Poverty in the Roman World. Ed.M.atkins, 2006

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P OV E RT Y I N T H E RO M A N W O R L D

If poor individuals have always been with us, societies have not always seen the poor as a distinct social group. But within the Roman world, from at least the late Republic onwards, the poor were an important force in social and political life and how to treat the poor was a topic of philosophical as well as political discussion. This book explains what poverty meant in antiquity, and why the poor came to be an important group in the Roman world, and it explores the issues which poverty and the poor raised for Roman society and for Roman writers. In essays which range widely in space and time across the whole Roman empire, the contributors address both the reality and the representation of poverty, and examine the impact which Christianity had upon attitudes towards and treatment of the poor. Marg are t Atkin s is a Senior Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. She was previously Senior Lecturer in Theology at Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds. She has published with Cambridge University Press translations of Cicero’s De Officiis, Augustine’s political writings and Aquinas’ Disputed Questions on the Virtues. Rob i n Osb o r n e is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s College. His numerous publications include Greece in the Making (1996), Archaic and Classical Greek Art (1998), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy (1999, edited with Simon Goldhill) and Greek Historical Inscriptions from the End of the Peloponnesian War to the Death of Alexander (2003, edited with P. J. Rhodes).

P OV E RT Y I N T H E RO M A N WO R L D ed ited by MA R G A R E T AT K I N S A N D RO B I N O S B O R N E

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521862110 © Cambridge University Press 2006 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2006 isbn-13 isbn-10

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for Peter Garnsey

Contents

List of contributors Preface List of abbreviations

page ix xi xiii

1 Introduction: Roman poverty in context

1

Robin Osborne

2 The poor in the city of Rome

21

Neville Morley

3 Stratification, deprivation and quality of life

40

Walter Scheidel

4 ‘You do him no service’: an exploration of pagan almsgiving

60

Anneliese Parkin

5 Writing poverty in Rome

83

Greg Woolf

6 Poverty and population in Roman Egypt

100

Dominic Rathbone

7 A pragmatic approach to poverty and riches: Ambrosiaster’s quaestio 124

115

Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe

8 Portraying the poor: descriptions of poverty in Christian texts from the late Roman empire.

130

Richard Finn, O.P.

9 Thowing parties for the poor: poverty and splendour in the late antique church Lucy Grig vii

145

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10 Salvian, the ideal Christian community and the fate of the poor in fifth-century Gaul

162

Cam Grey

11 Poverty and Roman law

183

Caroline Humfress

Bibliography Index

204 220

Contributors

M argaret Atkins has taught Classics and Theology in Cambridge and Leeds and is currently a Senior Research Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. She is the editor, with R. J. Dodaro, of Augustine: Political Writings (2001). Richard Fin n OP is a Dominican friar and Regent of Studies at Blackfriars Hall in the University of Oxford. He was a doctoral student of Peter Garnsey and Averil Cameron. He is the author of Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire (2006). C am Grey is Assistant Professor of Roman History in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has spent many hours discussing the merits and weaknesses of the Australian cricket team with Peter Garnsey. He also wrote a doctoral dissertation on rural communities in late antiquity under Peter’s guidance. Lucy Grig is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Edinburgh and was a PhD student of Peter Garnsey. Her published work includes a monograph, Making Martyrs in Late Antiquity (2004), and articles on subjects ranging from late antique gold glass to the representation of female saints. C arolin e Humf ress is a Lecturer in Late Antique History at Birkbeck College, University of London and was both an undergraduate and graduate student of Peter Garnsey. Her published work includes ‘Law and Legal Practice in the Age of Justinian’, in Maas, M. (ed.) Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian (2005) and The Evolution of Late Antiquity (with Peter Garnsey, 2001). Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe is Harris Fellow in History and College Lecturer at Peterhouse, Cambridge. She was supervised for her MPhil and PhD by Peter Garnsey. ix

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N ev ille Morley is Reader in Ancient Economic History and Historical Theory at the University of Bristol. His PhD thesis on Rome and Italy, published by Cambridge University Press in 1996 as Metropolis and Hinterland, was supervised by Peter Garnsey. He has subsequently published books on historical theory, and has just completed a work on trade in classical antiquity. Robin Osborne is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge and was an undergraduate pupil of Peter Garnsey. His books include Classical Landscape with Figures: The Ancient Greek City and its Countryside (1987), Greece in the Making c.1200–479 b.c. (1996) and Greek History (2004). Ann eliese Parkin is a Senior Analyst at New Zealand’s Department of Labour. She was a doctoral student of Peter Garnsey. Dom in ic Rathbone was an undergraduate pupil of Peter Garnsey and is now Professor of Ancient History at King’s College London. His published work includes: Economic Rationalism and Rural Society in ThirdCentury AD Egypt (1991); ed. with R. S. Bagnall, Egypt from Alexander to the Copts: An Archaeological and Historical Guide (2004). Walter S cheid el is Professor of Classics at Stanford University. As a research fellow at Cambridge, he edited a collection of Peter Garnsey’s papers as Cities, Peasants and Food in Classical Antiquity (1998). Greg Woolf is Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews. Peter Garnsey was one of the supervisors of his PhD thesis, and despite that experience has continued to offer advice and criticism whenever asked. Greg Woolf’s first publication was a collaborative piece with Peter, appropriately enough dealing with the patronage of the poor. Greg Woolf’s other publications include Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (1998).

Preface

The papers collected here were given at a conference in Cambridge in 2003 in honour of Professor Peter Garnsey. All those contributing are in one sense or another pupils of Peter, and most of them had their doctoral studies supervised by him, at least in part. The conference was held not to mark any particular anniversary or event, but to signal the enormous contribution that Peter Garnsey has made to our understanding of the social and economic history of the Graeco-Roman world, and to the way in which we do ancient history. All Peter’s publications have been directed at explaining the social dynamics of the Greek and Roman worlds, and in particular explaining how social status is established and marked, how it interacts with political power, and how the structures of society impact back upon the life of the individual. Peter has repeatedly insisted on the importance of understanding the basic questions of how individuals and communities survive, what they eat and where they live. He has directed attention at social groups neglected by our main literary sources, and has shown how judicious reading of texts of all sorts against the knowledge that we have of the constants of human physiological and ecological realities can enable bright light to be thrown on even the most intractable of problems. In this volume his pupils try to emulate his example as they explore a facet of the Roman world peculiarly liable to neglect and distortion. The conference was crucially shaped by Gillian Clark, Dominic Rathbone and Greg Woolf. It was enabled by the generosity of the Faculty of Classics, the Faculty of History, and Jesus College, Cambridge. For the lively and productive conference discussions we are particularly indebted to the skills of Gillian Clark, Christopher Kelly and Richard Saller as chairmen. In turning the papers from the conference into a book we have been much assisted by Gillian Clark, Emily Gowers, Jill Harries, John Henderson, Brent Shaw and an anonymous reader for Cambridge University Press. We xi

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regret that Pasquale Rosafio was unable to contribute to the volume the paper he delivered at the conference. m arg aret at kins and robin osborne

September 2005

Abbreviations

CAH CCL 149 CJ CTh

D. En. in Ps.

Frag. Vat. Inst. Iust. Nov. Iust. Sent. Paul.

Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd edn. Cambridge. Corpus Christianorum series Latina, vol. 149, ed. Charles Munier. Codex Justinianus, ed. Paul Kr¨uger, Corpus Iuris Civilis II (Berlin, 1877). Codex Theodosianus, ed. Theodor Mommsen, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1905). Translated by Clyde Pharr and others, The Theodosian Code and Novels, and the Sirmondian Constitutions (Princeton, 1952). Digest of Justinian, trans. Alan Watson and others (Pennsylvania, 1985). Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, vols. I–L, ed. D. Dekkers and J. Fraipont, CCSL 38; vols. LI–C, ed. D. Dekkers and J. Fraipont, CCSL 39; vols. CI–CL, ed. D. Dekkers and J. Fraipont, CCSL 40. Turnhout, Brepols, 1956. Fragmenta Quae Dicuntur Vaticana in Fontes Iuris Romani Anteiustiniani, 2nd edn. S. Riccobono and others, vol. ii (Florence, 1940): 464–540. Justinian’s Institutes, trans. Peter Birks and Grant McLeod (London, 1987). Novellae (Justiniani), ed. Rudolf Sch¨oll and Wilhelm Kroll, Corpus Iuris Civilis III (Berlin, 1895). Sententiae Receptae Paulo Tributae in Fontes Iuris Romani Anteiustiniani, 2nd edn. S. Riccobono and others, vol. ii (Florence, 1940): 329–417.

Other ancient authors and works are abbreviated as in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn). xiii

chap t e r 1

Introduction: Roman poverty in context Robin Osborne

What are we studying when we study poverty? Are we studying the social and economic structure that means that a proportion of the population has barely adequate access to the resources required for life? Or are we studying those in a society who at any moment happen to have less than some particular, and more or less arbitrary, threshold of resources? Or again, are we studying how the society in question analyses its own structure, how it classifies those with least resources, what it does about them and how it justifies to itself what it does or does not do? Studying poverty in contemporary societies is closely linked to the question of what to do about it; ‘make poverty history’ is the political slogan of 2005. Doing something about it depends on understanding the nature of the problem to begin with. Are the poor a random collection of people who for different reasons have fallen on hard times but can be expected to improve their lot in better times (‘conjunctural poverty’ as it is sometimes called)? Or are the poor trapped by the structure of economic system, whether that be feudalism, capitalism, or whatever, so that in good times as well as hard times they will remain impoverished (‘structural poverty’)? Is poverty an economic problem (because a given society does not produce enough resources to go round), or is it a social problem (because the resources are there but for social reasons are maldistributed)? Understanding poverty in the contemporary world is inevitably a political matter, and the politics do not always assist the understanding. For this reason, it can help us to see the issues involved if we study poverty in a historic society, particularly in one well removed from the roots of twentyfirst century social and economic problems. Studying poverty in the Roman world – and in this volume we are primarily concerned with the Roman world in the first four centuries ad – has a peculiar interest. The size of the city of Rome – the first western city to reach a million inhabitants – created issues of food supply quite unlike those faced by Greek city-states or even the great Hellenistic cities, and the equally unprecedented size of Rome’s 1

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empire meant that Roman government could both call upon an extraordinarily diverse productive base and had responsibility for ensuring the well-being of the isolated as well as of those at the centre. Rome thus gives a case study in the sustenance of a population that is extremely unequally distributed in a world where communications were slow and uncertain. But Rome is also of particular interest because the arrival of Christianity gives an opportunity to examine the impact of changing systems of belief upon the classification of and attitudes towards the poor. past work on roman povert y ‘There are no studies specifically on poverty in ancient Rome’. So C. R. Whittaker, in his chapter on ‘The poor’ in Giardina’s collection originally published as L’uomo Romano.1 Since these words were published in 1989, poverty at Rome has begun to attract more attention. Peter Brown’s Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire has brought to the forefront of discussion issues of the changing position of and attitudes towards the poor in late antiquity, which were flagged up long ago by Bolkestein and reinforced by Patlagean. In addition, Marcus Prell has given us a socioeconomic study of poverty in Rome between the Gracchi and Diocletian.2 What is more, detailed work has been done on poverty in specific areas of the Roman empire.3 Two related issues dominate discussions of the poor in the Roman world: the emergence of the poor as a distinct social group, and the changing ways in which poverty is represented and the poor are thought about. Although throughout Greek and Roman history it was acknowledged that some men were poor, only in the late Roman Republic and the imperial period did poverty begin to be seen as a social and political problem which required some sort of consistent and systematic treatment, and even then the poor never came to constitute a distinct class.4 It was not until the early empire, as Bolkestein stressed, that people began less to think of the poor as necessarily morally corrupt and more to see giving monetary relief to the poor as a virtue. Once this alteration in the view of the poor had occurred, the beneficence which had earlier been bestowed upon communities generally, and to which the work of Veyne has done so much to attract attention, came to be seen as properly directed at the poor.5 1 2 3 5

Whittaker (1993) 299. Bolkestein (1939); Patlagean (1977); Brown (2002); Prell (1997). 4 Prell (1997) ch. 3. Hamel (1989); Holman (2001). Veyne (1990); on which see Garnsey (1991b)

Roman poverty in context

3

Much recent scholarship has repeated the idea that there was a move from a civic notion of virtue, in which it was the general well-being of the whole community which was promoted by the well-doing of the rich, to a more narrowly economic definition of benefaction, in which largesse consisting in money or consumable goods was bestowed specifically upon the impoverished. There is no general agreement, however, about the date of the change of attitude, and the reason for it. For Bolkestein, whose study of pre-Christian antiquity embraced Egypt and Israel as well as Greece and Rome, the change was visible as early as the first century ad, and was consequent upon oriental influence which caused priority to be given to poor relief in the Graeco-Roman world just as poor relief had been given priority in Israel. Bolkestein thought it significant that Seneca, in Letters to Lucilius 95.51, included giving a coin to the beggar and a crust to the starving in an otherwise tralatician list of minimum moral demands on any man (on which see Parkin, below p. 66). He noted parallels with Philo and Josephus, and saw the mark of eastern influence.6 By contrast, for Patlagean and for Brown this same change is a feature of late antiquity, emerging ‘slowly in centuries that followed the conversion of Constantine in 312’.7 But whereas for Patlagean the crucial factor was a massive change in the structure of late antique society in general, partly consequent on significant demographic change, for Brown, as his choice of 312 as a key date indicates, the crucial factor was the influence of Christianity.8 One major weakness to date of work on poverty in the Roman world has been the absence of any study which spans the whole period from Republic to late antiquity: Bolkestein and Prell stop with the rise of Christianity, Brown and Patlagean show no great interest in the Roman world in the pre-Christian period. A second is that those who, like Bolkestein, Hands, and Brown, interest themselves in attitudes to the poor tend to look only superficially at what it was actually to be poor, while those who, like Prell and Patlagean, interest themselves in the actual conditions of the poor pay little attention to ideas about the poor. Peter Garnsey’s scholarship is marked by a unique interest in the ways in which ideas played themselves out in practice – in the relationship between legal privilege and social status, in ideas of slavery and the conditions of the slave, in how the nutritional value of foods and conventional attitudes to foodstuffs relate to their consumption 6 7 8

Philo ap. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 358d; Josephus, Ap. 2.29.1; for some questioning of the truth of this see Hands (1968) 84. Brown (2002) 111. Brown (2002) 75–6 for arguments against Patlagean. With Brown’s own position compare also the conclusion of Prell (1997) 296.

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and its consequences.9 In this collection of essays by his pupils, brought together to honour Peter and to demonstrate something of what we have learned from him, we attempt to bridge both the divide between poverty as image and poverty as reality and the divide between earlier and later Roman empire in a set of papers which discuss both the realities and the representation of poverty in the Roman world both before and after the conversion of Constantine. In this introduction I outline the big issues involved by asking whether there was anything distinctive about poverty in the Roman world, by asking how the representation of poverty at Rome compares with the representation of poverty in the Greek world, and by offering a synopsis of the chapters which follow. was roman povert y d ist inct ive? The Roman world was pre-industrial. Its economy was fundamentally based in agriculture, and its population was largely rural. In modern terminology ‘the Roman economy was underdeveloped’.10 Life expectancy was low (life expectancy at birth was somewhere between twenty and thirty and probably closer to twenty).11 Nutritional deficiencies were widespread.12 But in none of these features was the Roman world clearly distinct from the Hellenistic world or from the world of the archaic and classical Greek city-state. Poverty in this pre-industrial world was largely determined by access to land.13 Those who owned, or were able to secure the rental of, land could secure their subsistence provided that the area of land at their disposal was large enough, and the climatic conditions favourable enough. How large the plot of land needed to be has been much debated: it is clear that the productivity of land is directly related to the labour put into it – gardening is more productive per unit area than farming – but also that the law of diminishing returns applies – repeatedly doubling the number of gardeners does not repeatedly double the output of the garden.14 What counts as favourable climatic conditions depends upon the nature of the land (‘the grimness of the terrain’15 ) and the crops grown (barley can withstand drier conditions than wheat). What it is possible or reasonable to grow, however, will often, in turn, depend upon the relationship of the farmer to the market: farming r´egimes that optimise the yield of the land in calorific 9 11 12 14 15

10 Garnsey and Saller (1987) 43. Garnsey (1970), (1988), (1996), (1999). See Scheidel (2001b) and chapter 3 below; cf. Brown (2002) 52, citing Simon Keay’s work on Tarraco. 13 Garnsey (1998) 201–13, esp. 213. Garnsey (1999). See most recently the papers in Van der Veen (2005), and especially Jones (2005). Garnsey (1999) 1 (specifically of Palestine).

Roman poverty in context

5

terms may not produce the kind of food a family needs to consume. In general large landowners do better than small out of drought conditions, but how badly the small farmer fares will depend upon access to the market.16 Many people, therefore, had reason to be anxious about food, but for those who had access to land the threat of hunger was episodic, not endemic.17 Not all who were without land or access to land were impoverished. From the eighth century bc onwards in both Greece and Italy there was significant urbanisation.18 Although the proportion of the population employed in craft activity or service industries of one sort or another never approached the proportion employed in agriculture, nevertheless a significant number of people was securely fed, and in some cases significantly enriched, by non-agricultural activities. Towns were an important focus of such activities, though not the only one: those activities which depended upon the exploitation of natural resources – above all mining – were necessarily located in the countryside. Political developments further diversified the possible sources of livelihood: at any one time a large number of mercenary troops, infantry or rowers, were to be found in active service in the classical or Hellenistic Greek worlds. Since land was the main acceptable security for loans, it was hard for those without land to achieve wealth, but in times of plenty all who were able-bodied could expect to subsist. In the country even those who did not own land could gather food from the land beyond cultivation.19 What was gathered could be consumed directly or marketed in towns and villages. In the town there were possibilities of casual employment that might involve working alongside slaves but which would give an irregular income.20 For the able-bodied, poverty was conjunctural. Times of dearth divided communities between those who had and those who had not managed to fill their storehouses. Those compelled to pay the soaring prices of foodstuffs in the market quickly found their conditions of life deteriorating as the need to secure food caused other economic activity to contract. It was in such times that individuals were no doubt tempted to sell themselves or their children into slavery – a practice legislated against by Solon in Athens but still encountered by Augustine.21 For those who were not able-bodied, all times were times of dearth. The disabled relied on the charity of their families, their friends, and ultimately 16 18 19 20 21

17 Garnsey (1988), (1999) 2. Garnsey (1998) 212. For a survey of early urbanisation in the Mediterranean see Osborne and Cunliffe (2005). See, for twentieth-century Greece, Clark (1976), (1997), Forbes (1997). Brown (2002) 50–51 on cities constructing a safety net for the destitute; but I am sceptical about his claim that the real poor were in the countryside. Brown (2002) 63 on Augustine.

