The words that suggest most clearly the Roman attitude towards what we
call charity are _liberalitas_, _beneficentia_ and _pietas_. The two
former are almost synonymous (Cicero, _De Offic._ i. 7, 14). Liberality
lays stress on the mood--that of the _liber_, the freeborn, and so in a
sense the independent and superior; beneficence on the deed and its
purpose (Seneca, _De Benef._ vi. 10). The conditions laid down by
Cicero, following Panaetius the Stoic (185-112 B.C.) are three: not to
do harm to him whom one would benefit, not to exceed one's means, and to
have regard to merit. The character of the person whom we would benefit
should be considered, his feelings towards us, the interest of the
community, our social relations in life, and services rendered in the
past. The utility of the deed or gift graded according to social
relationship and estimated largely from the point of view of ultimate
advantage to the doer or donor seems to predominate in the general
thought of the book, though (cf. Aristotle, _Eth._ viii. 3) the idea
culminates in the completeness of friendship where "all things are in
common." _Pietas_ has the religious note which the other words lack,
loving dutifulness to gods and home and country. Not "piety" only but
"pity" derive from it: thus it comes near to our "charity." Both books,
the _De Officiis_ and the _De Beneficiis_, represent a Roman and Stoical
revision of the problem of charity and, as in Stoicism generally, there
seems to be a half-conscious attempt to feel the way to a new social
standpoint from this side.
Roman times.
As from the point of view of charity the well-being of the community
depends upon the vigour of the deep-laid elemental life within it, so in
passing to Roman times we consider the family first. The Roman family
was unique in its completeness, and by some of its conditions the world
has long been bound. The father alone had independent authority (_sui
juris_), and so long as he lived all who were under his power--his wife,
his sons, and their wives and children, and his unmarried
daughters--could not acquire any property of their own. Failing father
or husband, the unmarried daughters were placed under the guardianship
of the nearest male members of the family. Thus the family, in the
narrower sense in which we commonly use the word, as meaning descendants
of a common father or grandfather, was, as it were, a single point of
growth in a larger organism, the _gens_, which consisted of all those
who shared a common ancestry.
The wife, though in law the property of her husband, held a position
of honour and influence higher than that of the Greek wife, at least
in historic times. She seems to come nearer to the ideal of Xenophon:
"the good wife should be the mistress of everything within the house."
"A house of his own and the blessing of children appeared to the Roman
citizen as the end and essence of life" (Mommsen, _Hist. Rome_). The
obligation of the father to the sons was strongly felt. The family,
past, present and future, was conceived as one and indivisible. Each
succeeding generation had a right to the care of its predecessor in
mind, body and estate. The training of the sons was distinctly a home
and not a school training. Brought up by the father and constantly at
his side, they learnt spontaneously the habits and traditions of the
family. The home was their school. By their father they were
introduced into public life, and though still remaining under his
power during his lifetime, they became citizens, and their relation to
the state was direct. The nation was a nation of yeomen. Only
agriculture and warfare were considered honourable employments. The
father and sons worked outdoors on the farm, employing little or no
slave labour; the wife and daughters indoors at spinning and weaving.
The drudgery of the household was done by domestic slaves. The father
was the working head of a toiling household. Their chief gods were the
same as those of early Greece--Zeus-Diovis and Hestia-Vesta, the
goddess of the hearth and home. Out of this solid, compact family
Roman society was built, and so long as the family was strong
attachment to the service of the state was intense. The _res publica_,
the common weal, the phrase and the thought, meet one at every turn;
and never were citizens more patient and tenacious combatants on their
country's behalf. The men were soldiers in an unpaid militia and were
constantly engaged in wars with the rivals of Rome, leaving home and
family for their campaigns and returning to them in the winter. With a
hardness and closeness inconsistent with--indeed, opposed to--the
charitable spirit, they combined the strength of character and sense
of justice without which charity becomes sentimental and unsocial. In
the development of the family, and thus, indirectly, in the
development of charity, they stand for settled obligation and
unrelenting duty.
