The Historians' History of the World 06

From this time forward the cereal prefects were amongst the most important of imperial officers, since the tranquillity of the capital depended on the due discharge of their functions. They commanded an army of subordinate officials and servants, for the imperial grain fleets which brought corn, oil, etc., from the provinces to Ostia and Puteoli were under their management. In both these places they had extensive storehouses with a great staff of accountants, clerks, and cashiers; then another great army of storehouse managers, workmen employed in measuring the corn and carrying the sacks, of waggoners, and lastly, of watermen who brought the corn to Rome, where it was deposited for the most part in the Sempronian horrea which dated back to the time of the Gracchi, or in the newly erected Agrippian, Lollian, Galbian, and other horrea. The distribution took place every month in the Minucian portico on the Field of Mars. Here there were forty-five doorways (ostia) for distribution, and the people had to prove their right to receive the corn by means of counters marked with the number of the particular doorway and the day of the month.

Roman Jackstones

An attempt which the emperor made to have the corn distributed every four months instead of every month met with scant approval and was soon abandoned. The Roman populace had grown thoroughly accustomed to the notion that its maintenance was the business of the state and would have liked nothing better than to have the emperor give them drink as well as food. Whenever wine grew dear they addressed complaints to him. But Augustus calmly replied that since the aqueducts of Agrippa had been completed no one in Rome need suffer thirst. Augustus had organised the maintenance of Rome on a large and liberal scale, but that which had formerly been a free-will offering became in his reign an eleemosynary institution.

Besides these regular monthly distributions there were special distributions in money and in kind on extraordinary occasions, which exhibit the emperor’s magnificent liberality. He has left the record of them in the Monumentum Ancyranum.e “To the Roman people, man by man, I caused three hundred sesterces to be paid in accordance with the testament of my father; in my own name I gave four hundred sesterces out of the spoils of war in my fifth consulate; and again in my tenth consulate I caused provisions to the value of four hundred sesterces per man to be distributed man by man out of my own means; and in my eleventh consulate I made twelve distributions of grain which I had purchased with my private means; and in my twelfth year of office as tribune I for the third time made a gift of four hundred sesterces man by man. These distributions were never made to less than 250,000 persons.

“In my eighteenth year of my office as tribune and my twelfth consulate I presented sixty denarii to 320,000 persons of the population of the capital man by man. In my thirteenth year of consular office I distributed sixty denarii apiece to the people who received the state corn, amounting to something over two hundred thousand persons.”

Taking these gifts in connection with similar expenses for lands and rewards for the veterans, for the imperial contributions to the state treasury and the provision of the military revenue, the colossal sum of six hundred million denarii mentioned in the appendix to the Monumentum Ancyranum

as given by Augustus to the Roman citizens does not seem at all exaggerated; and as these distributions were spread over a period of not quite sixty years, we must assign to each year a sum of not less than ten million denarii.

These sums, though dispensed of the imperial bounty, were taken by the people as their right in exchange for their lost liberty. Augustus was well aware that hunger is wont to be one of the mightiest, if not the mightiest, of revolutionary forces.

Games; Gladiatorial Contests

In the matter of subsistence the southerner is more modest in his demands than northern nations are; in the matter of excitement and amusement he makes greater claims. These Augustus also provided for liberally. The large scale and elaborate arrangement of the Roman games was in part the outcome of the simple idea of giving the people a compensation for their lack of influence in politics and of diverting their attention. In most cases where a nation is weary of politics it concentrates its attention upon private life, and the great ones of the theatre thrust statesmen and party leaders into the background. The emperor’s shows excelled everything that had ever been before in frequency, variety, and splendour; and so great was the interest taken in them by all classes that at great festivals and games the emperor was obliged to post sentinels to guard the vacant city from robbers and housebreakers.