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of strangers. If they exhausted local charity and moved away to seek alms from larger pools of beneficence they risked finding themselves isolated from all with whom they had affective bonds. For such people, poverty was structural. Both in Greek city-states and during much of the Roman Republic political status was of greater significance than levels of wealth. As a result, the poor were not thought of as a distinct social group. It is true that Greek citystates, including democratic Athens, and Republican Rome both restricted certain economic opportunities (above all landownership) to citizens and made certain political rights depend upon wealth. In this way rights of participation might be curtailed, both theoretically and practically, by poverty. However, citizenship and the legal privileges which went with it were forfeited only by seriously unbecoming conduct. Citizens, however indigent, remained distinct in their political rights from both free non-citizens and slaves, and the possession of citizenship and freedom, in that order, were ideologically, if not always practically, privileged over considerations of wealth. The importance of political status that Finley saw as rendering Marxist class analysis unsuitable for the ancient world ruled out the perception, or self-perception, of ‘the poor’ as a particular group just as it ruled out the development of a ‘working class’.22 What scholars call ‘civic’ models of poor relief are based on the privileging of political status over economic need. The sharing out among all citizens of the profits that had accrued to a polis is attested for the archaic period, when the Siphnians shared the profits of the silver mines there, and later, in the early fifth century, when Themistocles intervened to boost the Athenian navy at the expense of such a hand-out in Athens.23 Acts of beneficence (euergesia) by rich individuals towards their communities are attested in Greek cities from the classical period onwards and become increasingly prominent in later Greek epigraphy from the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman worlds. But ‘very few euergetists would have described what they were doing as poor relief’.24 The principles of sharing out city resources were applied also to the sharing out of grain. At times of crisis city magistrates might be charged with buying grain, and might distribute it at a fixed price, but the principle of distribution was that it was to citizens.25 However, it is with the question of grain distribution and its recipients that we encounter Roman 22 23 24

Finley (1973) 49. Herodotus 3.57.2 for Siphnos, 8.144.1–2 and [Aristotle] Ath. Pol. 22.7 for Themistocles; Humphreys (1976) 145 for the general principle. 25 All this definitively documented in Garnsey (1988). Garnsey and Saller (1987) 101.

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distinctiveness. Finley observed that at Rome the decision in 58 bc to distribute free grain again restricted recipients to citizens, but he stressed that in this instance ‘the ancient sources are unanimous in their view of the dole as a form of poor relief won by the plebs after considerable struggle’.26 Why was grain distribution regarded like this at Rome when it had not been so regarded in other cities of the Greek or Roman world? Despite emphasising the exceptional nature of this Finley offers no discussion of the reasons for the exceptional conception of grain distribution at Rome.27 Two factors can, however, surely be isolated. One is the sheer size of the population of Rome in the late Republic, the other is the potential political power of the Roman poor. Each of these demands some further discussion. The economic impact of Rome’s unprecedented size was first drawn to ancient historians’ attention by Keith Hopkins, in an unpublished paper, and it has been set out in detail by Neville Morley.28 The concentration of people in Rome created demands for both foodstuffs and other basic necessities of life, such as clothing and housing, and also for the goods required to secure and display status in a place where all ranks of society gathered. A city of a million inhabitants that was the centre of an empire extending all round the Mediterranean and beyond was quite unlike any other town or city. Along with Rome’s peculiar demands for goods went also demands for labour, not least to sustain a supply system that had to draw on the surplus of a much wider area than any other city and to ensure that the goods required reached those who needed them. As far as the way in which the poor were perceived and perceived themselves is concerned, however, what was important about Rome was not that its economy was differently configured but that the sheer number of citizens present in Rome meant that the fiction of the citizen state could no longer be maintained. As recent work has made ever more clear, only a tiny proportion of citizens resident in Rome could ever physically cast their vote in a Roman voting assembly, let alone have their votes make any difference to the result.29 As Aristotle had pointed out, if a population grew to beyond a few thousand citizens the organisation of the city-state would be threatened, since no herald would be physically able to address them all (Politics 1326b). The citizen population of Rome could no longer envisage 26 27

28 29

Finley (1973) 170–71 with second edition (1985) 201; and cf. 40. Finley (1973) 201–2 devotes rather more space to the question of the reasons for Trajan’s alimenta schemes, withdrawing his initial support for Veyne’s view that the motivation was demographic and preferring to see the projection of the emperor’s power as the crucial factor. Morley (1996). Hopkins was inspired by Wrigley (1967) on London. Mouritsen (2001), engaging with Millar (1998).

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itself as a distinct community when it could neither gather together in one place nor engage together in even the most minor of political activities. Sheer weight of numbers crushed both the distinction between citizens and other urban residents and the political machinery invented for a small town. The breakdown of the political machinery manifested itself in the politics of violence, the destruction of the distinction between citizens and other urban residents manifested itself in the birth of the poor. It is no accident that the Clodius who introduced the free grain dole was also the prime exponent of political violence.30 But if the sheer size of Rome made it inevitable that the meaning of citizenship would be transformed, it was Roman imperialism that spread awareness of, and self-awareness among, the poor, and in two ways. First, the incoming wealth of empire encouraged everyone to have higher hopes of material riches. ‘Debates over poverty . . . tend to flourish in the context of rising expectations.’31 Second, in order to ensure that Rome could raise the size of army required to maintain and expand its empire, Rome abolished the traditional requirement that to serve as a soldier one had to possess a certain (gradually reduced) level of property. Rome’s need for military manpower on a scale, both in terms of numbers and in terms of length of service, quite different from that of any Greek city, impacted directly upon the economic and political ambitions of the citizen body. The lowering and eventual abolition of the property qualification for legionary service during the second century bc fundamentally altered the relationship between the army and the land.32 It also meant that at the end of every military campaign poor Roman citizens were in a position, with the minimum of organisation, to make their presence felt in such numbers that traditional means of expressing political views, such as the ballot box, became irrelevant. Although Catiline’s conspiracy seems in the end actually not to have mobilised the poor in significant numbers, and although many of Clodius’ activities themselves relied not upon the poor but upon slaves, the potential that had been feared in 63 bc and was then enabled by the tribune’s legislation of 58 bc was real enough. Other cities needed to provide a cushion for their whole population only in times of crisis in the grain supply; at Rome, by contrast, the abolition of property qualifications for military service led to an identification between legionary and landless such that there was a permanent need to provide subsidised food for the landless citizen poor. 30 32

On violence in Rome see Nippel (1995). So, famously, Brunt (1962/1988).

31

Shaw (2002) 43.

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Augustus famously acknowledged the political importance of grain distributions when he refrained from abolishing them on the grounds that they were bound to be reintroduced at some point per ambitionem (Suet. Aug. 42.3). The senatorial aristocracy in the late Republic and the new r´egime in the early principate cashed in grain for power. In the late empire, as the city of Rome itself lost its overwhelming dominance, it was a more general concern for the poor that emperors cashed in for power. Peter Brown insists on the continued importance of political interests when he argues that the emergence of a discourse on the poor in the fourth century was directly related to the need of the new (Christian) imperial state to assert its presence. It is hard to separate the transformation that the size of Rome brought about in the effective civic status of its poor inhabitants from that which it wrought in their material conditions. For all the importance of urban neighbourhoods, clich´es about the deracination and anonymisation of the individual in the metropolis retain their force: Rome remained notable into late antiquity for the presence of a population living ‘informally in the crevices of the towering buildings, sleeping rough in tabernae or huddled in the vaults beneath the seating of theatres, circuses and amphitheatres’.33 On the one hand, the system necessary to provision the huge urban population inevitably involved a level of wastage sufficient to support significant numbers; on the other, those who wanted to be regarded as the greatest men in the city had not only to cream off the wealth of empire to build houses and gardens of extraordinary luxury but also to be seen to have throngs of men dependent upon them. The princeps sustained his position as primus inter pares by ensuring that the calendar of the poor as well as the well-to-do was structured around festivals and events that were linked to himself and that brought material as well as immaterial pleasures to all.34 If the growth of Rome and Roman imperialism had already destroyed the civic ideal in Rome itself by the late Republic, that ideal continued to thrive outside Rome. Some of the clearest manifestations of civic benefaction come from the cities of Italy and the Greek east in the first and second centuries ad. But as the Roman world gradually transformed itself from a collection of semi-autonomous cities subordinated to the power of an alien Rome, and to a single political and economic unit, the civic ideal came under pressure outside Rome also. The provincial elite were incorporated into central government through recruitment to the senate 33 34

Purcell (1996) 784, citing Ammianus Marcellinus 14.6.25. Purcell (1996) 799–806.

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or to the imperial service: ‘provincial wealth flowed to Rome as they purchased houses on the Esquiline and in other fashionable areas and set up their considerable establishments’.35 Initially such men continued to wish to display themselves to their native communities through benefactions, but the more local citizenship came to be a matter of obligations rather than of opportunities, the more the old civic idealism became irrelevant to the way in which people’s lives were organised and envisaged. Division between those who were in a position actively to participate in imperial rule (essentially the wealthy and those who served in the legions), and those who were not, became formalised already under Hadrian in the distinction between honestiores and humiliores.36 When Caracalla extended citizenship to all free-born inhabitants of the empire in the Constitutio Antoniniana of ad 212, the civic model was doomed. Where there was no distinction of political status to back them up, distinctions of social status could not survive unless they were also distinctions of economic status. The death of the city-state inevitably brought about the birth of the poor. Looked at from the bottom up, the Roman world was recognisably the same under-developed world as the world of classical Greek city-states or Hellenistic kings. Political unification had an economic impact, reducing the risks and therefore the costs of long-distance transport. This speeded up the ‘brownian motion’ which had, as Horden and Purcell have taught us, long been a feature of the Mediterranean’s corrupting sea, and so enabled both the primate city and the leading men to become far wealthier. But those changes occurred within an unchanged economic structure within which even the achievement of per capita economic growth is debated.37 The revolution which was effected by the Roman empire was not economic (or socio-economic) but political (or socio-political). Roman conquest and Rome’s own revolution from city-state to imperial power brought about the slow decline in the domination of the civic ideal over the selfperception of the free inhabitants of the empire. The habit of defining oneself in contrast to various Others, which has been seen as so central to classical Greeks,38 could no longer be sustained when some of the fundamental divisions upon which it rested were first effectively and then formally dissolved in a world empire. As the myth collapsed according to which the citizens of each city-state were peculiar and particular, a myth which had successfully prevented material circumstances from bringing 35 37

Edwards and Woolf (2003b) 11. Garnsey and Saller (1987) 51–63.

36 Garnsey (1970) ch. 38 Cartledge (1993).

11.

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about divisions among those citizens, so material divisions in the condition of life imposed themselves. Imperial, philosophical (Stoic) and religious (Christian) visions of world citizenship had to find new ways of coming to terms with economic and social variety within that world vision. representing povert y in the greek and roman world What impact did the distinct manifestation of poverty in the Roman world have on how its richer inhabitants saw and related to the poor? Rome not only came to deal with the poor and with poverty in ways that were distinctly different from those prevailing in the Greek city but also to think about poverty and the poor differently. It is a striking feature of discussions of poverty in Greek texts that poverty is always relative.39 Of the various terms available to describe the poor, none is attached to any absolute level of destitution. In Aristophanes’ Plutus the personification of Penia, the term normally translated ‘poverty’, reacts to the suggestion that she is the sister of Ptocheia, the term normally translated ‘beggary’, by saying that the life of a ptochos ‘is to live having nothing’, whereas ‘the life of a penes is to live a sparing life, working hard, with nothing to spare but not falling short’ (lines 552–4). But Menander, in his play Dyskolos will have Gorgias describe himself as a ptochos even though he owns land (lines 284–6). Demosthenes can even describe as ‘without means’ (aporoi) men who belonged to the liturgical class in Athens, the richest 10 per cent of the citizens (18.108). Although it is generally true to say, as Finley does, that ‘Penia, in short, meant the harsh compulsion to toil, whereas the pauper, the man who was altogether without resources, was normally called a ptochos, a beggar, not a penes’, neither of the terms was sufficiently laden with associations with a particular level of need to prevent its use in quite other circumstances.40 In as far as ‘the poor’ constitute a political group for classical Greek writers, it is as the majority who are not rich. Aristotle insists that it is rule by the wealthy that constitutes oligarchy, rule by those without means, the aporoi, that constitutes democracy, and that this would be true even if the wealthy were in fact the majority and the aporoi the minority (Politics 1279b26–1280a6). In the case of democracy, the important point is not that those who are resourceless in fact dominate it, but that resources are, in theory, irrelevant to political power in a democracy. Similarly, the dominance of oligarchy by the wealthy derives from the fact that wealth 39

See more generally Hands (1968) 62–76, 77–88.

40

Finley (1973) 41.

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defines eligibility for full citizenship in such a r´egime, whereas there is no property qualification for citizenship in a democracy. Plato had already remarked that the use of property qualifications led not only to power not necessarily being given to those who could make best use of it, but also to those below the property qualification having no reason not to sell real estate. As a result, he observes, they may cease to have any stake in the city and end up destitute, so that the city becomes divided into two groups, those with and those without resources (Republic 551b–552b). For the ideal community of the Laws Plato legislates to make land inalienable and to prevent the wealthiest becoming more than four times as wealthy as the poorest (Laws 744d–745a). It is the political effects of differences of wealth, not the problem of absolute poverty, which exercises both Plato and Aristotle. The issue of the really destitute arises when Aristotle considers what makes a democracy durable. He is critical of redistributing state surplus to the destitute, on the ground that they will spend and remain destitute (‘such assistance for the aporoi is a large jar with a hole in the bottom’). He recommends instead that redistribution should be undertaken sufficient to enable those without means (the aporoi) to acquire land or set themselves up in business (Politics 1320a17–1320b3). Aristotle’s concern here is not with the welfare of the destitute as such, but with the political behaviour consequent on there being some within a community who are heavily burdened with taxes, and others who have no resources of their own and rely on state pay and other handouts. Plato had suggested that indebtedness was the primary cause of revolution from oligarchy to democracy, provoking Aristotle to point out that this is not the only source of such a change (Politics 1316b6– 27). The redistribution mechanisms to which Aristotle refers themselves confirm the absence of concern with a distinct group of really resourceless people. Cities of democratic persuasion might offer pay for taking public office, pay for attending public meetings, pay for military service, and various free handouts at public festivals. All of these distributions were made to the citizen body in general, without any redirection of them specifically to the needy. Only in the case of those who were disabled, did democratic Athens recognise a case for meeting a manifest need with targeted help. At one point in the Laws Plato argues that ‘if the state and society he lives in is run with only average skill’ no virtuous person will ever be reduced to ‘final ptocheia’ – and in consequence he makes a law that beggars shall be expelled from the ideal city (936b3–c7). That denial that there were any virtuous poor was made easier by the long-standing Greek habit of

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describing the wealthy as ‘good’ and ‘best’ (chrestoi, beltistoi), the poor as ‘bad’ and ‘worse’ (poneroi, kheirous).41 Such terminology, equating virtue and worldly success, only began to be challenged in the fifth century, and some remnants remain in fourth-century authors. The idea, fundamental to Hesiod’s Works and Days, that if a man is prepared to work honestly and hard he will be able to provide for himself adequately, lies consistently behind classical Greek texts. In consequence, not only are those who really are poor necessarily not themselves good, but poverty itself cannot be or breed virtue.42 Despite the concerns of Plato and Aristotle, and despite the existence of ‘abolition of debts’ and ‘redistribution of land’ as revolutionary rallying cries, it remains unclear how important a role poverty and the poor played in the practical politics of classical Greece.43 By contrast, in Rome, from at least the middle Republic, poverty plays an important part in political discourse and the poor have a significant role in practical politics. The place of the poor in Roman political discourse seems to be initially linked to the invention of the virtuous poor man. Greek writers sometimes criticise a life of truphe, ‘luxury’, or express nostalgia for the simple country life (e.g. in plays of Aristophanes), but they never extol the life of the poor man as in any way exemplary. The message of Hesiod’s Works and Days, that the hard life of labour is imposed upon men by the gods, and it is for men to knuckle down and make the best of it, is the message that runs through classical Greek texts. Luxury is associated not simply with wealth, but with non-Greeks, particularly with the east, and the opposition is not between luxury and poverty but between ‘barbarian’ and Greek behaviour.44 By contrast, the Romans had already in the middle Republic developed the image of the virtuous hard-working citizen, who had no time for anything except earning his living on his farm and doing his civic duty. The truth of the exemplary stories (e.g. of Cincinnatus or of the Elder Cato) does not matter; the importance is that those stories were told, and both are clearly part of the stock of exempla doing the rounds in the late Republic (Cic. Sen. 56 for Cincinnatus; Plut. Cat. Mai. 3.1–3 for the Elder Cato). Although the exemplary Cincinnatus and Cato were hardly destitute, the honour that they bestow upon the labouring life which enjoys no luxury offers the foundation upon which a positive evaluation of poverty can be built. And that positive evaluation we find in such fictions as the speech 41 43 44

42 cf. De Ste Croix (1981) 425–6, 431–2. See further Osborne (2004) 11–12. Social factors in political unrest have been stressed by Fuks (1984) and minimised by Gehrke (1985). See the balanced review by Austin (1994) 528–35. Hall (1989) 81–3, 126–9, 209–10.

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which the Elder Seneca puts into the mouth of Arellius Fuscus, discussed below by Greg Woolf, in which poverty is extolled as the best defence against the corruption of riches.45 The discourse of the corruption of riches is well represented in Sallust’s Catiline. In the introduction to that work, Sallust presents riches as the root of all evil. The state whose success is built upon justice and hard work is undermined by leisure and wealth, which become an impossible burden (Cat. 10.1–2). Desire for money is followed by desire for power and all manner of evils follow as greed undermines honesty and loyalty (Cat. 10.3–4). As riches are themselves honoured and become the root of power and glory, poverty becomes seen as criminal and established values are overturned (Cat. 12.1–2). This then attracts all who are resourceless, hate the status quo, and desire change, since change can bring them no loss – the group in question, Sallust says, includes ‘practically the whole plebs’ (Cat. 37.1–3). Men who have seen others around them becoming wealthy are moved by the desire to reverse their own misfortune and looking to their own material interest prefer the handouts they can get in the city to honest labour (Cat. 37.4–8). Analyses of what goes wrong with a constitution in terms of corruption and greed are familiar in Greek sources from Thucydides on civil strife (stasis) (3.82.8) through to Polybius (6.57), and greed plays a catalysing role in Aristotle’s analysis of stasis (Politics 1302b; cf. Plato Republic 555b).46 But wealth and poverty play a much more prominent part in Sallust’s analysis than in any Greek text.47 Although Sallust is not himself consistent in his description of the reactions of the city residents to Catiline,48 there is little doubt that the picture he paints in Cat. 37 puts so much stress on the role of the economic position of Catiline’s urban followers precisely because poverty had become a political issue. Finley observed that ‘Not even the state showed much concern for the poor. The famous exception is the intensely political one of the city of Rome.’49 But the fact of the exception is crucial: in Rome the poor had become a political force as they had never been in any other city. As we have already seen, the plebs frumentaria created by the grain dole recognised and gave an identity to a large body of more or less impoverished citizens 45

46 47 48

Arellius’ formulation suggests that Finley’s claim that ‘Fundamentally . . . “Blessed are the poor” was not within the Graeco-Roman world of ideas’ (1973: 38) is wrong: it is not within the Greek view, but it is within the Roman. Balot (2001) 46–8. And are more prominent in the Catiline than in the corresponding passage (ch. 41) of the Jugurtha. 49 Finley (1973) 40, cf. 171. Compare Cat. 31 and Cat. 48.

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with a political voice.50 Emperors’ toleration of popular protest about food shortages stemmed in part from the opportunity that solving perceived crises gave to display imperial power; but at the same time imperial officials often listened to what the crowd said, and responded positively.51 There is no sign that the poor of late Republican Rome came to be considered to have any greater moral claim to support from the more well off than had been possessed by the poor in any Greek city. Their political power did not make them virtuous, and writers and politicians continued to treat them as the dregs of society, responsible for their own destitution by their own moral failings. But what the political power of the poor did was to draw attention to the contrasts between rich and poor, between those whose unusual political power gave them wealth and those whose common destitution gave them political power. It remains as true for Rome as it was for Athens that ‘poor’ was a relative term, open for persuasive definition and ascription according to context, and even more open to remaining vague and ambiguous. It remains true for Rome that the poor were more often a topic for thinking with than a practical problem to be solved. It remains true in Rome, as it was in Athens, that there was only a discourse of wealth, not a discourse of poverty. But for all that, the invention of the poor as a political problem had a profound effect on the ways in which life was lived and theorised. In classical Athens, the moment when buying expensive fish led to suspicions of aiming for tyranny passed, and even the eastern connotations of the luxury lifestyle came to be positively appreciated.52 At Rome by the late Republic excessive luxuria had come to create an expectation of both moral and political depravity.53 the shape of this volume It is this new world of the poor and distinctive Roman attitudes towards poverty and representation of the poor that the chapters in this collection proceed to explore. They take up the story of poverty and its representation in the Roman world from the beginning of the principate and trace issues of what it was to be poor through until the great late Roman law codes. They revisit and review from various angles the question of the impact upon the poor of the peculiar life of the city of Rome and the unprecedented size and coherence of its empire, on the one hand, and of the spread of Christianity on the other. 50 52

Garnsey (1998) 237–9; (1988) 211–14, 236–43. Davidson (1993); Miller (1997) chs. 8–10.