Under the protection of the head of the family "in dependent freedom"
lived the clients. They were in a middle position between the freemen
and the slaves. The relation between patron and client lasted for
several generations; and there were many clients. Their number increased
as state after state was conquered, and they formed the _plebs_, in Rome
the _plebs urbana_, the lower orders of the city.
In relation to our subject the important factors are the family, the
_plebs_ and slavery.
Two processes were at work from an early date, before the first agrarian
law (486 B.C.): the impoverishment of the _plebs_ and the increase of
slavery. The former led to the _annona civica_, or the free supply of
corn to the citizens, and to the _sportula_ or the organized food-supply
for poor clients, and ultimately to the _alimentarii pueri_, the
maintenance of children of citizens by voluntary and imperial bounty.
The latter (slavery) was the standing witness that, as self-support was
undermined, the task of relief became hopeless, and the impoverished
citizen, as the generations passed, became in turn dependant, beggar,
pauper and slave.
The great patrician families--"an oligarchy of warriors and
slaveholders"--did not themselves engage in trade, but, entering on
large speculations, employed as their agents their clients, _libertini_
or freedmen, and, later, their slaves. The constant wars, for which the
soldiers of a local militia were eventually retained in permanent
service, broke up the yeomanry and very greatly reduced their number.
Whole families of citizens became impoverished, and their lands were in
consequence sold to the large patrician families, members of which had
acquired lucrative posts, or prospered in their speculations, and
assumed possession of the larger part of the land, the _ager publicus_,
acquired by the state through conquest. The city had always been the
centre of the patrician families, the patron of the trading _libertini_
and other dependants. To it now flocked as well the _metoeci_, the
resident aliens from the conquered states, and the poorer citizens,
landless and unable for social reasons to turn to trade. There was thus
in Rome a growing multitude of aliens, dispossessed yeomen and dependent
clients. Simultaneously slavery increased very largely after the second
Punic War (202 B.C.). Every conquest brought slaves into the market, for
whom ready purchasers were found. The slaves took the place of the
freemen upon the old family estates, and the free country people became
extinct. Husbandry gave place to shepherding. The estates were thrown
into large domains (_latifundia_), managed by bailiffs and worked by
slaves, often fettered or bound by chains, lodged in cells in houses of
labour (_ergastula_), and sometimes cared for when ill in infirmaries
(_valetudinaria_). In Crete and Sparta the slaves toiled that the mass
of citizens might have means and leisure. In Rome the slave class was
organized for private and not for common ends. In Athens the citizens
were paid for their services; at Rome no offices were paid. Thus the
citizen at Rome was, one might almost say, forced into a dependence on
the public corn, for as the large properties swallowed up the smaller,
and the slave dispossessed the citizen, a population grew up unfit for
rural toil, disinclined to live by methods that pride considered sordid,
unstable and pleasure-loving, and yet a serious political factor, as
dependent on the rich for their enjoyments as they were on their patrons
or the prefect of the corn in the city for their food.
It is estimated, from extremely difficult and uncertain data, that the
population of Rome in the time of Augustus was about 1,200,000 or
1,500,000. At that time the_ plebs urbana_ numbered 320,000. If this
be multiplied by three, to give a low average of dependants, wives and
children, this section of the population would number 960,000. The
remainder of the 1,500,000, 540,000, would consist of (a) slaves, and
(b) those, the comparatively few, who would be members of the great
clan-families (_gentes_). Proportionately to Attica this seems to
allow too small a population of slaves. But however this be, we may
picture the population of Rome as consisting chiefly of a few
patrician families ministered to by a very large number of slaves, and
a populace of needy citizens, in whose ranks it was profitable for an
outsider to find a place in order that he might participate in the
advantages of state maintenance.
The annona civica.
