He contrasted Rome with contemporary society, arguing that modern development had made war uneconomical and clientelage obsolete.

  • Common Idea of Rome:

    • Rome was seen as the archetypal example of a society where the poor were a threat, indulged at the expense of the empire.

Reinterpreting Roman Poverty

  • Problems with the Historical Accounts:

    • Sources are already politicized.

  • Elite Perspective:

    • Elite writers often used the term "poor" to describe the entire non-elite population.
    • They distinguished between the "virtuous" and the "dirty plebs."

  • Juvenal's Ironic Intent:

    • His account of "bread and circuses" is not a simple description of Roman life but a symbol of political failure and decadence.
    • Satire 3 uses poverty to construct an image of extreme contrasts in the city.

  • Stereotypes of the Poor:

    • Stereotypes legitimized wealth and reinforced the social structure.
    • Those who attended contiones were encouraged to identify with the respectable populus and oppose the sordida plebs.

  • Poverty and Sedition:

    • Poverty was pathologized and associated with envy and sedition.
    • Associating Catiline's followers with the poor discredited them and tainted legitimate grievances.

  • Identifying the Subject:

    • There is a basic problem in this study: How do we identify its subject? The writers of the 18th and 19th centuries treated the plebs and populus as identical to "the poor" of Rome.

Defining Poverty

  • Problematic Term:

    • 'Poverty' is challenging to define and often politicized.

  • Differing Perspectives:

    • Poverty can be defined in absolute or relative terms, as an objective or subjective state.
    • Classifications create differing perspectives.
    • Poverty can be seen as an urgent social problem of one age vs. a natural state of another.

  • Absence of Poverty?

    • One could argue there were no poor in Rome if poverty is defined as a social group whose lack of resources is seen as a problem for society.
    • Conversely, one might argue everyone in antiquity was poor compared to modern standards.

  • Mass Structural Poverty:

    • Mass structural poverty was the natural state of humanity for most of history, limited by reliance on organic energy sources.

  • Common Attributes:

    • High infant mortality, low literacy, and subsistence-level diets were common in the classical world.

  • Ancient vs. Modern Economies:

    • Global economic comparison demonstrates differences but is of limited usefulness in understanding poverty within any certain pre-industrial society.

  • Two Distinctions Need to Be Made:

    • Structural vs. Conjunctural Poverty:

      • Structural: Poverty due to birth and circumstance with little hope of escape unless skilled or fortunate.
      • Conjunctural: Poverty due to misfortune.
      • Distinction not always clear, (i.e. poverty of widows/orphans can be accident/structure etc.)
      • Some level of conjunctural poverty seems inevitable.
      • Important question: Was there an identifiable group within Roman society that was less well-off than the majority?

    • Poverty vs. Destitution:

      • Destitution can result from an accident, but without social provision, it's not a long-term prospect.
      • If equated, poverty is only a temporary distress where most either recover or parish.

  • Purcell's Rejection:

    • Economic poverty at Rome wasn't a state endured for long, if at all extreme, and it was usually rapidly fatal.
    • Survival meant improvement and emigration.

  • Reframing the Issue:

    • Did the majority of people live on subsistence level where deterioration only meant destitution, not mere poverty?

Social Stratification

  • Elite Bias:

    • Elite sources often treat the non-elites as an undifferentiated mass.
    • Distinctions are contradictory.
    • 'The poor' are defined as whatever the true populus should unite against.

  • Modern Interpretations:

    • Historians often analyze the politics of the Republic focusing on the elite, with 'the people' portrayed as passive.

  • Social Status:

    • Divisions are understood in terms of social status, with the distinction between free-born, slave, and freedman overshadowing other factors.
    • Economic/Social History: ancient diet / Roman family.

  • Homogeneity:

    • It is misleading to assume homogeneity or to take Juvenal's account as the life of an average Roman citizen.

  • Archaeological Evidence:

    • Rural development classifications operate with a crude distinction between peasant farms and villas.
    • Elite sites are more likely to be found.
    • Relying on fine wares for dating creates bias against poorer sites.

  • Interpreting Poorer Sites:

    • Status of a site's occupants is often interpreted, and small poor sites can be interpreted as slave dwellings.

The Silence of the Inscriptions

  • The vast majority of inscriptions commemorate freedmen and slaves, not the free-born.

  • Purcell's Interpretation:

    • Free-born urbanites tended to die and be commemorated outside the city, whereas the majority of the population were migrants or freedmen who failed to reproduce.

  • Counterarguments:

    • What about free-born who died unexpectedly instead of retiring?
    • Migration level debates assume a significant number of births from the free population.
    • It is assumed that those who couldn't afford a tombstone must have been destitute and unlikely to survive.

  • Survival in Cities:

    • Comparative evidence shows it is possible to survive through casual labor, prostitution, crime, and begging.

  • Core of Families:

    • There wouldn't have been old Plebian families; there was a social group with memberships constantly changing as some families move up and others fail.
    • The poor were those who failed to leave any marks in historical records.

  • Historian's Task:

    • Identify the empty spaces, gaps, and cracks in society where those worse off than the average Roman must have existed.