53

51 Garnsey (1988) 244 for both points. Edwards (1993).

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We begin with Neville Morley’s discussion of poverty in the city of Rome. Morley takes up the discussion of the politics of Roman poverty from that offered above, expanding the discussion not only of the politics of poverty in the Roman world but also of the politics of poverty in scholarly writing since David Hume. He looks closely at the various ways in which we might define poverty and at the problems of finding in Rome the people so defined. He lays emphasis on the poor as a social and cultural, rather than an economic group, picking out in particular their characteristic vulnerability, exclusion and the shame that attaches to poverty. In the final section of his chapter he explores what a history of the Roman poor might look like, asking how the various changes in civic organisation and the economy during the principate affected the poor. His final words bring the discussion full circle by noting how the politics of poverty in the late Republic and early empire provided a resource on which nineteenth-century discussions of the poor were able to draw. Walter Scheidel takes up in Chapter 3 Morley’s challenge of seeing the poor in Rome in relation to more recent discourse of poverty by situating the study of poverty and the poor in the Roman world in the context of studies of the poor more generally. He sets the poor within the sociology of the Roman empire and within the debate over the ways in which the formal ranking of Roman society did or did not make for stratification into separate classes. He argues against the dichotomisation of Roman society and against the notion that all Mediterranean societies have always been characterised by extreme inequality of land ownership and large-scale patronage. In the face of a prevailing view that there was no significant ‘middle class’ in the Roman world, he attempts to show, by quantifying the different census classes across the empire, that there was in fact a substantial ‘middling’ group. Our whole conceptualisation of the society of the Roman empire generally and our understanding of the world presupposed by our literary texts are at issue here. Scheidel then goes on in the final section to consider the difficulties of assessing living standards; he suggests that Roman Italy was ‘developed’ in rather different ways from classical Athens, and that Roman Egypt was significantly different again. Anneliese Parkin (Chapter 4) turns attention away from what made the poor poor, to the ways in which the condition of the poor was relieved. In discussing pagan almsgiving she insists that although ‘the generosity of Veyne’, in Peter Garnsey’s own phrase, was not aimed at the destitute, the destitute were not in fact merely ignored before Christian charity was directed towards them. Parkin examines the philosophical discussions about giving to the poor, noting that Stoic resistance to pity for the poor went

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together with a willingness practically to help them. Similarly the insistence that help should be given only to those who are able in some way to reciprocate did not mean nothing was given to beggars, whose continued existence indicates otherwise. But she suggests that much of the giving to the destitute may well have come from people who were not themselves among the elite and who may have been little affected by philosophical arguments, and whose giving may well have gone along with a certain disgust at the beggars themselves. Almsgiving should not be seen as purely a moral matter: fear of the beggar may itself have played a part. However, late legislation to outlaw begging by the able-bodied and to divide the poor according to their labour capacity suggests that beggars needed to be in some sense pitiable. Greg Woolf’s discussion ‘Writing Poverty in Rome’ in Chapter 5 turns to the question of the literary image of the poor in Rome – above all in the early principate. Woolf faces up to the question of how the ‘realism’ of literary fictions can be deployed for historical purposes, and insists that understanding the relationship between literature and life is as essential to understanding literature as it is to understanding life. Woolf argues that in the early principate there was no single discourse of poverty, but that poverty was a topic thought about in the context of the dominant discourses, such as those on wealth and on luxury. Woolf explores the ways in which poverty was treated as ‘unwealth’ in particular in the poetry of Martial, and argues that the persona of poverty was attractive to Martial in part because the negative condition of not being wealthy covered so great a social range and left the reader having to decide the degree of honesty or irony to be read into any particular claim. But he also argues that this poetic play with poverty had an effect on the destitute, who were depersonalised and treated as eminently ignorable. Dominic Rathbone’s chapter (6) moves the discussion from Rome to Egypt, but keeps the issue of image and reality in the centre of the discussion. Is the invisibility of the poor and problems of poverty in Egypt during the early principate and their visibility in late antique Egypt a product of increasing poverty, of increasing visibility for the poor who were always present, or of a Christian invention of poverty? Rathbone looks at the evidence for widows and their condition, arguing for the possibility that widows did not remarry because they had sufficient means to remain independent, and at the evidence for standards of living, arguing for relative prosperity. Although he finds some reason to suppose that conditions did worsen in late antiquity, he suggests that the prominence of poverty in the Christian source material gives undue emphasis to poverty as a problem.

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With Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe’s discussion in Chapter 7 of Ambrosiaster’s treatment of almsgiving we turn firmly to the Christian sources. LunnRockliffe’s analysis further illuminates the concern of the late antique church to offer space – and salvation – to the rich. She shows how Ambrosiaster notably avoids tussling with those scriptural passages which condemn riches. But he is prepared, as writers such as Clement had not been, to acknowledge that wealth needs to be taken into account when assessing other actions – an acknowledgement which builds, at least in part, on the allowance for status made in Roman law. Lunn-Rockliffe argues that Ambrosiaster’s position cannot be understood on the assumption that there were monolithic ideologies of poverty and wealth. She suggests that the poor could be both disdained, because of their physical condition, and admired, because of their spiritual wealth, and that the question of how means affected virtue was explored in a sophisticated way. Richard Finn in Chapter 8 takes further the issue of what can and should be concluded about the relationship of texts to the realities of impoverishment and destitution, now in relation to Christian texts. Finn argues that the visibility of the poor in late antique Christian texts should not be exaggerated, and that attention needs to be paid to the instances in which the poor are unreasonably absent as well as instances in which they are the focus of attention. In an analysis of Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos he suggests that the contrast between the low incidence of encouragement to almsgiving in the brief exegetical notes on Psalms 1–32 and the high incidence in the expositions of Psalms 33–98 is a consequence of promotion of almsgiving being one of the prime duties of a bishop. Finn analyses the way in which Augustine draws the materially poor man into relationship with the spiritual needs of all men, so breaking down the distance between rich and poor. There are some reflections of an insecure and uncertain age in these expositions, but avoiding detailed descriptions of the poor and using the term beggar only infrequently to refer to the recipient of alms helped keep small the perceived distance between rich and poor. Finn suggests that the attitudes of the well-off can be read between the lines of Augustine’s sermons and the strategies of argument that Augustine chooses to employ. The much greater visibility of the poor in saints’ lives, in terms of descriptions of their circumstances, must also be read in the light of the purpose and readership of these lives: they achieve their effects by replaying the episodes of Christ’s encounters with the poor in the Gospels, and hence emphasising the Christlikeness of the saint, as much as, or more than, by shocking the reader with recognition of daily reality.

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It is with a saint’s life that Lucy Grig begins her discussion in Chapter 9 of the parties thrown for the poor that figure prominently in some late Roman sources and which have been seen by some as central to Christian charity. Grig analyses the literary construction of these party stories in an extended treatment of Paulinus of Nola’s thirteenth letter. That letter spends much time on the sumptuousness of the setting of the ‘poverty party’, the basilica of St Peter’s in Rome, and Grig contrasts Paulinus’ belief in the glorification of God through material splendour as well as through charity with Jerome’s belief in the absolute priority of the poor and with Ambrose’s use of the story of St Laurence, who presented the poor as the riches of the church, to justify giving away the church’s material wealth. Grig notes that there was a sense in which the church relied upon desire for both material and spiritual riches and in which the poor played only an instrumental role in the church’s courtship of the elite. The world of Paulinus of Nola contrasts strongly with the graphic picture of the perils of life in fifth-century Gaul painted in the diatribe De Gubernatione Dei written by Salvian, which is the subject of Cam Grey’s chapter (10). Salvian’s work is an argument, rather than a description, but his themes of the responsibility of those in power, the importance of reciprocity in vertical social relations, and the need for communities to have a unity of purpose, reflect the issues of the day. For all that his generalisations about the plight of the poor are unlikely to be an accurate reflection of the circumstances of his time, the Theodosian and Justinianic codes, too, are concerned to regulate patronage and labour relations. It is to the world of late Roman law that Caroline Humfress turns in the final chapter (11). Humfress examines Marcian’s Novel 4 and asks what relationship the greater prominence of the poor in late Roman law has to the changing conditions of the late Roman world. She argues that the poor of Marcian’s text have to be understood as the relatively poor, the middling rather than the destitute, and that throughout late Roman law there is no single category of ‘the poor’ but each reference to a poor person has to be interpreted in context. Much late Roman legislation which bears upon the poor was not designed to alter the conditions of the poor but was concerned with mitigating the effects of poverty (e.g. the killing or selling of children). The regulation by law of what could and could not happen to bequests is in fact evidence that ways were often found to divert such bequests from the poor, and there is much evidence for on-going prejudice against the poor even within the church. Alongside evidence for men falsely claiming poverty in order to avoid various duties, there is also evidence of poverty being administered as a penalty. The relativity of poverty made

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it difficult or impossible to use ‘the poor’ as a legal category. Right until the end of antiquity, therefore, the political and moral force of claims to poverty prevented the formation of a coherent social group of those who were really destitute. Walter Scheidel’s chapter concludes with the observation that the questions which dominate development studies have hardly impinged on studies of the ancient world. Throughout this volume the contributors have gestured towards lines of enquiry and ways of thought which if pursued further would make us look very differently at poverty in the Roman world. This volume is not a collection of definitive studies, but a summary of current understanding, an attempt to survey and define a territory which has to date been under-explored. What is claimed here remains open to revision as Roman historians engage more fully with the lessons that can be learnt from analysis of more recent and contemporary societies. It is such a productive engagement between questions generated by the study of more recent societies and material derived from the Graeco-Roman world that has marked Peter Garnsey’s own research. And just as his examination of the ancient world has served also to sharpen awareness of issues in the modern world, so we hope that this volume also offers insights into the relationship between reality and representation, ideas and actions, that will themselves enlighten contemporary engagement with poverty and the poor.

chap t e r 2

The poor in the city of Rome Neville Morley

the politics of roman p overt y Almsgiving, though it cannot be stopped at present, as without it we should have hunger riots, and possibly revolution, is an evil. At present we give the unemployed a dole to support them, not for love of them, but because if we left them to starve they would begin by breaking our windows and end by looting our shops and burning our houses . . . In ancient Rome the unemployed demanded not only bread to feed them but gladiatorial shows to keep them amused; and the result was that Rome became crowded with playboys who would not work at all, and were fed and amused with money taken from the provinces. That was the beginning of the end for ancient Rome. We may come to bread and football (or prizefights) yet. (George Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism (1928))

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, writers on political economy frequently turned to examples from classical history, and above all from the history of Rome, to illustrate and support their arguments.1 Rome was better documented than any other past society, and the broad outlines of its history were familiar to educated people; more importantly, it was felt to be sufficiently similar to the present – a complex, ‘civilised’ society, and the ancestor of European civilisation – to make comparisons meaningful and productive. David Hume, for example, put forward Roman evidence to support his views on the inherent idleness of the poor and the pernicious effects of any attempt at poor relief: The sportulae, so much talked of by Martial and Juvenal, being presents regularly made by the great lords to their smaller clients, must have had a like tendency to produce idleness, debauchery, and a continual decay among the people. The parish-rates have at present the same bad consequences in England.2 1

Morley (1998).

2

Hume (1882) 177; cf. Himmelfarb (1984) 51–2.

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Adam Smith offered a rather different analysis of Roman society, with rather different implications, when discussing the tendency of states to respond to financial problems – which they had for the most part created themselves through unwise expenditure or poor government – by devaluing their coinage: In Rome, as in all the other ancient republics, the poor people were constantly in debt to the rich and the great, who in order to secure their votes at the annual elections, used to lend them money at exorbitant interest, which, being never paid, soon accumulated into a sum too great either for the debtor to pay, or for anybody else to pay for him. The debtor, for fear of a very severe execution, was obliged, without any further gratuity, to vote for the candidate whom the creditor recommended. In spite of all the laws against bribery and corruption, the bounty of the candidates, together with the occasional distributions of corn which were ordered by the senate, were the principal funds from which, during the latter times of the Roman republic, the poorer citizens derived their subsistence. To deliver themselves from this subjection to their creditors, the poorer citizens were continually calling out either for an entire abolition of debts, or for what they called New Tables; that is, for a law which should entitle them to a complete acquittance upon paying only a certain proportion of what their accumulated debts . . . In order to satisfy the people, the rich and the great were, upon several different occasions, obliged to consent to laws both for abolishing debts, and for introducing New Tables.3

There is an implicit contrast here with Smith’s discussion of modern poverty. He presented poverty as something that might be alleviated or even abolished through economic growth and limited political action, rather than as a natural, inescapable fact of life.4 Where Hume had advocated restricting wages to compel the poor to industry, Smith emphasised the role of higher wages as an incentive. For Smith, provided that the state is concerned with the well-being of all and not simply that of the wealthy, and thus that there will be ‘peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice’, the natural inclination of the poor labourer to improve his situation will result in the enrichment of both the individual and society as a whole.5 Rome, in contrast, exemplified a state that was managed for the benefit of the rich; the result was that the poor were maintained in idleness and thus remained poor, the political process was corrupted, and yet the wealthy remained susceptible to popular pressure and always fearful of demands for the complete redistribution of property.6 3 5

4 Himmelfarb (1984) 42–63; Stedman Jones (2004) 3–5, 36–41, 97–8. Smith (1976) 5.3.62. 6 Stedman Jones (2004) 36–8. Quoted in Winch (1996) 90.

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This new perspective was soon overtaken by events, as the French Revolution put the question of how societies should respond to the grievances of the poor at the centre of political debate.7 Radicals like Thomas Paine urged the introduction of social measures like subsidised education and grants for those in temporary need, in order that ‘the poor, as well as the rich, will then be interested in the support of government, and the cause and apprehension of riots and tumults will cease’.8 For conservatives like Edmund Burke, on the other hand, such proposals – which threatened the institutions of monarchy, religion and above all private property – were precisely the danger. Burke constantly evoked the fall of the Roman Republic and the decadence of the Roman Empire in his account of the French Revolution, quoting liberally from Sallust, Cicero, Virgil, Horace and Juvenal. Among the French revolutionaries ‘are found persons, in comparison of whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous’; the army was to be seduced from its discipline and fidelity through ‘donatives’, Burke suggested, while the citizens of the capital were to be fed at the expense of their fellow-subjects.9 In particular, he reiterated the dangers of giving in to calls for a redistribution of property, noting that the Romans had in the end confined themselves to confiscating the property of ‘enemies of the state’, rather than attacking all property rights in the name of the ‘rights of Man’.10 The comparison with Rome both emphasised the inevitable consequences of the French experiment, and highlighted the novelty of the radicals in developing an intellectual justification – the rights of Man – for acceding to the demands of the mob and taking advantage of their grievances to overthrow the established order. Burke followed the conservative tradition of previous centuries in taking the existence of the poor entirely for granted and assuming that any attempt at providing relief, even in times of famine, would simply encourage their inherent laziness.11 Thomas Malthus provided a more elaborate justification of this view, arguing that population growth would always outstrip any increase in agricultural productivity and so there could be no hope in the long term that the majority could be anything other than poor.12 Whereas for Smith the past might be used as a contrast, an example of what the modern world might now hope to escape, for Malthus it revealed the inescapable workings of nature, the ahistorical forces that would inevitably frustrate human endeavour; in later editions of his work he greatly expanded 7 10 12

8 Paine (1906) 501–2. Stedman Jones (2004) 16–63. 11 Stedman Jones (2004) 88–9. Burke (2001) 280–81. Himmelfarb (1984) 100–32; Stedman Jones (2004) 88–109.

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Burke (2001) 212, 228, 410–11.

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the historical sections to reinforce his point. The principle of population was revealed even in the case of the Roman Republic, cited against him by opponents who pointed to the concern of contemporaries about a lack of manpower: When the equality of property, which had formerly prevailed in the Roman territory, had been destroyed by degrees, and the land had fallen into the hands of a few great proprietors, the citizens, who were by this change successively deprived of the means of supporting themselves, would naturally have no recourse to prevent them from starving, but that of selling their labour to the rich, as in modern states; but from this resource they were completely cut off by the prodigious number of slaves, which, increasing by constant influx with the increasing luxury of Rome, filled up every employment both in agriculture and manufactures. Under such circumstances, so far from being astonished that the number of free citizens should decrease, the wonder seems to be that any should exist besides the proprietors. And in fact many could not have existed but for a strange and preposterous custom, which, however, the strange and unnatural state of the city might perhaps require, that of distributing vast quantities of corn to the poorer citizens gratuitously.13

If half the slaves had been sent out of the country, the effect would have been ‘to increase the number of Roman citizens with more certainty and rapidity than ten thousand laws for the encouragement of children’. Poverty for Malthus is thus unavoidable except in the short term, whether it results from slavery, from economic stagnation or from overpopulation.14 There is then always a danger that the poor might be persuaded by ‘any dissatisfied man of talents’ that their distress is actually the fault of the established order, and so induced to revolt against it – another analysis of the French Revolution that owed a great deal to Cicero and Sallust.15 Malthus’ solution was to urge moral restraint and the deferment of marriage, and to accept that the monarchy might sometimes be justified in restricting liberty and employing force. The question of whether the grievances of the poor could be addressed without resort to now-discredited revolutionary measures, or whether those grievances would inevitably lead to the destruction of society, was equally an issue for more liberal thinkers in the tradition of Smith, such as JeanBaptiste Say in France. Say offered a similar analysis of the indebtedness of the Roman poor, seen in part as a result of their unwillingness to take on ‘slavish’ employment; ‘hence the unrest and turbulence of the nonproprietors’, constantly demanding an equal distribution of property, which impelled the leaders of Rome to embark on military action abroad in order to distract the masses from their grievances and bribe them with booty: 13

Malthus (1989) 1.14.4.

14

Cf. Malthus (1989) 3.14.13.

15

Stedman Jones (2004) 103–6.

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What a poor figure these masters of the world cut, when they were not in the army or in revolt. They fell into poverty the moment they had no one more to pillage. It was from such people that the clientelage of a Marius, a Sulla, a Pompey, a Caesar, an Anthony or an Augustus were formed.16

More explicitly than in Smith’s account, this description of Rome was offered as a contrast to the contemporary situation. Say’s optimistic view was that modern economic and social development had made war uneconomical and clientelage obsolete; poverty should be a thing of the past, and the poverty that brought about the fall of governments and the establishment of tyranny should now be confined to the Roman past. Writers in this period drew very different conclusions from historical material, both regarding whether (and, if so, how) poverty could be relieved or abolished, and more generally about the way that society should be organised and managed, but they shared a common idea of Rome. Roman history provided the archetypal image of the mob, the group of poor whose grievances left them alienated from the rest of society and who were thus susceptible to rabble-rousing and manipulation; it presented the poor as a potential threat to social stability, whose acquiescence had to be bought by indulging their idleness at the expense of the empire’s subjects. This account echoes faithfully a number of familiar Roman sources, from Sallust and Cicero on the followers of Catiline to Juvenal’s much-quoted dismissal of the Roman plebs as concerned only with bread and circuses. However, the material is reinterpreted in the light of a new understanding of economic and social structures; whereas for Cicero (and indeed for Burke) poverty was accepted as part of the order of things and, in individual cases, seen as a moral defect, Smith and Malthus developed explanations of why some people happen to be poor. They sought to understand Roman society in these terms, considering the interrelations between poverty, slavery, political structures and imperialism, and as a result attributed a greater share of the blame for social disorder to Rome’s leaders, for the way that they had responded to the problem. Their accounts suggest different ways of thinking about the place of the poor in the city of Rome, but there are two obvious problems. The first is that of the evidence: Burke, Malthus and the like deploy historical material to support their political arguments about poverty, but their sources for this are already politicised, presented in the context of a set of ideological assumptions. When Cicero describes Roman society in terms of a 16

Say (1971) 341; Stedman Jones (2004) 135–8.