In Rome the clan-family became the dominant political factor. As in
England and elsewhere in the middle ages, and even in later times, the
family, in these circumstances, assumes an influence which is out of
harmony with the common good. The social advantage of the family lies in
its self-maintenance, its home charities, and its moral and educational
force, but if its separate interests are made supreme, it becomes
uncharitable and unsocial. In Rome this was the line of development. The
stronger clan-families crushed the weaker, and became the "oligarchy of
warriors and slaveholders." In the same spirit they possessed themselves
of the _ager publicus_. The land obtained by the Romans by right of
conquest was public. It belonged to the state, and to a yeoman state it
was the most valuable acquisition. At first part of it was sold and part
was distributed to citizens without property and destitute (cf.
Plutarch, _Tib. Gracchus_). At a very early date, however, the patrician
families acquired possession of much of it and held it at a low rental,
and thus the natural outlet for a conquering farmer race was monopolized
by one class, the richer clan-families. This injustice was in part
remedied by the establishment of colonies, in which the emigrant
citizens received sufficient portions of land. But these colonies were
comparatively few, and after each conquest the rich families made large
purchases, while the smaller proprietors, whose services as soldiers
were constantly required, were unable to attend to their lands or to
retain possession of them. To prevent this (367 B.C.) the Licinian law
was passed, by which ownership in land was limited to 500 _jugera_,
about 312 acres. This law was ignored, however, and more than two
centuries later the evil, the double evil of the dispossession of the
citizen farmer and of slavery, reached a crisis. The slave war broke out
(134 B.C.) and (133 B.C.) Tiberius Gracchus made his attempt to re-endow
the Roman citizens with the lands which they had acquired by conquest.
He undertook what was essentially a charitable or philanthropic
movement, which was set on foot too late. He had passed through Tuscany,
and seen with resentment and pity the deserted country where the foreign
slaves and barbarians were now the only shepherds and cultivators. He
had been brought up under the influence of Greek Stoical thought, with
which, almost in spite of itself, there was always associated an element
of pity. The problem which he desired to solve, though larger in scale,
was essentially the same as that with which Solon and Peisistratus had
dealt successfully. At bottom the issue lay between private property,
considered as the basis of family life for the great bulk of the
community, with personal independence, and pauperism, with the _annona_
or slavery. In 133 B.C. Tiberius Gracchus became tribune. To expand
society on the lines of private property, he proposed the enforcement of
"the Licinian Rogations"; the rich were to give up all beyond their
rightful 312 acres, and the remainder was to be distributed amongst the
poor. The measure was carried by the use of arbitrary powers, and
followed by the death of Tiberius at the hands of the patricians, the
dominant clan-families. In 132 B.C. Caius Gracchus took up his brother's
quarrel, and adopting, it would seem, a large scheme of political and
social reform, proposed measures for emigration and for relief. The
former failed; the latter apparently were acceptable to all parties, and
continued in force long after C. Gracchus had been slain (121 B.C.).
Already, at times, there had been sales of corn at cheap prices. Now, by
the _lex frumentaria_ he gave the citizens--those who had the Roman
franchise--the right to purchase corn every month from the public stores
at rather more than half-price, 6-1/3 _asses_ or about 3.3d. the peck.
This, the fatal alternative, was accepted, and henceforth there was no
possibility of a reversion to better social conditions.
The provisioning of Rome was, like that of Athens, a public service.
There were public granaries (267 B.C.), and there was a quaestor to
supervise the transit of the corn from Sicily and, later, from Spain and
Africa, and an elaborate administration for collecting and conveying it.
The _lex frumentaria_ of Caius was followed by the _lex Octavia_,
restricting the monthly sale to citizens settled in Rome, and to 5
_modii_ (1-1/4 bushels). According to Polybius, the amount required for
the maintenance of a slave was 5 _modii_ a month, and of a soldier 4.
Hence the allowance, if continued at this rate, was practically a
maintenance. The _lex Clodia_ (58 B.C.) made the corn gratuitous to the
_plebs urbana_.
Julius Caesar (5 B.C.) found the number of recipients to be 320,000,
and reduced them to 150,000. In Augustus's time they rose to 200,000.
