The Economic Consequences Of The Grain Dole

[M. Porcius Cato]

Reading a lot of Cicero recently I see.

More than before...but mostly "Party Politics in the Age of Caesar" and articles in Journal of Roman Studies.

…The dole was bad for the Italian countryside, but was supported by the urban mob, with whose interests Italians were almost always at odds. The urban mob--united with patrician interests--opposed the Gracchi proposal of citizenship for Italians and once they were forced to accept it, jealously guarded their political supremacy through special election laws that prevented effective Italian participation except through the senate and their plebian allies (such as Cato). Thus, the senatorial class who opposed the Gracchi differed very much from the senatorial class who opposed urban patricians such as Caesar and Clodius. To call both the opponents of Caesar and the Gracchi 'optimates' is misleading and anachronistic.

While still allowing the alliance against Italian dictatorship which just shows things can sometimes be more complicated, the history of internal Republican politics is nothing if it isn’t the struggle between the populares and patricians. You seem to be suggesting some new paradigm of relationships between the two classes that goes against most historical study and quite frankly fails.

The relationships among magistrates over a period of more than 100 years were obviously more complicated than is captured by attempting to shoehorn everything into the familiar division between patrician and pleb.

 

The alliances of the late republic particularly demonstrate that the failure is on the part of seeing everything in terms of the patrician/pleb division. The patrician families included Clodius, Caesar, and Catalina--who would thus be 'optimates' in your categorization scheme; the plebian families included Catulus, Metellus Pius, Lucullus, Domitius, and Cato--who thus would be 'populares' in your scheme. Obviously, this makes absolutely no sense because mapping the optimate/populare distinction onto the patrician/pleb divide fails utterly to capture who derived power from the senate (the plebs listed above) and who had power from the tribal assembly (the patricians listed above).

 

I pointed out how the dole started and am skeptical of the phrase middle-class (especially consisting of down-on-their-heels Equestrians) as being much of a percentage of this particular agrarian economy.

A histogram of income distribution almost invariably follows a power law no matter the society. If Rome were the only economy in the history of the world to have a bimodal distribution of the very rich and the very poor, it would be a miracle. The myth of the bimodal income distribution is a cherished one among populists because the myth recruits the middle class into their "us versus them" ideology, but it's the sociological equivalent of creationism and the flat-earth society.

 

The aid in Somalia was under the auspices of the U.N. not the U.S., and yes our efforts were successful in denying aid from being horded in militia hands once we got boots on the ground. Tens of thousands of Somali’s are alive today because of U.N. military intervention.

 

Good for you. How many Americans were killed by the Somali mobs to whom we sent that aid?

Edited December 27, 2005 by M. Porcius Cato

[Virgil61]

The relationships among magistrates over a period of more than 100 years were obviously more complicated than is captured by attempting to shoehorn everything into the familiar division between patrician and pleb.

Active bribery, putting up patsies and other successful attempts by the patrician class to involve themselves in undermining populares affairs for their benefit can make it look complicated.

The alliances of the late republic particularly demonstrate that the failure is on the part of seeing everything in terms of the patrician/pleb division. The patrician families included Clodius, Caesar, and Catalina--who would thus be 'optimates' in your categorization scheme; the plebian families included Catulus, Metellus Pius, Lucullus, Domitius, and Cato--who thus would be 'populares' in your scheme. Obviously, this makes absolutely no sense because mapping the optimate/populare distinction onto the patrician/pleb divide fails utterly to capture who derived power from the senate (the plebs listed above) and who had power from the tribal assembly (the patricians listed above).

Patricians/plebian scheme isn

[M. Porcius Cato]

Funny--plebs who oppose the populares are simply "patsies" of the patrician class and patricians who oppose both plebs and Italian rights are somehow populares. I'm wondering, Is there any historical evidence at all that would convince you that the divisons of 133 BCE don't apply to the divisions of 50 BCE? It seems you've managed to guard your theory against any falsification whatever.

 

A histogram of income distribution almost invariably follows a power law no matter the society. If Rome were the only economy in the history of the world to have a bimodal distribution of the very rich and the very poor, it would be a miracle. The myth of the bimodal income distribution is a cherished one among populists because the myth recruits the middle class into their "us versus them" ideology, but it's the sociological equivalent of creationism and the flat-earth society.

Perhaps you meant to post this in a Friedrich Hayek forum. We aren

[Virgil61]

Funny--plebs who oppose the populares are simply "patsies" of the patrician class and patricians who oppose both plebs and Italian rights are somehow populares. I'm wondering, Is there any historical evidence at all that would convince you that the divisons of 133 BCE don't apply to the divisions of 50 BCE? It seems you've managed to guard your theory against any falsification whatever.

 

C'mon, you're doubtful that patsies or bribes were used by the patricians? Running tribunes for office who were in cahoots with the Senate was something done to T. Gracchus as well as others.

 

By 50 BC events had degenerated so far they barely looked like the decade prior, but make no mistake they were built on the fault lines of the previous eras and the line-ups, JC vs Cato and Co., seem to reflect that.

 

The historical evidence convinces me otherwise.

 

Sure, and your claim that there was no middle class in Rome flies in the face of hundreds of cross-disciplinary empirical studies of income distribution, which almost invariably follows a power law (or exponential decay function, which is mathematically quite close).

 

You might want to reread my posts. I never claimed there was no middle-class, only skepticism that it constituted all that much of the population.

 

Using subsistence as a baseline, I'd like to see a study of income distribution of an ancient economy like the late Roman Republic and it's slave-based agrarian foundation show a distribution that'll look anything like what we'd like today . There's one out there on the Byzantine Empire circa 1000...it's not pretty.