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distinction between assidui and proletarii (Rep. 2.40) or between the populus and the plebs (Mur. 1), or identifies those who work in shops and taverns as likely adherents of Catiline, as opposed to the respectable plebs (Cat. 4.17), these are not neutral accounts of social reality. In part, they reflect an elite world-view that sometimes uses the vocabulary of poverty indiscriminately of the entire non-elite population – a poor man, from this perspective, is anyone who lacks the leisure, and hence the virtue, of the rich – and sometimes seeks to distinguish, as Tacitus puts it, between those sections of the population who were ‘virtuous and associated with the great houses’ and the ‘dirty plebs, accustomed to the circus and theatres’ (Hist. 1.4).17 In part, they are deliberate attempts at constructing and promoting such an image of society for particular purposes. Long ago, the people cast off its worries, when we stopped selling our votes. A body that used to confer commands, legions, rods and everything else, has now narrowed its scope, and is eager and anxious for two things only: bread and circuses. (Juvenal 10.77–80)

The tradition of taking Juvenal’s account at face value, either quoting it as a simple description of Roman life (as nineteenth-century commentators tended to do) or explaining how the plebs could not in fact have survived on the corn dole alone, neglects his ironic intent.18 He does not pretend to present a description of urban reality, but rather deploys this picture of the idle mob as a symbol of the political failure of the Republic – the good old days when we used to sell our votes – and the decadence of the principate. Likewise, Satire 3 uses the topos of the poor man’s life in Rome to construct an image of the city as a place of extreme contrasts between luxury and poverty, opulence and destitution, pleasure and death. There are echoes here of the dramatic qualities of nineteenth-century depictions of London: ‘the most miserable is the most memorable’.19 More sinisterly, it can be argued that the stereotypes of the poor as idle and worthless legitimised the wealthy in the enjoyment of their wealth, and reinforced the social structure that kept the masses in their place.20 Certainly those who attended contiones were encouraged to identify themselves with the loyal, respectable populus which upheld the authority of the magistrates and supported the maintenance of the social hierarchy, and to oppose 17 18 19

Pars populi integra et magnis dominus adnexa . . . plebs sordida et circo ac theatris sueta. Generally, Whittaker (1993) 6. Debunking Juvenal’s panem et circenses: Brunt (1980); Whittaker (1993). 20 Whittaker (1993) 2. Himmelfarb (1984) 321; more generally, Williams (1973).

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the sordida plebs.21 Within political discourse, poverty was pathologised, presented as inextricably entwined with envy and sedition: In general the whole plebs approved of Catiline’s undertaking, from an inclination for new things. In this it seemed to act according to its custom. For always in a state those who have no resources envy the propertied, admire evil men, hate established things and long for new ones, and from discontent with their own position they desire everything to be changed. (Sall. Cat. 37)22

Catiline, Clodius and the like are to be discredited by the base motives of their followers, as they can win over only those people too poor to uphold their own principles (compare Cic. Dom. 89), while any legitimate grievances of the poor are tainted through their association with Catiline and other revolutionaries. Reference to the Roman poor was intended to arouse fear of violent upheaval and attacks on private property, in order to justify a course of action, sway a jury or win support for one side in a debate. It is easy to see how such texts would serve the purposes of conservatives like Burke; it is not clear that they can tell us much about the actual Roman poor. Indeed, there is a second and more basic problem in this study, that of identifying its subject. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political economists unselfconsciously treated ‘the poor’ of Rome as identical with the plebs or the populus, and vice versa, despite the fact that within their own societies the poor were clearly only a subset of the population at large. They were happy to accept, following Juvenal, that the mass of the Roman population was effectively destitute and dependent on the corn dole, and to consider a group defined in political terms as coterminous with one defined by economic or social criteria. Neither of these assumptions now seems tenable; to consider how far ‘the poor’ were in fact a significant social group within Roman society, it is necessary to try to develop a more precise definition of their identity, based on economic or social criteria. we re there any poor in the cit y of rome? ‘Poverty’ is a problematic, and almost invariably politicised, term, referring to a state that is easier to describe than define.23 There is no agreement on 21 22

23

Morstein-Marx (2004) 13–23, esp. 15–16; cf. Cic. Cat. 4.14–16. Omnino cuncta plebes novarum rerum studio Catilinae incepta probabat. Id adeo more suo videbatur facere. Nam semper in civitate quibus opes nullae sunt bonis invident, malos extollunt, vetera odere, nova exoptant, odio suarum rerum mutari omnia student. Cat. 36 represents adherence to Catiline in terms of disease, morbus and tabes. P. Alcock (1993) 3; Whittaker (1993) 2–7.

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how ‘the poor’ as a social group should be identified; the choice of a particular set of criteria can always be criticised for its ideological assumptions and implications. Commentators differ as to whether poverty should be defined in absolute or relative terms, and whether it is primarily an objective or a subjective state. As Himmelfarb’s classic study of the idea of poverty has shown, different systems of classification produce radically different perspectives: ‘the “natural”, unproblematic poverty of one age becomes the urgent social problem of another’.24 It could be argued, for example, that there were no poor in Rome, or anywhere else in the empire, if one follows modern practice in taking the term to refer to a social group whose lack of resources and/or way of life is regarded as a problem for ‘society’ as a whole, an unacceptable state of affairs.25 Conversely, one might argue that everyone or virtually everyone in antiquity was poor, in material terms, in comparison with the modern era. ‘Mass structural poverty’, it is suggested, has been the natural state of humanity for most of history, an inevitable feature of life in a society that was wholly dependent on ‘organic’ sources of energy – above all, human or animal muscle, which had to be supported from the land and therefore placed strict limits on how far productivity could be increased.26 Many of the attributes which are today often taken as indicative of the condition of poverty – high levels of infant mortality, low levels of literacy, a diet close to subsistence level – were indeed common to the vast majority of inhabitants of the classical world.27 This global comparison highlights one of the essential differences between ancient and modern economies, but it is of limited use in understanding the place of poverty within any particular pre-industrial society – and one might also be wary of the implication that poverty has now been abolished, at least in the industrialised West. In order to study the position of the poor within a particular society, two distinctions need to be made. The first is between structural and conjunctural poverty; between those who are born poor and remain poor until they die, unless they are particularly skilled or fortunate, and those who fall into that state as a result of misfortune. In individual cases, this distinction is not necessarily clear; the poverty of widows and orphans in most pre-industrial societies might be described as the result both of an accident and of the structure of society that renders the position of such people, like that of the elderly, particularly precarious. Even in the modern West, some level of 24 25 26 27

Himmelfarb (1984) 8. Cf. Osborne, above p. 1. cf. Jordan (1996) 95–6; Parkin, Chapter 4. Lal (1997) 162. On the ‘organic energy economy’, Wrigley (1988) and Osborne, above pp. 4–5. Lal and Myint (1996) 29, 34–6.

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conjunctural poverty seems unavoidable; in a pre-industrial society where risk was endemic, its existence can be taken for granted. The important question must be whether there was an identifiable group within Roman society of those who were significantly less well-off than the majority over most of their lives, a group into which those who suffered accidents or misfortune might then also find themselves incorporated. The second distinction is between poverty and destitution. Anyone might fall into the latter condition as a result of accident – it will be argued below that ‘the poor’ would be particularly vulnerable to this – but in the absence of any social provision it is not a long-term prospect. If poverty is equated with destitution, the lack of any significant income, then ‘the poor’ cannot be a significant social group but only a collection of individuals in temporary distress, most of whom would either quickly recover or perish. A blurring of this distinction seems to be the main basis for Purcell’s rejection of the idea that ‘there was in the late Republic a group of free-born Romans “largely too poor to erect even the simplest epitaphs”’.28 ‘Economic poverty at Rome was not a state that an individual is likely to have endured for long, let alone a family; it was, if at all extreme, usually rapidly fatal’; survival for any period of time, it is suggested, must have entailed betterment, and the possibility of emigrating from the city.29 There is a question as to whether this scenario is demographically plausible, but it also leaves open the question of how one should label those whose poverty was not so extreme – precisely those who, if one distinguishes poverty from destitution, might be categorised as ‘the poor’. The issue raised by Purcell needs to be reformulated: did the majority of the inhabitants of the city of Rome (and indeed of the empire) live so close to subsistence level that any deterioration in one’s condition could only mean destitution, not mere poverty? Certainly elite sources often treat the rest of the population as an undifferentiated mass, and apply the vocabulary of poverty indiscriminately. The distinctions that they sometimes draw between different groups within the plebs are vague and contradictory; this is unsurprising, given that they speak of an image rather than a social reality and that on any particular occasion ‘the poor’ were those who were absent, the threat against which those present (the true populus) should unite. In other words, we could dismiss such finely grained descriptions of Roman society as politically motivated. Modern historians have often implicitly adopted such an approach, emphasising that the plebs was not completely homogeneous but then analysing 28

Purcell (1994) 656–7.

29

Purcell (1994) 657.

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the politics of the Republic as if it was; often focusing on the activities and divisions of the political class, with ‘the people’ or ‘the crowd’ as a largely passive mass, relevant only when one of the elite seeks to make use of them.30 Where divisions within the ‘mass’ are highlighted, these are often understood solely in terms of social status; the distinction between free-born, slave and freedman is taken to overshadow other criteria of differentiation. In economic and social history, too, there is a tendency to pursue the idea of ‘ancient diet’ or ‘the Roman family’ – noting, of course, that elite sources cannot be taken as representative of the entire population – rather than acknowledging the possibility of variation outside the elite as well. The argument can be developed that, in diet at least, there were no significant differences in terms of quality or quantity across the mass of the population, but it is as misleading simply to assume homogeneity as it would be to take Juvenal’s account as representative of the life of the average Roman citizen.31 In many cases this approach is understandable; there is scarcely sufficient evidence to answer any of our questions about ancient nutritional status, and the temptation must be to make use of everything available. However, it can make a considerable difference to our interpretation of these limited sources if we assume the existence of economic differentiation, even if we admit that we cannot say much about it, or if we assume its absence.32 For example, discussions of rural development in Roman Italy, and the classification systems used for archaeological material, often operate with a crude distinction between ‘peasant farms’ and ‘villas’ – that is, once again, between the elite and an undifferentiated mass.33 It is widely recognised that elite sites are more likely to be found by archaeological survey, and that the tendency to rely on fine wares rather than ordinary pottery for dating creates a further bias against the sites that are poorest in material terms.34 It is less often noted how far the interpretation of the poorest sites rests on prior assumptions about social structure; since the status of a site’s occupants is archaeologically invisible, small poor sites can be interpreted as slave dwellings, shepherds’ huts or sheds.35 If one assumes the existence of a hierarchy amongst the non-elite farmers, then they could be interpreted as the homes of the poorer peasants. 30 31 32 33 35

E.g. Beard and Crawford (1985) 40–71; cf. Millar (1998). Garnsey (1999) 113–27. Garnsey (1999) is quite explicit about the fact that its general conclusions must conceal significant variation in reality. 34 Millett (1991); S. Alcock (1993) 49–53. Rathbone (1993b). Potter (1979) 135; Celuzza and Regoli (1982) 59–60; cf. Morley (1996) 99–100.

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In the city of Rome, the problem is that of the interpretation of silence. The vast majority of inscriptions from the city commemorate freedmen and slaves; the free-born (including the offspring of freedmen) are conspicuously absent. Purcell takes this as grounds for rejecting the idea (influenced by Juvenal’s complaints) that the city included a sizeable group of the poor descendents of pure-blood Romans. He argues instead, supported by some inscriptions from other parts of Italy, that free-born urbanites tended to die and be commemorated outside the city, while the majority of the population were new migrants or freedmen who failed to reproduce themselves.36 In other words, the absence of evidence for a free-born population is indeed evidence of absence; epigraphy offers more than just a record of a particular habit of social display that only some inhabitants, predominantly freedmen, wished or could afford to indulge.37 This seems implausible; what of the free-born who died unexpectedly and had to be commemorated on the spot, before they could retire to the country? Current debates about the level of migration to Rome assume that there was a significant number of births annually amongst the free population, if never enough to compensate for high urban mortality levels. If there was no free population in the city to reproduce itself, these arguments would need to be drastically revised, as would assumptions about the required level of slave imports.38 Further, this argument assumes that those who could not afford a tombstone must have been destitute and hence unlikely to survive long in the city, and seems drastically to underestimate the degree to which large cities can support large populations with no obvious regular employment. As comparative evidence from early modern and modern cities shows, it is generally possible to survive, if not to live well, living from hand to mouth, through casual labour, prostitution, crime and begging.39 That is not to say that we should believe in a core of old plebeian families, surviving from the early Republic – that seems equally implausible from a demographic perspective – but rather in a social group whose membership was constantly changing as some families managed to improve their position and others failed altogether, some indeed moved out into Italy and others arrived as migrants. Rather than assume their non-existence, we might define the poor precisely as those who, in unknown numbers, failed to leave any significant mark in the historical record. The historian’s task, then, is to identify the empty spaces, the gaps and cracks in society, in which those noticeably 36 38 39

37 MacMullen (1982) Purcell (1994) 656–7. Morley (1996) 39–46, on urban mortality; Scheidel (2004) on migration and (1997) on the slave supply. cf. Whittaker (1993) 4; Mu˜noz et al. (1982).

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worse off even than the average Roman must have existed. There are two strands to such a project. The first, developed in detail by Walter Scheidel in the next chapter, is to try to establish the extent of economic differentiation within the Roman empire. Given the state of the evidence, this approach at once becomes a matter of choice between different models of the overall performance of the Roman economy. If the vast majority of the population lived at or close to subsistence level then no one could have survived longterm on an income significantly below the median; ‘poverty’ must describe either destitution as a temporary condition, or a subjective state of mind based on marginal inferiority. The former case, as noted above, implies that there was no significant social group of ‘the poor’; the latter, in the absence of suitable evidence, would mean that ‘the poor’ remained out of reach of historical research. If, on the other hand, we assume that the empire’s economy was more developed, and that on average each individual produced significantly more than was required for subsistence, then a more complex economic hierarchy than a simple rich–poor division can be envisaged. The wealthy elite would retain the lion’s share of resources, but there would be capacity within the system for the existence of a range of groups of different levels of wealth – local aristocrats, merchants and well-to-do farmers – and for a significant number of ordinary inhabitants of the empire to be well fed, reasonably prosperous and fairly secure (similar to the way that Dominic Rathbone has characterised the Egyptians at this time as ‘sleek’).40 Such a social structure could then include people living closer to the margin of subsistence than the average and so clearly ‘poor’ relative to the majority of Romans, without being destitute. In Scheidel’s analysis, it is precisely the evidence for the wide range of census classes at Rome, implying a broader distribution of wealth across society than is conventionally assumed, that supports the notion of the existence of ‘middling’ classes and hence, by implication, of ‘the poor’ – the latter constituting perhaps half of the population. The second aspect of the project is to attempt to characterise the condition of poverty in social and cultural terms. Whatever statement we may make about the diet or employment or health of the typical Roman, some people must always have done slightly worse; the poor were those who did so more or less consistently, even to the point where these deficiencies began to reinforce one another, as a poor diet affected one’s health and ability to work.41 However, we can try to offer an account of the nature of poverty in Rome in more than purely negative terms by focusing on some 40

Rathbone (forthcoming) and below, Chapter 6.

41

Garnsey (1999) 59–60.

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of its particular characteristics and organising principles. This also offers an opportunity to consider how far being poor in the metropolis may have differed from the experience elsewhere in the empire. (1) Vulnerability. To be poor was to be vulnerable, above all to food shortage. Of course, given the capricious Mediterranean climate, not to mention the frequency of war and the consequences of general political instability, virtually everyone in antiquity was vulnerable to periodic food crises.42 However, this ubiquitous risk had the greatest impact on those who were closest to the margin of subsistence, whether because they had access to insufficient land or could count on only poorly paid and irregular employment. In the countryside, poor peasants could employ a variety of strategies to reduce their exposure to risk, and could if necessary turn to famine foods or migrate to towns in search of employment.43 Urban dwellers were almost wholly dependent on the market, and so their access to sufficient and affordable food might be disrupted by rumours as much as by actual harvest failure. Their sole hope was then to put pressure on the elite or on the state to intervene in the market, by regulating its activities or bringing in emergency supplies; in times of real crisis, affecting a significant proportion of the populace, this might be effective, but smaller price rises might affect the ability of the poorest to afford sufficient food without creating sufficiently widespread unrest to force action. Under the principate, the use of state grain to provide a regular dole must have helped to stabilise the market, but not everyone had access to it – and recent immigrants, already vulnerable, were least likely to get on the lists. Other accidents – the loss of property in a fire, for example – must have had a disproportionate impact on those with the fewest resources, and we might also note modern statistics, confirmed by evidence from Roman Egypt, suggesting that the poor are by far the most likely to become victims of crime as well as its perpetrators.44 Everyone in the city was at risk from infectious disease (more so than in the country), but their poor nutritional status and crowded living conditions meant that the poorest were once again the most susceptible.45 (2) Exclusion. A certain level of wealth, and the leisure that this permits, is necessary in almost all societies in order to play a full social role; the poor, then, are denied the opportunity to participate fully (and, conversely, those who are excluded for other reasons may be considered, in a sense, as being among the poor).46 Under the Republic, this process of 42 43 46

Garnsey (1988) 8–16; Horden and Purcell (2000) 151, 175–203. 44 Gr¨ 45 Morley (2005). Garnsey (1988) 43–68. unewald (2004) 25–31. Cf. Jordan (1996) 93.

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exclusion was manifest in the stratification of the citizen body by wealth, both formally and, as Roman citizens came to be distributed over a wider geographical area, in terms of the costs involved in attending the assemblies. Political influence and the weight of one’s vote were determined by wealth; so too the opportunity to play a role in the defence of the state. In terms of the dominant ideology, at least, the poor were therefore incapable of developing their full potential as human beings. A further barrier stood between citizen and non-citizen, and it is clear that the wealthy Italian or provincial stood a far better chance of obtaining citizenship than the poor immigrant, who might indeed be in a less favourable position than some slaves.47 Under the principate, most of the population was excluded from politics, but citizenship continued to offer privileged access to largesse and legal protection – though it was formally noted that the poor man was always suspect as a witness (D. 22.5.3). Roman social interaction involved far more than politics, but many of the most important arenas of social activity – dinners, collegia, private bathhouses and gymnasia – required some measure of surplus wealth to gain access. The privileged amongst the plebs might be able to enter into a reciprocal patron–client relationship with a wealthier individual, offering an entry into the social world as well as access to more material resources, but, precisely because the client was expected to have something to offer his patron in return, these relationships excluded the poorest.48 Their main hope lay in the emperor’s generosity, which offered occasional access to resources (at least for citizens) and entertainment but no social interaction or recognition; their expected role was simply as a member of the grateful crowd in the arena.49 Purcell offers the optimistic view that even the poorer plebs would have been integrated into Roman society through their involvement in the social exchanges of the insula, something which remains entirely invisible to us; it seems equally possible that urban society, especially in the great metropolis and especially for recent immigrants, was characterised by the alienation, anonymity and purely instrumental relationships that were believed to constitute city life in the mid-twentieth century.50 High levels of urban mortality imply that not even family life would necessarily have offered a stable, dependable social framework for the most vulnerable. The countryside may have offered a more reliable and 47 48 50

Sherwin-White (1973) 292–311. 49 Whittaker (1993) 1. Saller (1982); Garnsey and Saller (1987) 151–2, 156. Purcell (1994) 667; cf. Laurence (1994) 38–50. On modern ‘urbanism’, see the essays by Wirth and Simmel in Sennett (1969).