There seems, however, to be some confusion as to the numbers. From the
_Ancyranum Monumentum_ it appears that the _plebs urbana_ who received
Augustus's dole of 60 _denarii_ (37s. 6d.) in his eighth consulship
numbered 320,000. And (Suet. _Caes._ 41) it seems likely that in
Caesar's time the lists of the recipients were settled by lot;
further, probably only those whose property was worth less than
400,000 _sesterces_ (L3541) were placed on the lists. It is probable,
therefore, that 320,000 represents a maximum, reduced for purposes of
administration to a smaller number (a) by a property test, and (b) by
some kind of scrutiny. The names of those certified to receive the
corn were exposed on bronze tablets. They were then called _aerarii_.
They had tickets (_tesserae_) for purposes of identification, and they
received the corn or bread in the time of the republic at the temple
of Ceres, and afterwards at steps in the several (14) regions or wards
of Rome. Hence the bread was called _panis gradilis_. In the middle of
the 2nd century there were state bakeries, and wheaten loaves were
baked for the people perhaps two or three times a week. In Aurelian's
time (A.D. 270) the flour was of the best, and the weight of the loaf
(one _uncia_) was doubled. To the gifts of bread were added pork, oil
and possibly wine; clothes also--white tunics with long sleeves--were
distributed. In the period after Constantine (cf. _Theod. Code_, xiv.
15) three classes received the bread--the palace people (_palatini_),
soldiers (_militares_), and the populace (_populares_). No
distribution was permitted except at the steps. Each class had its own
steps in the several wards. The bread at one step could not be
transferred to another step. Each class had its own supply. There were
arrangements for the exchange of stale loaves. Against
misappropriation there were (law of Valentinian and Valens) severe
penalties. If a public prosecutor (_actor_), a collector of the
revenue (_procurator_), or the slave of a senator obtained bread with
the cognizance of the clerk, or by bribery, the slave, if his master
was not a party to the offence, had to serve in the state bakehouse in
chains. If the master were involved, his house was confiscated. If
others who had not the right obtained the bread, they and their
property were placed at the service of the bakery (_pistrini exercitio
subjugari_). If they were poor (_pauperes_) they were enslaved, and
the delinquent client was to be put to death.
The right to relief was dependent on the right of citizenship. Hence it
became hereditary and passed from father to son. It was thus in the
nature of a continuous endowed charity, like the well-known family
charity of Smith, for instance, in which a large property was left to
the testator's descendants, of whom it was said that as a result no
Smith of that family could fail to be poor. But the _annona civica_ was
an endowed charity, affecting not a single family, but the whole
population. Later, when Constantinople was founded, the right to relief
was attached to new houses as a premium on building operations. Thus it
belonged not to persons only, but also to houses, and became a species
of "immovable" property, passing to the purchaser of the house or
property, as would the adscript slaves. The bread followed the house
(_aedes sequantur annonae_). If, on the transfer of a house, bread
claims were lost owing to the absence of claimants, they were
transferred to the treasury (_fisci viribus vindicentur_). But the
savage law of Valentinian, referred to above, shows to what lengths such
a system was pushed. Early in its history the _annona civica_ attracted
many to Rome in the hope of living there without working. For the 400
years since the _lex Clodia_ was enacted constant injury had been done
by it, and now (A.D. 364) people had to be kept off the civic bounty as
if they were birds of prey, and the very poor man (_pauperrimus_), who
had no civic title to the food, if he obtained it by fraud, was
enslaved. Thus, in spite of the abundant state relief, there had grown
up a class of the very poor, the Gentiles of the state, who were outside
the sphere of its ministrations. The _annona civica_ was introduced not
only into Constantinople, but also into Alexandria, with baleful
results, and into Antioch. When Constantinople was founded the
corn-ships of Africa sailed there instead of to Rome. On charitable
relief, as we shall see, the _annona_ has had a long-continued and fatal
influence.