[M. Porcius Cato]

C'mon, you're doubtful that patsies or bribes were used by the patricians? Running tribunes for office who were in cahoots with the Senate was something done to T. Gracchus as well as others.

 

This is a political tactic--like the manipulation of the state religion--and not a political agenda. And, yes, patricians like Caesar and Clodius did use patsies and bribes, but they weren't optimates.

 

By 50 BC events had degenerated so far they barely looked like the decade prior, but make no mistake they were built on the fault lines of the previous eras and the line-ups, JC vs Cato and Co., seem to reflect that.

The historical evidence convinces me otherwise.

 

So what is this evidence??? I've gone to the trouble of listing specific families and office holders that demonstrate that the electoral changes brought about by the Social War led to a seismic shift in the alliances between and among the old patrician and plebean classes. All you've said (in effect) is, "No I've not heard that idea before, so it must be wrong".

 

The only commonality between the factions of 133 and the factions of 50 is that in both periods there was one group that had relatively more support in the senate than tribal assembly and there was another group that had relatively more support in the tribal assembly than in the senate. Mathematically, this is almost certain to be the case and says nothing interesting in itself about the continuity of agendas between the senators of these two periods.

 

Look to Cicero's oration against Piso: Cicero says that while Piso attained his power from his patrician countenance and family history, Cicero gained his from the votes of cuncta Italia--all Italy. Really, Virgil, do you think that granting citizenship to cuncta Italia had no effect on the composition of the alliances? Do you think it is an accident that a provincial was finally able to win the consulship? Do you think Caesar was sending his emissaries from transalpine Gaul to canvas the nearby provinces simply for his health?

 

To me it seems bizarre to blame the provincial expropriations of the second century on the champions of provincial rights in the first century. It's rather analogous to equating the faction supporting American slavery with the faction supporting the New Deal. There is a connection of course (both being Democrats), but the connection is only superficial.

 

 

You might want to reread my posts. I never claimed there was no middle-class, only skepticism that it constituted all that much of the population.

 

In the context of the question of the corn dole, I claimed that the corn dole was a middle-class entitlement. Meaning, any person from the middle-class (almost always a smaller group than the lower class and a bigger group than the upper class) could get his share. So, if you want to maintain that the middle class wasn't much of the population, your claim is simply irrelevant.

 

Using subsistence as a baseline, I'd like to see a study of income distribution of an ancient economy like the late Roman Republic and it's slave-based agrarian foundation show a distribution that'll look anything like what we'd like today . There's one out there on the Byzantine Empire circa 1000...it's not pretty.

 

I've read that paper, and I'll quote it's conclusion:

We had two objectives in this paper: to come with a plausible estimate of

Byzantine average income at the time of the Empire

[Skarr]

Talking about the history of the 'dole' - this is a fascinating subject in of itself and possibly, the major reason for this is more economic than anything else, although it was used as a powerful political tool throughout Rome's history.

 

During the time of the Gracchi, the Roman world had undergone profound changes with the formation of a professional standing army and the widespread influence that Rome began to command throughout the Region from various conquests in Macedonia, Greece, Spain, parts of Numidia and even stretching up to Pontus. Rome was seeking to form alliances with all sorts of people and there was not only a huge influx of slaves from the various conquests into Rome but also the landless poor who began to pour into the city from all corners of Italy, seeking work. The soldier, after sixteen years of service, returned home to find himself without land as vast tracts of land began to get seized, appropriated or consolidated into giant farms that were dependent upon slave labor. The population in the city began to rapidly expand with the influx of all these people and the overcrowding, unemployment etc. meant rapidly deteriorating conditions that could lead to riots if the populace were not fed and in later periods, not only fed but also entertained.

 

What began as a welfare measure to ease the pain of all these people soon became a well established right with Sicily and Egypt becoming very important to Rome's survival as a city. After all, people had to be fed and the average Roman 'citizen' was basically poor and unemployed or perhaps, employed only sporadically.

[Virgil61]

This is a political tactic--like the manipulation of the state religion--and not a political agenda. And, yes, patricians like Caesar and Clodius did use patsies and bribes, but they weren't optimates.

 

Historically the money was on the side of the patricians who engaged an almost systematic attack on the plebian political structure. JC and Clodius played them at their own game and beat them. They did not like that, hell it drove them crazy.

 

So what is this evidence??? I've gone to the trouble of listing specific families and office holders that demonstrate that the electoral changes brought about by the Social War led to a seismic shift in the alliances between and among the old patrician and plebean classes. All you've said (in effect) is, "No I've not heard that idea before, so it must be wrong".

 

The patrician/plebe struggle set the overall parameters of internal Roman politics. Re the outcome of the Social War, I don

[M. Porcius Cato]

Once again we've strayed from the topic at hand--what were the consequences of the grain dole?

 

Virgil claimed that it was a terrible waste of resources and manpower (though he didn't elaborate and mostly was concerned to reiterate that it was really the fault of the optimates who opposed it). I claimed that it probably had the effect of driving Italian farmers out of business and more certainly was an indirect drain on the treasury (insofar as the grain came in the form of taxes on the provinces and would normally have been used for the legions without thereby affecting the grain supply in Rome itself).

 

Perhaps we can revisit the motives for the grain dole in another thread if we're all in agreement that the grain dole had negative long-term consequences for the total supply of grain that would have otherwise been available.

[Favonius Cornelius]

Perhaps we can revisit the motives for the grain dole in another thread if we're all in agreement that the grain dole had negative long-term consequences for the total supply of grain that would have otherwise been available.

 

Is it possible to say that the grain dole resulted in an artificial concentration of population in Rome itself, and this led to some actual benefits: perhaps a population to more easily conscript a sizable army, the joining together of ideas and concepts to spur on creative and technological progress, or even cause a boost to manufacture?