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inclusive network of relationships with kin, neighbours and friends, even for the poorest.51 (3) Shame. ‘Poverty is not basically an economic problem. Rather, it is a particular state of social, political, psychological and existential being that defines the human condition at a given point in history.’52 Certainly this is the perspective offered by Juvenal: ‘there is nothing in the calamity of poverty that is harder to bear than the fact that it makes men ridiculous’ (3.153–4).53 Of course, Juvenal’s character speaks of the ‘ambitious poverty’, ambitiosa paupertas (3.183; cf. 9.140–41), of those who still aspired to move in polite society; it would be both misleading and insulting to the truly destitute to assume that his highly literary account gives an accurate picture of the lives of the Roman poor. Conceivably, however, it does offer an insight into the psychology of poverty in Rome, into attitudes that were not necessarily restricted to the elite. Whether a man felt himself to be poor because of a lack of slaves, because of his clothing and shoes (Juvenal 3.147– 51), because he was compelled to work his farm himself or had insufficient money for a proper dowry (Valerius Maximus, De Paupertate 4.4), because he had to sell his labour to another (a common elite attitude: Cic. Off. 1.151; Sen. Ep. 88.21) or because he was genuinely destitute and desperate, the sense of shame, and envy against those who enjoyed better (and undeserved) fortune, may have been the same. To be poor was to be incapable of any virtue besides that of enduring poverty (Sen. De Beat. Vit. 22); it left one all too close to slavery, whether in occupation or appearance (cf. Sen. Clem. 1.23.2–24.1, D. 18.1.4–5). That is not to say that the masses shared the elite view on the demeaning nature of manual labour and trade, since they advertised their professions on their tombstones – but they did so in part precisely to emphasise that they were not entirely poor, not inferior to their fellow-citizens, with no reason to feel ashamed.54 Ancient attitudes to poverty were often ambiguous or contradictory, as seen most clearly in the arguments of Penia in Aristophanes’ Plutus. In Roman culture, these ambiguities were located in space: one kind of poverty, the specifically rural poverty of the peasant yeoman, was idealised and the virtues associated with working a 4-iugera farm like Cincinnatus were assimilated to the landowning class, while urban poverty was pathologised, associated with rebellion, crime and disease. Vulnerability, exclusion, shame. Not everyone was poor by every one of these criteria; the excluded and the shamed overlapped, but were not 51 53 54

52 Kothari (1993) 1. Cf. Garnsey (1988) 55–63. Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se quam quod ridiculos homines facit. Joshel (1992).

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co-extensive, with the vulnerable. However, poverty in one respect might well lead to another, as shame contributed to social exclusion and social exclusion reinforced vulnerability, since the outcast could not rely on networks of reciprocity or patronage in times of crisis. toward s a history of the roman poor Poverty is not an independent variable; it is the consequence of the combination of a particular level of economic development, a particular size of population relative to available resources and the particular social and economic structures that determine the distribution of wealth within society. Changes in any of these variables will affect the incidence and severity of poverty. Smith and his successors argued that increasing affluence would in due course alleviate poverty; Malthus retorted that this would not be the case unless population growth could somehow be checked; Paine and later Marx pointed to the need to transform the institutions of society in order to obtain a more equitable distribution of wealth. Modern explanations for the persistence of poverty even after the industrial revolution follow similarly diverging lines, considering poverty as an unfortunate but temporary by-product of processes of economic change that will in due course increase aggregate wealth and benefit everyone, or as an essential but disavowed element of the capitalist system, ensuring its perpetuation through the existence of ‘a mass of human material always ready for exploitation’.55 It is a truism that the political, economic, social and legal structures of the Roman empire favoured the dominance of the wealthy elite; equally, that the Roman economy was predominantly agrarian, under-developed and severely limited in its capacity for growth.56 It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that structural as well as conjunctural poverty should have existed; the questions that need to be considered in order to begin writing its history concern incidence, severity and location, and changes in each of these areas. For example, in Italy in the last two centuries of the Republic there is evidence that overall wealth may have increased, as some new land was brought into cultivation, new agricultural techniques were developed, and resources flowed in from other areas of the Mediterranean; it proved possible, if nothing else, to relieve citizens of the burden of the land tax.57 At the same time, there is evidence, both literary and archaeological, for the development of a more inequitable distribution of wealth, as property 55 56

For the former perspective, see e.g. Lal and Myint (1996) 44, Lal (1997), Hayami (2001); cf. Stiglitz (2002) 78–80. For the latter, Marx (1976) 784. 57 Generally, Morley (1996). Garnsey and Saller (1987), P. Millett (2001).

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became concentrated in fewer hands. The crucial variable in considering the likely impact of these changes is population size. If, as is conventionally argued, the free population stabilised or even declined at the same time as resources increased, then we might imagine a situation where the countryside became more prosperous (or less poor) while poverty was concentrated in the cities, especially the city of Rome; the capital’s demand for fresh bodies relieved Italy of a surplus population that might otherwise have put a strain on resources and reduced living standards. If, on the other hand, the Italian population grew to the level implied by the ‘high’ interpretation of the Augustan census figures, it implies widespread impoverishment in the countryside as well as the city; such a population was, arguably, sustainable, but only if the majority lived at subsistence level.58 Other factors need to be included in such a reconstruction; above all, the effects of military service both on demographic structures and on productivity. As Rosenstein has argued, the army predominantly drew on young unmarried men at a stage in the life-cycle of the average family where their labour could be spared. Rome’s military enterprise did not directly lead to the impoverishment of peasant farms, therefore, but the lack of surplus labour might have prevented them from taking advantage of opportunities for expansion and improvement.59 Partible inheritance would then leave many farms in the next generation too small to be fully viable, increasing poverty and creating conditions that might incline people to migrate to the cities. The growth of the metropolis especially, fuelled by the wealth of empire, attracted migrants with the promise of employment; individually they might have been better off staying put, but such decisions are based on hopes and expectations rather than rational calculations and full information.60 The removal of this ‘surplus’ population left those remaining behind with greater opportunities for access to land, and thus the opportunity to improve their situation. However, the apparent stability of the system in the long term should not disguise the likelihood of serious problems, including widespread impoverishment, during periods of, so to speak, adjustment; Rosenstein interprets the problems of the late second century, misinterpreted completely by Tiberius Gracchus, as the result of a population boom and consequent pressure on resources and competition for land in many areas of Italy.61 Within the city of Rome, urbanisation and poverty went hand in hand; Rome’s problems, as Purcell puts it, were the problems of success, and increased in parallel with the city’s growth.62 The number of poor certainly 58 60 61

59 Rosenstein (2004). Lo Cascio (1994), Morley (2001), Scheidel (2004). On migration, Oberai (1983); Clark and Souden (1987). 62 Purcell (1994) 647. Rosenstein (2004) 155–69.

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increased over the last two centuries bc; the proportion of the urban population which could be classified as poor may also have increased, as the city became ever more dominated by immigrants. As argued above, urban poverty is in general likely to be more severe than rural poverty; the city poor had no direct access to the means of subsistence, no source of food other than the market, theft or charity. The burden fell particularly heavily on recent arrivals: the decision to migrate had separated them from traditional social structures like kinship and patronage, whereas longerestablished residents might have succeeded in building up alternative social networks. It is conceivable, though unprovable, that the shame of poverty might be aggravated by being cut off from the traditions of rural life, idealised within Roman culture; it would take time for the migrant to become acclimatised to alternative sets of values, advertised on tombstones, that celebrated industriousness and skill – and it is impossible to deny, given the nature of the epigraphic evidence, that these attitudes may have been largely confined to freedmen. The severity of Roman poverty was aggravated by two factors directly related to the size of the metropolis. In the first place, the concentration of such a large population in a limited area made feeding them a more expensive and difficult undertaking. Although Rome had the great advantage of being a lucrative and reliable market for goods, and so could generally count on attracting merchants, grain had to be transported over longer distances, and the sheer volume of goods created logistical problems in the immediate vicinity of the city, such as along the Tiber; both of these would add to the price and increase the city’s vulnerability to disruptions in supply.63 Second, the size of the city made traditional face-to-face social interaction virtually impossible outside the elite and a small number of their dependents, especially as the rich became ever richer and more removed from the mass of the population.64 The problem was not simply that immigrants were cut off from their old social networks, but that the traditional networks of patronage within the city were ceasing to operate effectively, as the ties of dependence and civic patriotism were replaced with relationships based on the cash nexus.65 Exclusion, and social alienation, were magnified within the context of the metropolis. We might seek to locate the most serious incidence of poverty in the first century bc, not only because of the prominence of ‘popular’ concerns – and concern about the dangers represented by the poor – in the political discourse of the time, but because in this period the Roman state was 63

Generally, Garnsey (1988).

64

Mouritsen (2001) 136–7.

65

Cf. Whittaker (1993) 17.

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only just beginning to come to terms with the existence of a problem, and only just introducing measures to relieve the worst of the vulnerability of the urban population to food crisis. In considering how far pressure ‘from below’ may have influenced Roman politics and won concessions from the elite, Morstein-Marx tends to downplay the significance of improvements to the food supply as relating only to the most basic concern of existence.66 It is certainly true that popular pressure yielded no significant political reform or ‘democratisation’, but the practical importance of the corn dole for a major part of the city population should not be underestimated, nor the ideological significance of the concession that all Roman citizens should have the right to demand a share of the spoils of empire. The problem, as was recognised by the political economists, was that the measures relieved the worst effects of poverty without doing anything to reduce the number of poor; indeed, they undoubtedly served as an inducement to prospective migrants, perpetuating the problem. The only significant reform under the early principate was the creation, through Augustus’ reduction of the number of recipients of the corn dole, of a further social divide within the plebs, between the entitled and the excluded – who might, however, still hope to gain access to the lists of the annona in time. Perhaps because other reforms to the organisation of the food supply, and the advent of peace across the empire, proved effective in reducing the vulnerability of the city as a whole, this reform does not seem to have created any significant new social problems; it simply confirmed all Romans as either actual or prospective beneficiaries of the emperor’s generosity, rather than as active citizens.67 As in previous centuries, there was no specific concern expressed for the needs of the poor, as opposed to those of the people; late Republican political discourse appears to have successfully pathologised poverty, and persuaded the audience at the contiones – some, if not many, of whom would probably be classified as poor according to the criteria developed here – to identify with the values of their rulers and to regard ‘the poor’ as a threat to their own well-being. It is a remarkably similar discourse to that found in nineteenth-century debates on charity and the Poor Laws – except that those writers were able to draw on the traditional account of the violent and rebellious Roman poor to reinforce their arguments.68 66 68

67 Yavetz (1969). Morstein-Marx (2004) 286. E.g. Smith (1976) 5.3.62; Hume (1882) 153, 177; Winch (1996).

chap t e r 3

Stratification, deprivation and quality of life Walter Scheidel

m easuring ‘povert y’: t wo approaches Who is poor? There is a propensity to assimilate poverty to destitution. Other perspectives are possible. I would suggest that poverty assumes greater historical importance when the term is applied very loosely, in the sense of asking if societies as a whole were ‘impoverished’, and how this affected their development. There seem to me to be two ways of exploring this issue. One is by looking at the overall asset and income distribution in a society as a whole, in order to determine to what extent the concentration of resources at the top led to deprivation and impoverishment (however defined) of the general population. Alternatively, we may focus on the quality of life or human development as an indicator of overall well-being. This takes account of non-economic variables that are known to influence well-being, and in the absence of representative statistical data, such general factors (which include disparate features such as health, literacy, gender roles and legal rights) tend to be easier to study than a more narrowly defined phenomenon such as ‘poverty’. It also enables us to employ cross-cultural comparison both within the ancient world and between ancient and more recent societies, and to relate our research to the flourishing field of modern development studies. Both approaches ought to enhance the relevance of our findings to other disciplines. stratif ication and inequalit y What do we know about the distribution of resources within the Roman empire in general? If the conventional imperial nomenclature is anything to go by, a small elite lorded it over a vast and formally undifferentiated plebeian populace. Imperial legislation bestowed special prominence on the three orders (ordines) of senators, knights and municipal decurions, and subsequently distinguished between honestiores, comprised of the three 40

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orders plus army veterans, and humiliores, pretty much everybody else (or at least all other Roman citizens). Modern accounts of Roman social structure invariably employ these overlapping legal categories as their principal structuring principle. Geza Alf¨oldy’s ‘St¨ande-Schichten’ (orders-strata) pyramid of Roman imperial society is merely the most elaborate example.1 Recent critiques have done little to change the terms of the debate.2 Any model derived from either the ordo system or the honestiores/humiliores dichotomy is necessarily binary in nature, separating an officially recognised elite from the commoner population while restricting further fine-tuning mostly to the elite segment of society.3 Top-imposed binary ordering of society was not unique to the Roman empire. Perhaps the closest parallel is the distinction between elite and masses – khassa wa’umma, the ‘special’ and the ‘general’ – in early Islamic societies, brought into particularly sharp focus by the Ottoman divide between askeri (literally ‘warriors’, de facto the state in the sense of the political class under the direct control of the Sultan) and re’ayya (literally ‘sheep’, i.e. the common people).4 By contrast, Rome’s counterpart – the Han empire in China – produced a much more elaborate ordering system with a total of twenty ranks (up from seventeen or eighteen under the Qin), the lowest eight of which could be bestowed on any commoner apart from slaves, thereby extending formal stratification down to the village level. These ranks entailed exemptions from labour service and taxes and in some cases conferment of land or office. On special occasions, such as a change of emperor, commoner ranks could be summarily raised by a notch or two, with the result that rank came to be positively correlated with age. The top twelve ranks, in turn, created a currency of honour and privilege to spur on the members of the official class. Only the top rank was hereditary.5 What concerns us here is to what extent such social rankings reflected economic inequality. In the case of imperial Rome, it seems clear that on average, members of the three orders were wealthier than others, although the exclusion of rich freedmen shows that material prosperity was merely a necessary but not a sufficient condition for formal preferment. The total number of honestiores was relatively small: the three ordines consisted of at least 350,000 but probably not more than 500,000 individuals (including family members), and there cannot have been many more than 1 2 3 4

Alf¨oldy (1984) 125. Christ (1980) 213–21; Vittinghoff (1980); Rilinger (1985); Abramenko (1993) 78–81; Winterling (2001) 99–106. Alf¨oldy (1986) 78–81 re-emphasizes the dichotomous character of such reconstructions. 5 Loewe (1986) 485–6; Nishijima (1986) 552–3. Black (1999) 27–8.

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100,000 veterans. Together, these groups accounted for approximately 1 per cent of the population of the empire.6 In the eyes of the government, the other 99 per cent of the population may have been ‘humble’, but they can hardly all have been of modest means. More than anything else, the inclusion of veterans among the honestiores leaves no doubt that this group cannot have constituted a homogeneous economic class. Needless to say, the late Roman separation of potentiores from tenuiores that banished lesser decurions and veterans from the ranks of the formal elite was even less suitable as a meaningful marker of economic graduations. This partial mismatch between rank and class may be well known in principle but nevertheless remains worth emphasising. Alf¨oldy finds that since his orders-strata pyramid lacks a ‘genuine middle class’ (which remains undefined, especially the criterion for judging ‘genuineness’), Roman imperial society contained only ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ strata (‘Schichten’). He goes on to stress that this divide did not necessarily represent a strict economic dichotomy, only that real-life differences between affluent and poor plebeians were not captured by formal status categories.7 Andrik Abramenko’s recent attempt to identify seviri and augustales as a ‘municipal middle class’ does little to solve this problem.8 These collegia simply formed a supplementary quasi-ordo designed to accommodate and harness the energies of wealthy individuals who were unable to join the local ordo decurionum, either because of their servile origins or due to a surfeit of qualified freeborn candidates.9 In this sense, they represent a (lateral rather than vertical ‘downward’) extension of the third order, and not a ‘middling’ group in any meaningful sense of the term.10 Modern scholars have repeatedly identified the imperial ordines as ‘political classes’ defined by their civic function.11 In Runciman’s terminology, 6

7 10

11

The existence of some 2,000 cities in the empire implies the presence of at least 90,000 councillors (cf. Jongman (1988) 193 for Italy; Scheidel (forthcoming a) for the number of cities in the empire) or 315,000 with their families. The actual total may well have been significantly higher. Knights are partly included in that count, while senatorial families accounted for only about 2,000 honestiores. An army of 350,000–400,000 soldiers who enlisted around age 20 and served for 20–25 years yields about 100,000–120,000 living veterans (cf. Scheidel (forthcoming b)). The total population before the Antonine plague has been put at 60 million (Frier (2000) 814). The margin of error is considerable: Zelener (2003) reckons with a drop from 80 to 60 million after the Antonine plague. 8 Abramenko (1993). 9 Abramenko (1993) 58–82. Alf¨oldy (1986) 52–3, 55. Free-born augustales are attested in northern Italy but not in the south. Abramenko (1993) 62–76 seeks to explain this difference with reference to a broader base of wealthy free-born citizens in the north. E.g. Vittinghoff (1980) 42 (‘political classes’); Harris (1988) 601. Alf¨oldy (1986) 73 objects to the use of the term ‘class’ but likewise thinks that the imposition of the three orders marked out those who occupied or were able to occupy leadership positions in the imperial or municipal administration (76). Cf. Harris (1988) for a useful discussion of the applicability of the concept of ‘class’ in Roman

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they are ‘systacts’, or ‘groups or categories of persons sharing a common endowment (or lack) of power by virtue of their roles’.12 ‘Rulers’ and ‘ruled’ may well be an adequate alternative rendering of ordines and plebs.13 Peter Garnsey himself, on the final page of Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire, stresses that honestiores and humiliores were not understood as homogeneous groups, and that this apparent dichotomy was merely a theoretical construct largely confined to the restricted sphere of reference concerned with the administration of criminal law in the Roman provinces.14 In a sense, honestior was perhaps not so much a legal as a functional category that lumped together the (free-born) agents of the imperial centre.15 As noted earlier, these categories of legal and functional inequality cannot be co-extensive with any particular social strata or economic classes.16 Karl Christ warns against taking dichotomous models as representative of socio-economic reality and stresses the existence of a middle stratum.17 More forcefully, Vittinghoff considers it ‘absurd’ to classify all humiliores as ‘lower classes’ and to deny the presence of some economic (albeit not political) equivalent of more recent ‘middle classes’ in the Roman empire.18 So why do we need to worry about any of this? The reason is that regardless of all these protestations, current textbook wisdom (both Anglophone and German) tends to paint a rather different picture. Thus, the leading survey of the economy, society and culture of the Roman empire asserts unequivocally that while a sizeable heterogeneous group of men of free birth can be distinguished from both the elite orders and the humble masses . . . there was no ‘middle class’ in the sense of an intermediate group with independent economic resources or social standing.19

One wonders how this ‘sizeable heterogeneous group’ could possibly have been distinct from the ‘humble masses’ if not by virtue of some ‘independent economic resources’.20 Cruder versions of this binary view of Roman

12 14 15 17 19

20

history. Occasional informal usage of the term ordo (with reference to non-elite groups: e.g. Harris (1988) 601; K¨uhnert (1990) 144) does not imply an extension of formal structuring into the commoner population. 13 Alf¨ Runciman (1989) 20–24. oldy (1986) 81. Garnsey (1970) 280. Cf. Rilinger (1988) for further downgrading of the actual importance of these binary categories. 16 E.g. Vittinghoff (1980) 33; Alf¨ Vittinghoff (1980) 48–9. oldy (1986) 76. 18 Vittinghoff (1980) 49. Christ (1980) 216–17, 220. Garnsey and Saller (1987) 116. The only example of this ‘sizeable heterogeneous group’ given by the authors are the apparitores, whose role as mere ‘appendages to the ruling aristocrats’ is however taken to confirm the notion of an ‘essential dichotomy’ between the elite and the humble (ibid.). Garnsey and Saller (1987) 43 commence their sketch of a ‘simple model’ of the Roman economy with the statement that ‘the mass of the population lived at or near subsistence level’. Although

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imperial society are also available, as for instance in Wim Jongman’s contention that since people lived so close to bare subsistence, an estimate of what was needed just to survive provides a good approximation of the actual consumption patterns of the mass of the population.21

According to Peter Brunt, there is no evidence for a middle class in the city of Rome, ‘intervening between [senators and equites] and the poor, except for some rich freedmen’.22 Jerry Toner concurs: ‘There was no middle ground . . . The reality was nearer 99% poor, 0.4% military, 0.6% rich.’23 German scholarship has now adopted the same perspective. In the section on living standards in the latest recent survey of the Roman imperial economy, middling individuals are lucky to score a measly paragraph out of thirteen pages on the ‘fortunate rich’ and the ‘countless poor’.24 Yet they fare even worse in another recent textbook according to which everybody located beneath the three ordines ‘suffered from poverty, want, deprivation and the compulsion to eke out a meager living through physical labour’.25 Taken at face value, such bleak assessments leave little room for any substantial elements of the population which were financially secure yet independent of elite households, not wealthy enough to embrace a leisured lifestyle yet not destitute or at any significant risk of serious privations. I suspect that no matter how often the formal ordering of imperial society into a tiny elite and a vast humble mass is explained as a purely legal construct, it nevertheless continues to seep into our evaluations of lived realities and colours our perception of economic conditions. Had the Roman authorities been less cavalier in their apportioning of rank and privilege and joined their Han counterparts in adopting a farther-reaching ranking system, we might be less prone to binary tunnel vision. More than thirty years ago, Willy Pleket already pointed out that the image of the imperial plebs as a ‘gray uniform mass’ had come into being primarily as a mere foil for the ‘honorable’ people.26 William Harris envisions an economic structuring of the Roman population into three ‘classes’ – the well-to-do who relied on the work of others; households that owned means of production but also engaged in work;

21 22 24 25

this model is merely meant to provide a basis for more specific exploration, their analysis of actual socio-economic stratification never advances beyond this sweeping claim. Jongman (2000) 271. Compare Hopkins (2002) 198 for a more nuanced position. Jongman (forthcoming) offers a much more upbeat assessment of Roman living standards. 23 Toner (2002) 50–51. Brunt (1987) 383. Drexhage, Konen and Ruffing (2002) 163–76, at 172. 26 Pleket (1971) 237. Kloft (1992) 203.