1. If the government considers itself responsible for provisioning the
people it must fix the price of necessaries, and to meet distress or
popular clamour it will lower the price. It becomes thus a large
relief society for the supply of corn. In a time of distress, when the
corn laws were a matter of moment in England, a similar system was
adopted in the well-known Speenhamland scale (1795), by which a larger
or lesser allowance was given to a family according to its size and
the prevailing price of corn. A maintenance was thus provided for the
able-bodied and their families, at least in part, without any
equivalent in labour; though in England labour was demanded of the
applicant, and work was done more or less perfunctorily. In amount the
Roman dole seems to have been equivalent to the allowance provided for
a slave, but the citizen received it without having to do any labour
task. He received it as a statutory right. There could hardly be a
more effective method for degrading his manhood and denaturalizing his
family. He was also a voter, and the alms appealed to his weakness and
indolence; and the fear of displeasing him and losing his vote kept
him, socially, master of the situation, to his own ruin. If in England
now relief were given to able-bodied persons who retained their votes,
this evil would also attach to it.
2. The system obliged the hard-working to maintain the idlers, while
it continually increased their number. The needy teacher in Juvenal,
instead of a fee, is put off with a _tessera_, to which, not being a
citizen, he has no right. "The foreign reapers," it was said, "filled
Rome's belly and left Rome free for the stage and the circus." The
freeman had become a slave--"stupid and drowsy, to whom days of ease
had become habitual, the games, the circus, the theatre, dice,
eating-houses and brothels." Here are all the marks of a degraded
pauperism.
3. The system led the way to an ever more extensive slavery. The man
who could not live on his dole and other scrapings had the alternative
of becoming a slave. "Better have a good master than live so
distressfully"; and "If I were free I should live at my own risk; now
I live at yours," are the expressions suggestive of the natural
temptations of slavery in these conditions. The escaped slaves
returned to "their manger." The _annona_ did not prevent destitution.
It was a half-way house to slavery.
4. The effect on agriculture, and proportionally on commerce
generally, was ruinous. The largest corn-market, Rome, was withdrawn
from the trade--the market to which all the necessaries of life would
naturally have gravitated; and the supply of corn was placed in the
hands of producers at a few centres where it could be grown most
cheaply--Sicily, Spain and Africa. The Italian farmer had to turn his
attention to other produce--the cultivation of the olive and the vine,
and cattle and pig rearing. The greater the extension of the system
the more impossible was the regeneration of Rome. The Roman citizen
might well say that he was out of work, for, so far as the land was
concerned, the means of obtaining a living were placed out of his
reach. While not yet unfitted for the country by life in the town, he
at least could not "return to the land."
5. The method was the outcome of distress and political hopelessness.
Yet the rich also adopted it in distributing their private largess.
Cicero (_De Off._ ii. 16) writes as though he recognized its evil; but
though he expresses his disapprobation of the popular shows upon which
the _aediles_ spent large sums, he argues that something must be done
"if the people demand it, and if good men, though they do not wish it,
assent to it." Thus in a guarded manner he approves a distribution of
food--a free breakfast in the streets of Rome. One bad result of the
_annona_ was that it encouraged a special and ruinous form of
charitable munificence.
The sportula.
The _sportula_ was a form of charity corresponding to the _annona
civica_. Charity and poor relief run on parallel lines, and when the one
is administered without discrimination, little discrimination will
usually be exercised in the other. It was the charity of the patron of
the chiefs of the clan-families to their clients. Between them it was
natural that a relation, partly hospitable, partly charitable, should
grow up. The clients who attended the patron at his house were invited
to dine at his table. The patron, as Juvenal describes him, dined
luxuriously and in solitary grandeur, while the guests put up with what
they could get; or, as was usual under the empire, instead of the dinner
(_coena recta_) a present of food was given at the outer vestibule of
the house to clients who brought with them baskets (_sportula_) to carry
off their food, or even charcoal stoves to keep it warm. There was
endless trickery. The patron (or almoner who acted for him) tried to
identify the applicant, fearing lest he might get the dole under a false
name; and at each mansion was kept a list of persons, male and female,
entitled to receive the allowance. "The pilferer grabs the dole"
(_sportulam furunculus captat_) was a proverb. The _sportula_ was a
charity sufficiently important for state regulation. Nero (A.D. 54)
reduced it to a payment in money (100 _quadrantes_, about 1s.). Domitian
(A.D. 81) restored the custom of giving food. Subsequently both
practices--gifts in money and in food--appear to have been continued.