  • Two Strands:

    • Establish the extent of economic differentiation.

      • If most lived close to subsistence levels, then poverty must describe temporary destitution OR subjective state of mind.
      • If the economy was more developed/individuals produced, a more complex economic hierarchy may be imagined. It consists of groups of different levels of wealth.
      • The wealthy elite has the lion's share of resources; a number of ordinary inhabitants are well-fed, prosperous, and secure.
      • Social structure includes people living closer to the margin of subsistence without being destitute.
      • (Walter Scheidel found evidence for a wide range of census classes at Rome, supporting the existence of middle classes; by implication, the poor were perhaps half the population.)

    • Attempt to characterize the condition of poverty in social and cultural terms.

      • Poor diet affects one's health and ability to work; poverty in the Metropolis differs from other experiences.

Characteristics of Poverty

  1. Vulnerability

    • To be poor was to be vulnerable, above all to food shortage.
    • Everybody was at some level vulnerable.
    • Urban dwellers were wholly dependent on the market, so their access to food was disrupted by rumors. Their hope was to pressure elite/state to intervene/regulate the market.
    • The use of state grain likely stabilized the market, but recent immigrants weren't able to gain access.
    • Accidents had disproportionate impacts, modern statistics say the poor were more likely to become victims/perps of crime.
    • Everyone was at risk with infectious disease, but poor nutritional status and conditions meant the poorest most susceptible.

  2. Exclusion

    • A certain level of wealth and leisure is required to play a full social role.
    • The poor were denied opportunity to participate fully and vise versa.
    • Wealth determined political influence.
    • Ideology says the poor were incapable of developing full potential as a human.
    • The barrier stood between citizen/non and immigrants were in a less favored position over slaves.
    • Under the principate, most of the population was excluded from politics but citizenship offered largess but noted that the poor witness was suspect as a witness.
    • Social Arena required some measurement of surplus to gain access. Patron-Client relationships were reciprocal and excluded the poorest. Hope Laid with Emperor's Generosity, no interaction/recognition; gratitude in the audience.
    • Purcell: Poorer Plebs Integrated into Social Exchanges in Insula.
    • Urban society, especially the Metropolitan area, was alienated and had purely instrumental relationships; not a dependable stable family.
    • The countryside had more reliable relationships with kin, neighbors, and friends (even the poorest).

  3. Shame

    • Poverty is social, political, physiological and defines the human condition at a given point of history.
    • Ridicule is more burdensome than the calamity of poverty.
    • Ambitiosa Paupertas - poverty of those who still aspired to move in a polite society. It has an insight into psychology in Rome. They may have felt the same kind of shame if they sold labor.
    • The nature of Manual labor and trade.
    • Ambiguous and contradictory, the rural poverty of working yeoman was idealized, but urban poverty was pathologized with rebellions, crim,e and disease.
  • Everyone was poor in all aspects, with the shame contributing to exclusion and therefore reinforcing vulnerability. The ones outcasted couldn't fully rely on networks of reciprocity or patronage in times of crisis.

Towards a History of the Roman Poor

  • Poverty is not an independent variable; it is the consequence of the combo of economic development, population size relative to resources, and the economic structures that determine the distribution of wealth within society.
  • Changes affect severity.
  • Smith said affluence will reduce poverty; Malthus retorted not unless population is checked, Paine/Marx pointed out it needs transformation and equitable distribution.
  • Modern explanation follows - fortunate by-product or capitalism ensures exploitation.
  • Structures favor dominance of the wealthy elite.
  • Predominantly agrarian, undeveloped with limited capacity.
Incidence, Severity, Location
  • How did it change over time?
  • Overall wealth may have increased but property concentrated in fewer hands.
  • Italian population grew and it spread impoverishment in the countryside and cities, it was sustainable as long as the majority lived at subsistence level.
  • Roman's military drew Young men, the lack of surplus left them unable to expand or improve.
  • Divided inheritance made firms too small to be fully viable.
Large number of people -> metropolis.
  • It attracted migrants with employment promises.
  • Population left with access to land and better opportunities.
  • Rome's Problems were successes
  • increased over last Centuries, the proportion of the Urban population increased as immigrants came over.
  • it Was severe, no direct access because they had no source of food other than the market, theft, or charity.
  • Decisions made migrations that separated them from social structures.
  • There could have been aggravation and ideals of rural life, in their culture they couldn't stress industries or skills to emphasize they aren't inferior; they aren't ashamed.
  • Concentration in areas makes difficult undertakings and is lucrative for merchants.
  • Social alienation was magnified.
  • Concern began by political discourse and they are only introduced to relieve the population to food crisis.
  • The elites won concession and everyone has the right to have a share and to only demand a share in everything.
  • It relieve the Worst Effects yet the Poor are not diminished or reformed in anyway.
  • It shows how everything leads back to them. As in previous centuries, there isn't concern or needs because they aren't a threat. Discourses find audiences, not rulers.
  • Traditional violence. debates on the charity and the poor were able to find reinforcement. The violence was re-enforced