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and hired and slave labourers.27 Unfortunately for modern observers, the apparent lack of non-economic indicators of membership in this ‘middle class’ tends to obscure its size and significance. For instance, epigraphic records of municipal cash or food handouts dispensed by benefactors or their foundations usually distinguish merely between decurions, civic associations such as seviri and augustales, and an otherwise amorphous plebs or populus.28 An inscription from Histria in the Danube delta that refers to gifts for certain groups of the plebs such as carpenters and small businessmen remains unusual.29 However, more detailed evidence from urban environments – were it available – might contribute little: thanks to the predominantly agrarian character of Roman imperial society, it is the allocation of resources among the rural population that matters more than anything else. Luuk de Ligt, in a rare attempt to explore peasant stratification in the Roman empire, not only gathers a handful of references to well-to-do farmers but more importantly stresses the value of evidence for housing as an indicator of the distribution of wealth.30 What may be the best preserved relevant remains, Tchalenko’s Syrian villages, show a continuum from ‘the comfortable residence, through villas of steadily increasing simplicity and small farms, to humble shanties’,31 rather than a stark polarity of lavish versus ramshackle. De Ligt notes that the distribution of garden land in the Fayum village of Karanis likewise shows a smooth graduation from small to large owners.32 The presence of goldsmiths in Roman Egyptian villages also suggests some level of local demand for luxury goods, and as we will see below, potential customers appear to have been in ample supply.33 More generally, overly dichotomised images of Roman imperial society would be hard to reconcile not only with evidence from other ancient Mediterranean civilisations, most notably the Greek poleis, but also with what we know about the Republican phase of the Roman state. Archaic and classical Greece may serve as a limiting case for the spectrum of the plausible with regard to the potential for equitable resource allocation in ancient societies, furnishing us as it does with an increasingly well-documented case of a large socially and economically ‘middling’ population that had come to 27 28 29 31 33

Harris (1988) 604–5. At 603–4, Harris corrects the misapprehension of Alf¨oldy (1986) 53 who assumes that any class system must be binary in order to qualify as a class system. Duncan-Jones (1982) 263–73, for Roman Italy; see also Mrozek (1990). 30 De Ligt (1990) 49–55. Pleket (1971) 238. 32 De Ligt (1990) 50. De Ligt (1990) 51 (a translation of Tchalenko (1953) 358). De Ligt (1990) 54, and see below, pp. 52–4, on the distribution of landed property in the Hermopolite nome. The extent of rural demand for urban goods remains unclear, but this does not concern us here.

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dominate the political discourse.34 The best evidence comes from classical Athens. Robin Osborne estimates that 7.5 per cent of the population held about 30 per cent of the land, while Lin Foxhall independently argues that some 9 per cent of households owned 35–40 per cent of the land (and leased another 10 per cent). According to their schematic calculations, 20 to 30 per cent of the population may not have owned any land while 35 to 45 per cent – the middling (‘hoplite’) citizens – controlled about half.35 While both take this as a strong sign of material inequality, Ian Morris observes that the Gini coefficient of .38–.39 implied by their estimates is in fact remarkably low by historical standards. The apparent lack of very large estates in Attica is fully consistent with this reading.36 Even though the importance of the non-agrarian sector in classical Athens suggests that the pattern of landholding probably obscures higher disparities in overall income distribution,37 the existence of a sizeable hoplite ‘middle class’ is hardly in doubt. Even allowing for household life cycle fluctuations in labour power and consumption,38 there is no good reason to believe that most of these families regularly faced recurrent hunger or other significant resource deprivations. The fact that the oligarchs of 411 bc could draw on 5,000 citizens with enough resources to equip themselves indicates the existence of a substantial ‘middle class’ (Thuc. 8.97). At the apex of their prosperity at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians may have been able to muster no fewer than 22,000 adult male citizens of hoplite status.39 The question remains of how typical Athens was in this regard. In Robin Osborne’s words, ‘was Athens odd?’40 On the one hand, large-scale land allocations might produce even more egalitarian outcomes, as in Greek 34

35 36

37 38 39

See now esp. Morris (1996) and (2000) 109–54. Although in Athenian parlance, the mesoi or metrioi were not meant to form a ‘ “middle class” in an economic or occupational sense’ ( (2000) 115), since they comprised the rich who subscribed (or at least in their public displays and utterances professed to subscribe) to a ‘middling ideology’, this observation does not imply that financially independent freeholders did not in fact form an economically middling group as well. For a detailed study of this group in Athens and Sparta, see Spahn (1977). Osborne (1992) 23–4; Foxhall (1992) 157–8. Morris (1994) 362 n. 53; (2000) 141–2. (The Gini coefficient is a measure of inequality where 0 denotes perfect equality – i.e. everybody enjoys the same income or wealth – and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality – i.e. one person earns or owns everything and the others nothing at all.) Foxhall (2002) 218 fails to acknowledge this crucial point when she worries about ‘the paradox of substantial inequalities in landholding juxtaposed to the notion of political equality in poleis where landholding and citizenship were linked in several ways’. E.g. Cohen (1992); Jew (1999). Gallant (1991) ch. 4. Readers should be warned that several of his calculations are mathematically incorrect or otherwise flawed. 40 Osborne (1992) 24. Hansen (1988) 24–5.

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settlements overseas, and (possibly though not certainly) in (early?) Sparta.41 On the other hand, oligarchic r´egimes may have exacerbated inequality.42 In any event, institutional arrangements (especially in the political and legal spheres) were clearly critical to specific outcomes. Morris points out that any weakening of the ‘middling’ ideology would facilitate the concentration of land in the hands of the few.43 While this may seem to limit the applicability of the Athenian model to other ancient societies, it deserves attention that the Greek world in general appears to have benefited from widespread sustained and significant improvements in living standards between 800 and 300 bc that are incompatible with extreme imbalances in resource allocation.44 According to Morris, conventional house size is one of the most powerful indicators: by the end of this period, homes were on average five times as large as at its beginning. For all we can tell, this expansion was matched by home prices and the value of household goods.45 During the same period, spending on cult and defence increased much more rapidly. Less reliable proxy variables include longevity (where skeletal data may be taken to indicate an increase of several years in mean life expectancy at birth), stature (with a possible increase in mean body height), and nutritional status.46 In keeping with the principles of neo-institutional and development economics, Morris traces these improvements to the gradual and unintentional development of institutions that gave Greek citizens greater freedoms, specified property rights more clearly, and encouraged investment in human capital. Relevant factors include the poleis’ increasing freedom from predatory state rulers, the development of chattel slavery, citizen egalitarianism, the ‘invisible economy’ of banking, trade and commerce, and the relationship between war and economic growth. This model drives another nail into the coffin of ‘Mediterraneanism’, defined as the notion that the Mediterranean had always been characterised by large-scale patronage, rural dependency and extreme inequality in landownership. Periods in which economic growth temporarily outpaced demographic growth, thereby facilitating intensive growth, are repeatedly attested across pre-modern history. In a new survey, Jack Goldstone discusses western Europe in the High Middle Ages, the ‘Golden Age’ in 41 42 44 45 46

For Sparta, see Hodkinson (2000). 43 Morris (2000) 144. Cf. Hanson (1999) 207–9 for the situation in Boeotia. I draw on recent work by my colleague Ian Morris: see Morris (2004), (2005). Morris (2005). Morris (2004) who stresses that much of this evidence may be of low quality or unrepresentative; cf. furthermore Scheidel (2003b) 35–6.

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Holland, eighteenth-century England and Qing China as pertinent examples.47 In this regard, the Greek experience, albeit unusual, was by no means unique or incredible. Unfortunately, Roman historians have yet to undertake similarly ambitious surveys of proxy variables of long-term economic growth and development. In theory, the imperial success of the Roman state in the second half of the Republican period might well have engendered comparable rates of per capita growth, at least in its core regions. At the same time, differences in institutional arrangements (such as much more firmly entrenched elitism and the absence of a credible ‘middling ideology’) may have militated against significant improvements in sub-elite living standards and may have favoured increasing inequality in resource distribution. Nonetheless, traces of widespread changes are common in the material record: the ‘metallisation’ of Roman imperial sites is just one example.48 However, much more synthetic and diachronic investigation will be necessary to establish the nature and scale of change over time.49 But what if the Greeks were ‘odd’ after all? It does not take the romantic exuberance of a Victor Hanson to make a plausible case for their atypicality.50 If constraints on inequality are ultimately a function of the configuration of civic and moral institutions, the Greek experience need not be of any particular relevance to the more overtly elitist and stratified world of the Romans. Even so, such institutional differences may be a matter of degree rather than substance. For much of the Republican period, Roman citizen society was characterised by mass mobilisation of the adult male population for war and – although to a dramatically lesser extent – for the sake of periodic participation in the political process.51 For both purposes, the population was ordered in multiple (and arguably increasingly numerous) formal categories that were based on timocratic principles. In Dominic Rathbone’s apt characterisation, the evidence for census rankings in the Republican period is a ‘morass’.52 I can do no better than 47 48

49

50 51 52

Goldstone (2002). See also E. Jones (2000) for similar periods of ‘growth recurring’ (such as Song China). Harris (1993), (forthcoming). See De Ligt (1990) 48–9 for the spread of iron tools even at rural sites. To what extent dietary changes are indicative of net changes in living standards is an open question: see e.g. King (2001). Both the earlier Greek and the late medieval records would provide suitable standards for comparison to gauge the relative significance of any such developments: see above, and Dyer (1998). Cf. Scheidel (2004) for a counterpoint to Morris’ argument. See Hanson (1999) and in more extreme form in Hanson and Heath (1998) ch. 2. War: Hopkins (1978) 25–37. Politics: Mouritsen (2001) (for what I consider an appropriately oligarchic model of Roman politics). Rathbone (1993a) 125.

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follow his fundamental paper on this topic in assuming, for the last century of the Republic, thresholds of HS100,000 for the first class, HS75,000 for the second, HS50,000 for the third, HS20,000 for the fourth, and as little as HS375 for the fifth. The last detail is potentially of considerable importance for our understanding of Roman notions of ‘poverty’ – if true, one could own as little as HS375 (less than the annual stipend of an infantryman) and still count as an assiduus, and hence hardly as a card-carrying pauper. It is hard to be sure that this threshold was really this low – more than four times lower in real terms than prior to the re-tariffing of the as around 140 bc – but this is not what concerns me here. For my purposes, the lower limit for the fourth class is much more interesting. Reckoning with a mean grain price of HS3 to 3.5 per modius in that period,53 this property requirement is equivalent to about 5,700 to 6,700 modii, or 38 to 45 tons, of grain. Assuming a 5 to 6 per cent annual rate of return on farmland, this translates to an annual income of between 1,900 and 2,700 kg of grain. In a household of four, this yields 475 to 675 kg per person per year. This level of income compares well with the annual infantry stipend of HS456 or approximately 870 to 1,010 kg of grain for an adult male. By a variety of calculations, Peter Temin puts the average per capita GDP of the Roman empire at the equivalent of about 600 kg of grain, a finding which happens to be consistent with data from Roman Egypt.54 The implied average of 2,400 kg for a family of four falls squarely within the range of between 1,900 and 2,700 kg for the poorest fourth-class household. In other words, the lower census limit for the fourth class appears to have approximated the income threshold for a reasonably secure commoner household. While significantly less might have exposed it to periodic deprivation, significantly more would have lifted it permanently from the risk zone of temporary scarcity, except perhaps under the most unusual circumstances. I conclude that most members of the fourth class, with assets ranging from this lower limit to two and a half times as much, would have been reasonably well cushioned against chronic want. The same is necessarily even more true of the third class. At the same time, these households were hardly affluent enough to adopt a leisured lifestyle. In this sense, they would have constituted a middling group perhaps not very different from the freeholder hoplite class in classical Athens. However, whereas we may be able very roughly to estimate the relative size of that last group, it is much more difficult to get an idea of the relative size of the Roman property classes. As so often, crude yet controlled (i.e. parametric) speculation is the only solution. I must stress at the outset that 53

E.g. Meijer (1993) 156–8.

54

Temin (forthcoming).

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I do not claim that any of the following numbers represent reality. All I wish to suggest is that while the margins of error are very large they are not infinite, and that the formal structuring of the Roman citizenry must have followed some predictable pattern, such as the basic ‘fact’ that the less affluent outnumbered the rich. If there were hundreds of senators, equestrians must have run to several thousands. Despite the aristocratic focus of the Roman literary tradition, it is surprisingly hard to be more precise. A conventional total of 20,000 knights for the late Republic seems to me to be without merit, derived as it is from Plutarch’s extravagant claim that when Cicero was prosecuted by Clodius, 20,000 young men – supposedly all knights – turned out in his support.55 Appian’s claim (B Civ. 4.5) that 2,000 knights perished in the triumviral proscriptions need not be true either, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ statement (6.13.4) that up to 5,000 young knights attended the annual parade under Augustus is equally unprovable. All three contexts are clearly conducive to exaggeration. Then again, Strabo’s reference to the presence of 500 knights in both Gades and Patavium might give us pause (3.5.3, 5.1.7). If we very conservatively reckon with 10,000 knights in the late Republic, the ratio of voting centuries for equestrians and members of the first class suggests the existence of at least 40,000 citizens of the latter category, although their centuries may well have been larger. But if we stick, again very conservatively, to 40,000 first-class citizens and assume schematically that each of the remaining classes was one and a half times as large as the next-higher one, we get 60,000 members of the second class, 90,000 of the third, 135,000 of the fourth, 200,000 of the fifth, and 615,000 almost or completely propertyless citizens. This model produces 225,000 third- and fourth-class households, out of a total of about 1.15 million households with 4 million citizens.56 Under these circumstances, expropriation and pauperisation would have been extremely widespread, improbably though perhaps not impossibly so: as I summarise below, Roger Bagnall finds that as many as two-thirds of the residents of the Hermopolite nome in late Roman Egypt could in theory have been landless (though probably were not). Even so, my model is best seen as a limiting case that seems likely to understate the share of property holders in the general population. More conservative assumptions that would reduce the number of proletarians (to, say, not more than one-half or one-third of the citizenry) 55 56

Plut. Cic. 31.1, accepted at face value by Alf¨oldy (1984) 80. Did not a single knight miss the occasion? Could the forum hold this many people (cf. Mouritsen (2001) 21)? For the total number of citizens, see Brunt (1987) chs. 5–9.

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would primarily boost membership of the fifth class, although such changes would also swell the higher ranks.57 Conversely, I find it hard to imagine how in any reasonable scenario the number of middling property-owners could be (even) smaller than the 20 per cent share posited in my crude minimalist model.58 It is still possible to argue that these calculations presuppose what they set out to demonstrate, i.e. that there was some kind of pyramidal continuum between top and bottom rather than (say) an hour glass-shaped wealth distribution. In my defence, I should point out that what little empirical evidence we have is consistent with my model. For instance, we need to allow for at least 20,000 decurions in early imperial Italy, many though by not necessarily all of them possessed of at least HS100,000.59 As a consequence, truly tiny membership in the first three classes would hardly have been possible. In the alimentary land register of Ligures Baebiani in southern Italy, most estates fall in the range from HS25,000 to HS100,000, i.e. the census brackets for the second, third and fourth classes. Within this group, properties valued at HS25,000 to HS50,000 stand out, accounting for as many estates as in the range from HS50,000 to HS100,000.60 While the alimentary inscription of Veleia in northern Italy omits estates worth less than HS50,000, the lowest recorded range (from HS50,000 to HS75,000) accounts for more estates than any other comparable bracket.61 Spread out over more than 400 Italian cities and their territories, my 225,000 third- and fourth-class households are sufficient to provide each of these communities with several hundred solidly ‘middle class’ families, even if we assign a five digit number of them to the capital itself – surely enough to shore up order and compliance with state demands, and to check paupers and slaves. Not necessarily formally beholden to landed elites as ‘Mediterraneanist’ clients, they would have provided the backbone sorely lacking from a hypothetical more extremely dichotomous society that 57 58

59 61

Rosenstein (2002) convincingly refutes Brunt’s claim that proletarians accounted for more than half of all iuniores in 214 bc. I note in passing that a similar set of assumptions – the presence of 20,000 knights, 100,000 citizens of the first class, and lower classes twice as large as the next-higher one – would yield 200,000 members of the second class, 400,000 of the third, 800,000 of the fourth, 1,600,000 of the fifth, and 1,900,000 proletarians, for a total of 5 million adult male citizens as proposed by Lo Cascio (e.g. (1994)). The larger the elite was, the larger the base population must have been in order to preserve a pyramidal pattern of stratification. The overall size of the Roman citizen population is therefore a crucial issue. For the same problem, see below, pp. 52–4, on Egypt. 60 CIL 11.1455; Duncan-Jones (1976) 26 = (1990) 131. Duncan-Jones (1982) 304. CIL 11.1147; Duncan-Jones (1976) 27 = (1990) 132.

