Understanding Bread and Circuses

Rife throughout forum posts, twitter blather and facebook entries are several expressions that have become used so much they've lost their meaning to the bedraggled masses - if the mob understood these meaning in the first place - and have become what is known as logic-terminating clichés/tropes.

Some examples are:

"this is so Orwellian", or "history is repeating itself", and "it's all bread and circuses".

There are many more, but for this thread we're going to look at the last one, its historical and cultural significance, and how it applies to civilization and history. To extract most benefit from the thread, it's recommended to keep aloof from personal biases and look at our own nations as if from the point of a future historian, studying the past.

For the purposes of this post, general entertainment will be included with bread and circuses.
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"Bread and Circuses", Latin, Panem et Circenses, has been misquoted and misunderstood in the modern era, thanks in large part to the corrosive influence of Hollywood, and earlier due to spread of Jacobean, predominantly Revolutionary French, writers and painters, who frequently cherry picked Roman culture and history to suit their ends of portraying Western Civilization as in a constant state of rot. Some ahistorical cinema examples being to the effect of; "He'll give the people bread and circuses, and he'll love them for it."

More recently, the teen girl's author Suzan Collins, in a frenzy of unoriginality, has vivisected whole swaths of Roman history for her Hunger Games series, even being so droll as to label that world's evil capitol as 'Panem'.

So, the implication is that of a ruler, normally depicted as a tyrant, placating the unruly, dissatisfied citizenry with free food and sports events to distract them from their daily woes.

There's a pressing irony here, because this is exactly what Hollywood does.

But let's take a closer look at bread, sports, entertainment and how these things can be used to chart with fair accuracy where a civilization is, and where it's headed.

"Panem et circenses" is first attributed to the Roman poet and satirist, Decimus Junius Juvenalis (Juvenal), who lived during the 1st century AD, though the exact dates are disputed.

It's important to understand that by this time the Roman Republic was long gone, however its legacy and the benefits of its achievement still remained. We'll need to revisit pre-imperial Rome to understand bread and circuses more clearly, but for now, here is Juvenal's direct quote, taken from his Tenth Satire:

iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, panem et circenses

Those who read Latin can fully appreciate Juvenal's genius at placement and turn of phrase. The English:

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

For once Wikipedia is very accurate in describing Juvenal's intent, and how it fits within the context of his civilization at the time, and here we see some of the term's deeper meaning:

" identifies the only remaining cares of a Roman populace which no longer cares for its historical birthright of political involvement. Here Juvenal displays his contempt for the declining heroism of contemporary Romans, using a range of different themes including lust for power and desire for old age to illustrate his argument"

In other words, the issue was not merely a matter of 'football and EBT cards' for the mob, but that ethnic Romans themselves had become so dissolute, so nihilistic and so removed from legitimate political interest concurrent and part in parcel with political power using food and entertainment to control them.

Commendably, Wikipedia references the origin of the 'Panem' part, ie, free food, known the modern colloquial as 'the grain dole' and in Rome as the Annonia.

Now, here's the important part for our purposes of examining this from a civilizational perspective: The Annonia was passed several hundred years before, by one of Rome's earliest and most famous 'social justice warriors', Gaius Gracchus in 123 BC.

So, it's to early Republican Rome that we must journey in the thread's next post, to examine what both the Romans -and the modern West- were, are and will be.

Apologies if this introduction seems round-a-bout, but things will become more clear as we gather some commonly understood terms and histories.

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Understanding Bread and Circuses