In these conditions the Roman family steadily decayed. Its "old
discipline" was neglected; and Tacitus (A.D. 75), in his dialogue on
Oratory, wrote (c. xxviii.) what might be called its epitaph. Of the
general decline the laws of Caesar and Augustus to encourage marriage
and to reward the parents of large families are sufficient evidence.
The destruction of the working-class family must have been finally
achieved by the imperial control of the _collegia_.
The collegia.
In old Rome there were corporations of craftsmen for common worship,
and for the maintenance of the traditions of the craft. These
corporations were ruined by slave labour, and becoming secret
societies, in the time of Augustus were suppressed. Subsequently they
were reorganized, and gave scope for much friendliness. They often
existed in connexion with some great house, whose chief was their
patron and whose household gods they worshipped. The gilds of the
poor, or rather of the lower orders (_collegia tenuiorum_), consisted
of artisans and others, and slaves also, who paid monthly
contributions to a common fund to meet the expenses of worship, common
meals, and funerals. They were not in Italy, it would seem (J.P.
Waltzing, _Etudes histor. sur les corporations professionnelles chez
les Romains_, i. 145, 300), though they may have been in Asia Minor
and elsewhere, societies for mutual help generally. They were chiefly
funeral benefit societies. Under Severus (A.D. 192) the _collegia_
were extended and more closely organized as industrial bodies. They
were protected and controlled, as in England in the 15th century the
municipalities affected the cause of the craft gilds and ended by
controlling them. Industrial disorder was thus prevented; the
government were able to provide the supplies required in Rome and the
large cities with less risk and uncertainty; and the workmen employed
in trade, especially the carrying trade, became almost slaves. In the
2nd century, and until the invasions, there were three groups of
_collegia_: (1) those engaged in various state manufactures; (2) those
engaged in the provision trade; and (3) the free trades, which
gradually lapsed into a kind of slavery. If the members of these gilds
fled they were brought back by force. Parents had to keep to the trade
to which they belonged; their children had to succeed them in it. A
slave caste indeed had been formed of the once free workmen.
Pueri alimentarii.
As a charitable protest against the destruction of children, in the
midst of a broken family life, and increasing dependence and poverty, a
special institution was founded (to use the Scottish word) for the
"alimentation" of the children of citizens, at first by voluntary
charity and afterwards by imperial bounty.
Nerva and Trajan adopted the plan. Pliny (_Ep._ vii. 18) refers to it.
There was a desire to give more lasting and certain help than an
allotment of food to parents. A list of children, whose names were on
the relief tables at Rome, was accordingly drawn up, and a special
service for their maintenance established. Two instances are recorded
in inscriptions--one at Veleia, one at Beneventum. The emperor lent
money for the purpose at a low percentage--2-1/2 or 5% as against the
usual 10 or 12. At Veleia his loan amounted to 1,044,000
_sesterces_--about L8156, and 51 of the local landed proprietors
mortgaged land, valued at 13 or 14 million _sesterces_, as security
for the debt. The interest on the emperor's money at 5% was paid into
the municipal treasury, and out of it the children were relieved. The
figures seem small; at Veleia 300 children were assisted, of whom 36
were girls. The annual interest at 5% amounted to nearly L408, which
divided among 300 gives about 27s. a head. The figures suggest that
the money served as a charitable supplementation of the citizens'
relief in direct aid of the children. Apparently the scheme was widely
adopted. Curators of high position were the patrons; procurators acted
as inspectors over large areas; and _quaestores alimentarii_ undertook
the local management. Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138), and Marcus Aurelius
(A.D. 160), and subsequently Severus (A.D. 192) established these
bursaries for children in the names of their wives. In the 3rd century
the system fell into disorder. There were large arrears of payments,
and in the military anarchy that ensued it came to an end. It is of
special interest, as indicating a new feeling of responsibility
towards children akin to the humane Stoicism of the Antonines, and an
attempt to found, apart from temples or _collegia_, what was in the
nature of a public endowed charity.