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pitted a few wealthy toffs with their entourage of slaves and freedmen against countless marginalised subsistence peasants and day-labourers. Collectively, they would also provide a mass market for moderately priced manufactured goods, cash crops such as wine, and even meat. And if these people existed in the late Republic, they cannot simply have vanished under the early monarchy, even if imperial sources show (even) less interest in sub-elite groups. Nor were people necessarily ignorant of the census divisions of a bygone age: after all, as far away as Egypt, citizens still declared their property status in a way that suggests some awareness of the late Republican classification scheme.62 Egypt is also the only part of the empire where surviving land registers and similar documents afford us a unique opportunity to trace patterns of inequality in asset distribution in some detail. In a pioneering study, Alan Bowman computed a Gini coefficient of .815 for land owned by citizens of Antinoopolis and the residents of one of the four quarters of the city of Hermopolis in most of the Hermopolite nome in the mid-fourth century ad.63 However, the omission of rural landowners from the underlying lists might somehow slant the picture. For this reason, village registers are likely to be more representative. Bowman calculated a Gini coefficient of .737 for a list of private landowners in the Fayum village of Philadelphia in ad 216, a value which Roger Bagnall subsequently corrected to .532 (or .516 for complete datasets).64 However, this register understates inequality by including some urban owners without providing information about their holdings in other villages. A list of crown tenants and cleruchs in the village of Kerkeosiris in the late Ptolemaic period (116/15 bc) produces a low Gini coefficient of .374.65 This pattern may be the result of official land allotments and tenancy arrangements that ensured more equitable access to farmland. (In principle, it would be possible to envision a Gini coefficient of close to zero in the immediate aftermath of a land distribution to military settlers.) In a later study, Bagnall used tax assessments to establish groupspecific Gini coefficients for the village of Karanis in the Fayum in ad 308/9. The respective ratios are .638 for metropolitan landowners, broadly in the same range as for Hermopolis, and .431 for villagers, similar to Kerkeosiris. With all due caution, he suggests that landholdings among Egyptian villagers ‘tended to have only a moderate degree of inequality’, and this held true over time.66 A later land register from Aphrodito in the Antaiopolite nome (c. ad 525/6) yields a Gini coefficient of .623. Given a 62 65

Rathbone (1993a) 144. Bowman (1985) 151.

63 66

Bowman (1985) 150. Bagnall (1992) 134–6.

64

Bowman (1985) 151; Bagnall (1992) 131.

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predominance of urban owners, this result is similar to the corresponding ratio for Karanis.67 Evidence of landownership from other provinces compares poorly with the Egyptian record. While Richard Duncan-Jones was able to calculate Gini coefficients for a variety of samples, ranging from .394 at Volcei in Italy to .679 at Magnesia in Asia Minor, most of the datasets are vitiated by serious inadequacies. The most complete list, the alimentary register of Ligures Baebiani, gives a low Gini of .435.68 As Bagnall acknowledges, all the Egyptian and other samples share a fundamental problem: they omit landless residents, many of whom were likely to be poorer than landowners. Hence, Gini coefficients of the asset or income distribution of the entire population would necessarily be higher than those derived from the distribution of landholdings.69 The margin of error primarily depends on the share of the landless in the total number of residents. In order to account for their presence, Bagnall constructs a model for the Hermopolite nome that indicates an overall Gini of .56 for all landowners (urban and rural, locals and outsiders combined). In this scenario, 59 per cent of villagers’ holdings and 88 per cent of those owned by urban residents were surplus to their personal subsistence requirements. Thus, on the extreme assumption that the entire agricultural surplus was used to support landless labourers, as many as 65 per cent of all inhabitants of the nome could in theory have been landless.70 For our purposes, two of the points that emerge from Bagnall’s model nome matter most. Property was strongly concentrated among the top 10 per cent of all landowners. The model envisions 952 local urban landowners, which translates to an elite segment of about 100 individuals, equivalent to a municipal ordo decurionum in the West. In other words, there were few if any large landowners outside a council-sized group. At first glance, this might be taken to support a dichotomous vision of Roman imperial society. However, the model also generates 7,400 rural landowners, 59 per cent of whom owned enough land to enjoy a net surplus. Bagnall refers to them as ‘a broad band of middle-range men capable of bearing public obligations’.71 It is hard to imagine that these people accounted for less than 20 to 67 68

69 70

Bagnall (1992) 136–7. Duncan-Jones (1976) 15–33, (1990) 129–42. Duncan-Jones initially argued that the differences between these samples largely disappeared when comparisons of inequality were confined to the same sectors of wealth (i.e. value brackets: (1976) 21–2; but cf. Bowman (1985) 150 n. 75), but was rather non-committal later on ( (1990) 138–40). See Bagnall (1992) 139–43 for a discussion of comparative evidence. 71 Bagnall (1992) 142. Bagnall (1992) 138–9.

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25 per cent of the entire nome population (reckoning with 8,600 landowners compared to between 8,600 to 16,000 landless residents), and I see nothing that would keep us from identifying this group as a ‘middle class’ at least in purely economic terms. Thus, the concentration of a large percentage of all assets in the top 3 to 5 per cent of the population (assuming that the top 10 per cent of landowners represented 3 to 5 per cent of the total population) is in no way incompatible with the existence of a substantial middling group of owner-producers. Moreover, it merits attention that the Hermopolite model echoes my earlier guesstimate that at least 20 per cent of Italian households belonged to the third and fourth census classes. I conclude that there is sufficient evidence in support of the notion of an economic continuum from a narrow elite to a steadily broadening middling group as we move down the resource ladder. Sources ranging from Republican Italy to imperial Egypt and Syria all point in the same direction. It is perfectly possible to reconcile the dominance of a disproportionately affluent elite with the presence of a substantial ‘middle’. The relative size of the ‘poor’ population, to return to our topic here, is of course much more difficult to pin down. Some of the smallest landowners might fall into that category (although they may have worked as tenants), as well as some (many? most?) of the landless. Bagnall’s model suggests that, in principle, the majority of the nome population could have lived at a very low level of subsistence. Whether this really happened is, of course, what we would need to establish rather than merely assume. The key question is among how many consumers the available surplus was distributed. This takes us to the issue of ancient population size: the more people, the more poverty.72 In the final analysis, the vexing conundrum of Roman-period population numbers is bound to overshadow the debate over overall living standards. Whether ancient historians are particularly well equipped to tackle this problem is of course a painful question.73 povert y or deprivation? measuring the qualit y of life This brings me to my final question. How are ancient historians supposed to measure living standards anyway? Per capita GDP would be a measure of dubious value, and not just because it is unknown.74 Temin’s annual 72

73

Or maybe not (always)? Morris (2004) argues for parallel demographic and (intensive) economic growth in archaic and classical Greece. Even if this is true, one wonders if the provinces of the mature Roman empire experienced comparable dynamics. Eventually, Malthusian forces had to prevail: Scheidel (2004), (forthcoming a). 74 On Roman economic growth, see Saller (2002). I doubt it: see Scheidel (2001a) 49–72.

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mean of about HS190 for the Roman empire, were it correct, would tell us little about actual quality of life, or even how the Roman economy performed within the constraints imposed by pre-industrial levels of productivity. Observing that urbanisation and GDP tend to be correlated in modern developing countries, Temin argues that likely levels of urbanisation in the Roman empire imply an average per capita GDP equivalent to about $2,000, comparable to that of India.75 But even if this were in fact a meaningful parallel, what would it tell us about Roman living conditions? In many ways, India is not at all like the Roman empire.76 In 2000, mean life expectancy at birth had reached 63.3 years, at least twice (or conceivably up to three times) as much as in the Roman empire. 57.2 per cent of Indian adults are classified as literate (including 45.4 per cent of adult women), several times as many as in antiquity. Total enrolment in primary, secondary and tertiary education amounts to 55 per cent, again many times more than in Rome. 31 per cent of the population of India has access to adequate sanitation facilities, and 88 per cent draw water from improved sources, compared to none in Rome. Up to half of the population has access to essential drugs, once more unlike anybody in Rome. 68 per cent of one-year-olds are immunised against TB and 50 per cent against measles, against none in Rome. Other features may have been much more similar in both societies: for instance, 23 per cent of Indians are undernourished, and 47 per cent of all children aged 0 to 5 are underweight. 26 per cent of infants are born with low birth weight. At the same time, infant mortality is 6.9 per cent, surely just a small fraction of the Roman rate. Public expenditure on education amounts to 3.2 per cent of GDP, against very close to zero in Rome. Conversely, defence absorbs 2.4 per cent of Indian GDP, significantly less than in the mature Roman empire.77 Inequality in access to resources is pronounced, perhaps – or perhaps not – in a way comparable to Roman conditions: 35 per cent of the population falls below the national poverty line. In terms of material inequality, India performs markedly worse than in other areas, such as female development.78 75 76 77

78

Temin (forthcoming). The data for India are taken from the Human Development Report 2002, http://hdr.undp.org. For Roman life expectancy, see Scheidel (2001b); for literacy, Harris (1989). If the GDP of the Roman empire was HS10–12bn (Temin (forthcoming)) and military spending totalled HS650–700m (Duncan-Jones (1994) 36), the latter’s share in the former would be between 5 and 7 per cent. India ranks higher in the gender-related development index (#105 worldwide) than in the basic human development index HDI-1 (#124). Conversely, its HDI-1 score minus its poverty ranking produces a negative score of −13.

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What is the point of this enumeration? It is obvious that we cannot judge ancient Rome by the standards of the present. Yet the comparison with India is useful because it shows how difficult it is to relate GDP to the overall quality of life. Back in 1990, dissatisfaction with this conventional measure inspired the launch of the annual Human Development Report, whose goal is to devise a series of indices that take account of a broad variety of factors that impact upon living standards, including income, demographic indicators, health, education, literacy and school enrolment, inequality in income and consumption, priorities in public spending, unemployment, energy consumption, refugee displacement, crime, gender empowerment and inequality in education, economic activity and political participation, and human and labour rights. Comparisons between modern low-income countries readily highlight the substantial scope of variation. For example, several countries today do dramatically better in terms of various quality indicators than with regard to GDP: Armenia, Tajikistan and Cuba are the leading examples. Others underperform outside their GDP rankings, most notably countries that draw income from mineral resources but are lagging in concurrent domestic development, such as Equatorial Guinea, Oman and Saudi Arabia. Seemingly related features do not fully coincide: while Zambia currently ranks as the most poverty-striken country on earth (at least by its own standards, with 86 per cent falling below the national poverty line), the most extreme income disparities are found in Latin America, above all in Honduras, where the poorest 10 per cent earn 0.6 per cent of total income and the richest 10 per cent get 42.7 per cent. Swaziland and Brazil boast the highest Gini coefficients. Nevertheless, hunger strikes most forcefully elsewhere: the highest percentages of undernourished individuals, underweight children and underweight newborns are found in Burundi (66 per cent), Ethiopia (47 per cent), and Chad (24 per cent), respectively. Adult illiteracy is worst in Niger, affecting 84.1 per cent of adults and 91.6 per cent of women. This survey could easily be extended to more developed countries, with their divergent experiences with regard to crime, inequality, gender roles and human rights. It might be an exaggeration to say that while all rich countries resemble one another, each poor society is poor in its own way. Even so, it is clear that the particular mix of conditions in each of the latter varies significantly depending on local ecological and institutional characteristics. There is no good reason to assume that the ancient Mediterranean was much more homogeneous than, say, sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America today. Bruce Frier, in a pioneering attempt to assess the quality of life in the Roman

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empire, looks at various factors only to pass an unfavourable verdict – life was short, literacy rare, and so forth, which means that the Roman state did little to improve the lot of its subjects – but fails to specify his criteria of judgement and standards of comparison.79 Just how much development would the Roman empire have had to facilitate to count as a success? Ian Morris focuses more narrowly on consumption (of material goods) by considering a whole bundle of variables that permits us to get a rough idea of the scale of change in overall consumption between 800 and 300 bc.80 On this score, Greece did remarkably well by pre-modern standards. Yet again, consumption is only part of the story. If we adopt the perspective of the human development index, other factors also come into play, from the political sphere to violence and gender discrimination. We may never be able to construct a comparative index of human development in the Graeco-Roman world. Even so, it is clear that different societies diverged significantly in specific spheres. Thus, while classical Athens would do relatively well in categories such as political participation, GDP and asset equality, Roman Italy might boast better water supply and public welfare, and fare somewhat better on gender equality. Graeco-Roman Egypt would do comparatively well on women’s rights as well as slavery (in as much as there was less of the latter). Classical Athens and Republican Italy suffered heavily from violent conflict whereas imperial Italy or Roman Egypt did not. On average, none of these systems appear to have achieved consistently higher levels of human development than the others. We may conclude that the study of human well-being and deprivation in the ancient world needs to be separated from the study of economic growth per se. This chimes well with Amartya Sen’s emphasis on human ‘capabilities’ rather than average output and consumption.81 In his view, development is not so much a matter of expanding the supply of commodities but of enhancing people’s capabilities, that is to say, their ability to make use of available resources. Attempts to measure deprivation are complicated by the fact that it cannot be measured independently but is contingent on social standards that define poverty thresholds. Adam Smith’s leather shoes are the conventional example: By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but what ever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even the lowest order, to be without. . . . Custom . . . 79 81

80 Morris (2004). See above. Frier (1997). See esp. Sen (1981); (1984) 325–45, 512–15, 521–3; (1999) 87–110.

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has rendered leather shoes a necessary in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them.82

While there may well be some kind of universal human threshold for significant physiological deprivation (in terms of sheer caloric intake), the capability to be sufficiently well nourished is not simply a function of income but depends on a variety of other factors such as health and nutritional knowledge, which are in turn important indicators of overall development and well-being. Entitlements within a family or household are likewise critical in determining well-being but not necessarily strongly correlated with total family or household income: gender and age can be more important variables. Slaves are perhaps the most extreme example, of little interest to modern development economists but relevant to ancient historians. Legally bereft of any property, they were the ultimate poor. In the near-absence of formal entitlements, their income and well-being were tightly controlled by their owners and supervisors, and could in principle (though perhaps not profitably) be fully decoupled from the level of their own inputs.83 Thus, the existence and accessibility of a labour market is an important index of capability, as are formal rights. More recently, Sen expanded his entitlement approach by turning his attention to the influence on wellbeing of political freedoms (such as opportunities to select and scrutinise the government, and freedom of expression), economic facilities (focusing on distributional issues), social opportunities (such as arrangements for education and health care), transparency guarantees (to curb corruption and to build trust, arguably an essential feature of developed societies), and protective security (from welfare to emergency relief ).84 All of these are interconnected, and affect the quality of life.85 I think it would be a worthwhile exercise to re-configure and re-view our evidence for different ancient societies to explore, in a systematic fashion, the characteristics of each of these factors and their change over time. A whole bundle of seemingly disparate but ultimately related features would need to be taken into account, from political ideologies and practices to land use, gender roles, schooling, accountability in government, food subsidies and relief measures after natural disasters. As far as I can see, ancient historians have not even begun to structure their enquiries in accordance with the basic concepts and questions of human development studies. Peter Garnsey’s Famine and Food Supply may serve as a rare exception. But given 82 84 85

83 Bradley (1994) 81–106. Smith (1776) 351–2. Sen (1999) esp. 38–40 for a summary. On trust, see Fukuyama (1995). E.g. Nussbaum and Sen (eds.) (1993).

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the sheer range of factors that help determine human deprivation and wellbeing, most of the necessary work remains yet to be done. Our ultimate goal has to be a comparative evaluation of different ‘poverties’: not just the poverty of whoever counted as poor at the time (or by our own standards),86 but also the relative poverty (and hence the wealth) of nations, which was determined by particular configurations of social, political, economic and ecological conditions that could be highly specific in terms of time and place. From this perspective, all of (Roman) history contributes to our understanding of ‘poverty’. 86

I.e. the standard approach of ancient historians so far: e.g. Prell (1997); A. Parkin (2001).

chap t e r 4

‘You do him no service’: an exploration of pagan almsgiving∗ Anneliese Parkin

Such organised material aid and services as the elite were prepared to extend to their social and economic inferiors were not directed at the poorest of Graeco-Roman society in the early imperial period. The marginal – women, slaves, foreigners, and to an extent children – were rarely included in munificentiae or euergesiae, and while the marginal are not co-extensive with the poorest, there is considerable intersection between the two groups, not least for this reason. In the Greek cities, euergetism occasionally was extended to slaves and foreign migrants, but of course when this did happen, they received by far the lowest proportions.1 The destitute were never en masse targets of aid. As Hendrik Bolkestein made clear long ago, Christian charity did not develop out of pagan munificence. The two were concerned with fundamentally different sectors of ancient society. This does not mean that no one ever gave to beggars before Christian charity swept the empire. On the contrary, it merely indicates that beneficentia was not aimed at beggars. To investigate almsgiving in the early empire, we need to get away from the discourse of euergetism and beneficentia. This point is worth stressing, because the lack of organised relief directed at the destitute in this period has led historians to make rather extreme claims about pagan almsgiving. It has been suggested, for example, that it was standard in the pagan world to feel repulsed and depressed by the sight of diseased beggars, yet not be moved to assist.2 A recent study of poverty in the early empire similarly claims that begging was ineffective in antiquity, because ‘almsgiving was not sanctioned by any prevalent form of ∗

1

This chapter draws on a chapter of my doctoral thesis, Poverty in the Early Roman Empire, completed under Peter Garnsey’s supervision in 2001. In addition to Peter, I would like to thank Margaret Atkins, Richard Finn, Cam Grey, Valerio Neri, John Patterson, Art Pomeroy, Nicholas Purcell, Dominic Rathbone, Walter Scheidel, Greg Woolf and the readers for Cambridge University Press, all of whom had input into this work at some stage of its evolution. Any errors remaining are naturally mine. 2 Pomeroy (1991) 66, cf. 63 n. 36. Whittaker (1993) 295.

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morality in the Graeco-Roman period’.3 Bolkestein’s treatment of pagan almsgiving, although much older, is considerably more useful, but its focus on the influence of oriental religion has given rise to a long tradition of scholarship which can only conceive of almsgiving in a religious context.4 This is partly a problem of terminology. For western scholars, the vocabulary and concepts of ‘alms’ and ‘charity’ are thoroughly imbued with Christian connotations. They presuppose emotions of pity and kindness, which hijack our examination of donations to the destitute. Nonetheless, the vocabulary of almsgiving and charity is used in what follows in what is intended to be a culturally neutral way, for lack of other idiomatic English words. The aim of this discussion is to steer pagan almsgiving well clear of the discourse of civic munificence and euergetism, and to explore the possibility of motivations beyond the moral or religious. It is difficult to get a clear idea of how private almsgiving functioned before the expansion of Christianity. However, the presence of living beggars in the pagan world, which is very well attested, is mute testimony that people did give. Beggars were a normal part of at least urban, and probably also rural life in the imperial period, yet it is not clear precisely who gave to them, or with what motivations. The problem is, predictably, one of sources: our elite writers are simply not interested in the dregs of their society and their survival mechanisms. The comment available is minimal, and often contradictory: the rhetoric of euergetism, for example, clashing with the precepts of Stoic philosophy, or with the studied callousness of satire. Moreover, one cannot and should not assume continuity of attitudes across the social spectra. Reactions to begging may well have differed, for example, from upper to lower classes, but this in particular is difficult to assess from our elite sources. Some insight can be gained through the use of comparative evidence, in particular the testimony of late antique Christian sources, which are – obviously – much more interested in the plight of the destitute. m otivations for almsgiving: moral considerat ions Cicero and Seneca are perhaps our most forthcoming sources on private pagan charity, and some of their comments look at first glance very 3

4

Meggitt (1998) 166. Cf. Whittaker (1993) 294, who accepts that Plaut. Trin. 339 (to give to a beggar is to do him an ill service) represents the view of the rich, ‘whose interests lay not in general poverty, which they regarded with indifference, but in marginalizing extreme poverty as a form of moral degradation’. Bolkestein (1939) 339. Note however that his discussion almost entirely concerns the Republic, and he relies heavily on dramatic texts for his evidence.

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promising for this enquiry. Cicero says that if one has money, it should be used for good deeds – beneficentia – and generosity – liberalitas – through which one may win fame and the love of the masses (amor multitudinis). However, so that money is not wasted, it must be given only to suitable (idonei), needy (indigentes, tenuiores, inopes) people, and in a measured way (Off. 1.68, 2.36–7, 2.52–5, 2.61–2, 2.69). Seneca claims to help a needy person, an egens or pauper (Clem. 2.6.2; Ben. 4.10.4–5; Ep. 120.2), and says that he expects no other return than gratitude, and that it satisfies him to do what is necessary: he calls such giving a social act, a socialis res (Ben. 3.8.3, 4.10.5, 4.11.1, 5.11.5). On closer examination, however, it quickly becomes clear that the ‘needy’ in question in both Cicero and Seneca’s thought are respectable citizens, and not the most desperate members of their society. Seneca advocates giving to a poor man of worth, who will be grateful, where a rich man may not. Cicero provides more detailed guidelines: the worthy should be virtuous and respectful, should have a special relationship with the giver, and should give a return. This is the semiotics of patronage. Indeed, Seneca makes this explicit: tossing a beggar a coin does not constitute a beneficium. Nevertheless, Seneca’s Stoic proclivities and the influence of Stoicism on Cicero make them productive sources in spite of themselves. Products of their time and status, most of their thought on giving dwells on beneficentia, on the assessment of a good risk for a return of honour. But alongside this runs a trickle of thought concerned with humanitas. Seneca, in particular, if read carefully, gives a good deal away about private almsgiving when engaged in Stoic didactics. Liberality, doing good works and mercy (liberalitas, beneficentia and clementia) feature among the Roman virtues, and are symptoms of the much-prized humanitas. Misericordia, or pity, however, is more complicated and was not always portrayed as a positive characteristic.5 The Stoics, in particular, saw in it sickness and disturbance of the soul. Their ethics dictated that the wise man was to feel no pain over the misfortunes of his neighbour, for pity brings grief. Cicero’s attitude to misericordia varies according to context: on the one hand, he knows and articulates in his philosophical discussions the Stoic line on pity, sometimes critically, sometimes less so.6 On the other hand, in rhetorical writings designed to stir 5 6

Hands (1968) 77–88; Aubrion (1989) 383–91. Cic. Tusc. 3.20–21, where Cicero puts into the mouth of his protagonist the Stoic case against pity. The gloss here is that a man who can pity another’s misfortunes can also envy him his good fortune, which Cicero considers awkward. In Tusc. 4.16, misericordia is simply listed among the Stoic aegritudines. His treatment is more sympathetic at 4.56.

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the emotions and appeal to a broader audience, misericordia appears as a praiseworthy quality (e.g. Cic. Lig. 12.37; see also 12.29, where humanitas, clementia and misericordia are linked together as desirable qualities). Thus Cicero can observe that none of the virtues is more pleasing or admirable to the people than pity. The internecine strife amongst the elite which formed a backdrop to much of Cicero’s thought perhaps made so great a degree of emotional detachment as the Stoics advocated unattractive to him when it came to political or forensic matters.7 Stoicism was criticised for recommending a pitilessness that was dangerous to the powerful (cf. Sen. Clem. 2.5.2): in Cicero’s time a lack of misericordia bore real and vicious consequences. The influence of the harsh Stoic attitude to emotion is more evident in Seneca’s writing, in which we find obedient acknowledgement that pity is the error of a weak soul, which is brought low by the sight of a stranger’s misery (Clem. 2.5.1, cf. 2.6.4). Seneca elaborates: pity comes from the sight of misery and misfortune which has happened to people who do not deserve it (Clem. 2.5.4). The wise man does not experience this weakness, but gives alms to the anonymous poor in the street and is as ready to help as someone who feels pity (cf. Cic. Tusc. 4.43–57; Acad. 2.44.135; Sen. De Ira 1.9.2). This is an important statement. Not only does Seneca by implication advocate almsgiving whilst rejecting that such acts must necessarily be the consequence of pity, but he also implies that other, less enlightened, people do give to beggars out of pity.8 So it seems that Seneca and, to a lesser extent, Cicero prize moral principles which are not necessarily in step with the charitable practices of their society.9 Indeed, the Stoics’ stern rejection of pity and other human emotions earned them criticism from other ancient thinkers. Many people, Seneca has to admit, consider pity to be a virtue (Clem. 2.4.4).10 7 8

9 10

See Atkins (2000) 514–15, for the fundamental impact of the civil wars on Cicero’s thought. Hands (1968) 85, 88 concludes from this passage that pity existed among the Romans as a natural human reaction, even if the same people passed their days watching torture and death in the arena. Cf. Veyne (1990) 30: ‘pity for the disinherited, that pity which is so natural a sentiment when felt, but which societies can endure for thousands of years without feeling, and which, in any case, they feel only when major interests allow this to happen’. Cf. Cic. Tusc. 4.56: the protagonist is made to advocate the Stoic model of giving aid without feeling pity: misericordia is not useful, for we are able to be liberal without feeling pity. Prell (1997) 268. Sorabji (2000) 389: Aristotle thought that pity was ‘often appropriate and sometimes beneficial’. The Epicureans appear to have taken a softer line than the Stoics on pity (see Diog. Laert. Vitae Philosophorum 10.118). Both the rhetorical and tragic traditions actively sought to arouse pity in the audience, and Levene (1997) 128–49 argues that early imperial historians on the whole view pity as a desirable response to misfortune, provided its objects have not authored their own fates.

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The emotion of pity in Graeco-Roman thought has been identified as being motivated not by religion, as in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but by an ancient awareness of the fickleness of fate.11 Seneca muses that rich men are frequently reduced to beggary overnight, and marvels that people can be blind to the slippery slope on which their fortunes rest (Ad Marciam de Consolatione 9.1; cf. Ov. Tr. 5.8.13–14 for the woman who once denied food to the poor, now herself found begging). It is perhaps helpful to view pity in a Graeco-Roman context as an empathic response in view of an uncertain future. This is brought out in Aristotle’s definition of pity, in which pity is the pain aroused by the sight of misfortunes happening to people who do not deserve them. These are the kind of misfortunes that might happen to the viewer, or to his friends, and that seem close (Rh. 2.8). This conceptualisation is – deliberately – very close to Aristotle’s definition of fear, effectively an extension of it.12 Some people, observed Aristotle, were more given to pity and fear than others, and consequently more in need of catharsis (Pol. 8.7.1341b32–1432a16).13 Of course he was thinking of the arts, of achieving catharsis through, for example, the contemplation of ruin on the stage, but one might argue that the sight of beggars and the response of contributing to their upkeep functioned as a cathartic act in real life. Anaximenes wrote that the rich do not pity the unfortunate in the same way as the poor do: their pity is a product of their fear for themselves (Stob. Flor.: Concerning the Reproach of Poverty 21). Understanding this is the key to understanding the Stoic disapproval of pity: pity was a self-regarding emotion, a pathos experienced by imagining oneself in the place of the pitied, which undermined the Stoic ideal of being untroubled by emotion, autarcheia. Pity was bad enough; pity linked with fear was dreadful, suggestive of personal weakness and doubt about the wisdom of the universe.14 This is how the Stoic characteristic ‘possessed of a social conscience and given to act on it’ (koinonikos phusei kai praktikos) manages not to be negated by Stoic rejection of pity: the aim is to help without being disturbed in one’s soul.15 We must not lose sight of this: the 11 13

14

12 Sorabji (2000) 23; cf. Arist. Rh. 2.5. Hands (1968) 78–99. Sorabji (2000) 291 argues that it is not an excess of pity per se that requires catharsis, but an excess of grief associated with pity. Sorabji finds it difficult to imagine that experiencing too much pity was a problem for many. See, however, Lucr. De Rerum Natura 3.312–13 for the Epicurean view that some people are naturally more prone to clementia than others: it is Lucretius’ view that one can be excessively merciful. Sen. Clem. 2.6.1 claims that women, especially elderly ones, are immoderately given to pity. 15 Hands (1968) 82; cf. Cic. Tusc. 4.26.56; Bolkestein (1939) 143. Hands (1968) 81–2.

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aim is to help.16 Stoicism, the philosophy most antagonistic to feeling pity, nonetheless advocates – in our parlance – taking pity. Pity (misericordia) is incompatible with apatheia, but mercy (clementia) is laudable. To his depiction of the ideal Stoic as a man who should not hesitate to give a coin to a beggar, Seneca adds that this aid should be given as from a man to a fellow man, and not be given as the majority give it: that is, in a scornful way by those who wish to appear full of pity, but do not wish to come near to misfortune (Clem. 2.5.1). It has been suggested that Seneca’s recommendation of giving a coin to a beggar must refer to giving to wealthy people who have suffered reversals of fortune.17 There is no reason to suppose so, however. Of course the aid of the respectable fallen on hard times is a topos in literature, but this interpretation would be entirely at odds with the Stoic precept that a man should be helped out of common humanity. Herodes Atticus is reported to have quashed his friends’ objections when they saw him give money to a beggar in spite of their protestations as to the beggar’s bad character, by telling them that he gave because he himself was a man (Gell. NA 9.2.7; cf. Diog. Laert. Vitae Philosophorum 5.1.21). We can fight too hard to argue away every possible reference to almsgiving. The admission of casual almsgiving need not pull down the monolith of theory surrounding euergetism and beneficentia. In the case of Seneca’s coin for a beggar, the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. It is surely right to say that the elite were more likely to help their own peers fallen on hard times, but this is not to say that they never helped anyone else. Granted, pity was traditionally and ideologically felt for those who might be in a position to return it (cf. Arist. Poet. 13.1452b34– 1453a7; Rh. 2.5.1383a10, 2.8.1386a25), but we must be open to possibilities in social practice beyond concretely and self-consciously expressed beliefs. The self-conscious and traditional line on beggars is that they should be ignored. If aid is to be extended, it should be to citizens, who have something to offer in return. Hence in De Vita Beata, Seneca observes that the rich man should give, but not to the irredeemably poor, whom no amount of money can save (De Beat. Vit. 23.5–24.1). Cicero advises much the same thing in De Officiis (2.54), and that it is an old-established idea may be seen from the Plautus passage that gives this chapter its title. One of the characters in the Trinummus cheerfully announces: ‘You do no service to a beggar by giving him food or drink, for you both lose what you give 16 17

Sen. Clem. 2.5.3 defends Stoicism vigorously on this point: no philosophy is kinder, more loving of man and concerned for the common good. Hands (1968) 84: i.e. the proximity of the beggars in the text to shipwrecked sailors.

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him and prolong his life for misery’ (Trin. 339). Scholars have argued for a ‘pervading mentality that one’s lot was what one deserved’ when it came to poor relief in antiquity.18 And yet, beggars were a commonplace in the early empire. Their continued presence can only be explained by a habit of giving, by at least some members of society. We are justified in looking for traces of a moral code that would explain this. Bolkestein discusses the arai Bouzygeiai, which were traditional and evidently ancient curses levelled against those who would not give water to the thirsty, fire to someone in need of it, burial to the unburied, or directions to the lost.19 By the early Roman imperial period, this list had come to include the denial of a coin for a beggar or a crust for the starving. These were considered to be trivial acts, because no reciprocity was expected. They were gifts, according to Seneca, not to man, but to humanity. And thus he excludes them from beneficia: ‘a beneficium is a useful act, but not every useful act is a beneficium; some such acts are so trivial, that they are not called beneficia’. Nevertheless, as he himself realises, such trivial acts were of immense material value to the recipients. With such gifts, one was not to consider the worth of the recipient, any more than one would expect any return (Ben. 4.29.2–3; cf. Cic. Off. 1.51).20 The extension of the standard list of cost-free duties to include giving to beggars effectively normalises beggars by associating them with respectable passers-by (cf. Cic. Off. 1.51, where Cicero describes such duties as incumbent on everyone precisely because they are cost-free). This concept seems to have had a long life, surely underlying Heliodorus’ observation that the beggar gets easily out of generosity what any other stranger would not get at all (Aeth. 6.10.2). The arai Bouzygeiai must at one time have had a religious element. An ongoing consciousness of this religious root may be seen in one of the Elder Seneca’s Controversiae. In this Controversia, almsgiving is equated with the ancient duty to bury the dead, in what is probably a tradition even older than Plautus’. Among those laws that are unwritten, and yet set in stone, observes the speaker, are the obligations on all to give alms to a beggar and throw earth on a corpse. It is wrong not to reach out a hand to the lowest, he adds: this is humanity’s common right (Controv. 1.1.14). It seems possible that the echoes of this ancient morality might explain the otherwise rather mysterious phenomenon of beggars haunting Roman temples, as there is no other evident religious connection to be made between mainstream Graeco-Roman religion and almsgiving. 18 20

19 Bolkestein (1939) 471–2. E.g. Parkin (1997) 139. See Hands (1968) 46–7. Hands notes dryly that in the case of a corpse, one hardly had any choice in the matter of return.

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Insofar as begging is explicitly connected to religion in our sources, the discussion is solely of eastern religions and cults, principally the priests of Cybele. The itinerant priests of Cybele were supported by the alms of the populace, to which they apparently had a religiously sanctioned right: they, alone of religious beggars, were to be tolerated in Cicero’s ideal state, although then only on certain days (Leg. 2.9.22, cf. 2.16.40). Cynic philosophers were linked by Epictetus to the begging priests of Cybele by their comparable dress and bad behaviour (Arr. Epict. diss. 4.8.4–6). The link is also implicit in their mutual right to public support, however, which was ultimately derived from the perception that they were performing a service for the community, pedagogic in the case of the Cynics, and religious in the case of the priests of Cybele. From Apuleius’ depiction of the priests of Cybele in procession, however, one suspects that much of their true appeal was in their entertainment value (Met. 8.26, 28). Cynics are by no means a category of religious beggars, but they are perhaps worth considering as the pagan world’s only other full-time voluntary poor, in effect, the only other group licensed to beg. Respect, fear and amusement are recorded as reactions to Cynics in our sources, but also, perhaps, pity. Dio Chrysostom observes that many people in his day thought that Cynics were madmen, unable to cope with real life (Or. 34.2) and according to Julian, the common people of his era felt pity for those mendicant philosophers whom they saw to be living in true destitution (Or. 6.198b).21 The Cynics may not always have received patience, respect or pity, but even contempt, if coupled with a perception of genuine incompetence for daily life, may still have led people to give them alms.22 How do such reactions compare to those evoked by the involuntarily destitute? Bolkestein looked at Seneca’s demand of a coin for the beggar, and thought he had been influenced by the writings of hellenised Jews, such as Josephus and Philo. Bolkestein thought he detected the influence of oriental almsgiving stealing over the Roman world, bringing a growing sense of obligation to the poor in the early empire, a result of the spread of eastern religions, and of an economic and social assimilation of east and west.23 This theory was refuted fairly quickly, through epigraphic studies.24 A study of Roman epigraphy from the early imperial era found no trend 21

22 23 24

Cf. Or. 6.190d, asking whether a man who has taken up the garb of a Cynic thinks to impress the crowd with it, and comparing the reception of a classical Cynic, whom he insists sickened and repulsed 100,000 passers-by for every one or two who applauded him. Cf. Artem. 3.42, on tolerance of and almsgiving to people with mental illnesses. Bolkestein (1939) 435. McGuire (1946) 129–50. Bolkestein drew on three inscriptions found in Italy. All three show strong oriental affinity and were commissioned by oriental immigrants or their descendents.

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indicating that people wanted to be remembered as lovers of the poor.25 No one claimed to love the destitute until the rise of Christianity as a power in the late empire, when patronage of the poor became an ideological and political force. At least some of the elite appear to have found the poor interesting or amusing, in a detached and unsympathetic way, decorating their homes and gardens with statues of, for example, elderly fishermen, or drunken elderly women. Paul Veyne comments on the ‘brutal, exaggerated naturalism’ of the style in which these figures are rendered, which portrays malnutrition, desiccation, age, and deformity. He claims that: Old age and poverty are here nothing but a spectacle for the diversion of indifferent aesthetes; the onlooker does not penetrate beneath the surface, nor does he ever put aside his fundamental disdain.26

However, not all our pagan sources express such detachment and disgust. Pliny the Younger, while he does not specifically discuss the destitute, shows himself aware of and sympathetic to the desperate situations in which the lower strata of his society could find themselves (for example, in Ep. 3.19.6). Elite attitudes vary, then, from an apparent distaste or lack of interest to a vague if suggestive compassion. Programmatic statements on almsgiving are few on the ground, but equally extreme, from Plautus’ ‘do not give’ to Seneca’s ‘give without scorn’. Yet this range should not be allowed to obscure the overall reticence on the subject of beggars. Begging was not considered a social problem: there is nothing about it in the early imperial legal sources, explicable precisely because there is no obvious problem in the subject to provoke legal interest. Nor is there much in the literary texts. When Cicero dreamed of his ideal state, he only felt the need to curb religious beggars: ordinary beggars do not seem to have disturbed him.27 What all this means, of course, is that beggars were not a problem for the Roman elite. It is reasonably evident why not. Probably the rich did not in fact often give to the destitute: they will have been largely protected from the attentions of beggars in public by their servants, clients or lictors, and many, entrenched in the doctrine of euergetism or beneficentia, may genuinely have 25

26

Tod (1951) 186. Whittaker (1993) 297, notes that ILLRP 797, the sole example of someone being commemorated as a ‘lover of the poor’, concerns a Greek peregrine. Veyne (2000) 1188–9 argues that the objects in amans pauperis must be poor plebs who made up the conjunctural poor, rather than the destitute per se. 27 Bolkestein (1939) 340. Veyne (1997) 135.

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believed that it was money not well used. There are one or two suggestive references to beggars frequenting the doors of the rich. The gladiator in one of the Declamationes Maiores falsely attributed to Quintilian, for example, complains that he was left, starving, to beg around the doors of strangers’ domus (9.12). But this does not necessarily imply that the rich emerged to feed the destitute with their own hands: indeed, that seems unlikely. Slaves of the household probably distributed kitchen scraps, and whether this was done with or without their masters’ knowledge is now of course irrecoverable. Most gifts to the destitute must have come from non-elites. Primary evidence for this is predictably meagre. Veyne has argued that a plebeian morality distinct from the dominant elite one may be glimpsed in the early imperial Dicta/Disticha Catonis, which advocates, for example, not hoarding your wealth and not scorning those more lowly than yourself. This is a discourse, Veyne maintains, produced by life experience and common sense, and born of concerns removed from the social and economic milieu of the elite.28 Seneca’s observation that many fling their alms to beggars in scorn, keeping as far back from them as possible, is interesting in this regard (Clem. 2.5.2). To some extent this mode of behaviour must have been a reaction to the squalour and ill health which surrounded beggars. Certainly evidence from the lower strata as from the upper indicates that people found them repulsive. But the concern to maintain distance was perhaps also born of a fear of contagion from the bad luck which beggars manifested. ‘Am I to become a beggar?’, people would anxiously ask the Oracle of Astrampsychus.29 Beggars were horrifying physically and metaphysically: they evoked fear for what the future might hold. The interesting point, however, is that fear and disgust manifested in almsgiving. This exact pattern of reaction and action may been seen, for example, in Artemidorus’ dream interpretation manual, Oneirocritica. Artemidorus observes that those who are beggars, pleaders, pitiful or indigent signify pain and worry to men and women because they are repugnant, helpless and obstructive and there is nothing healthy about them. Giving to them signifies an impending loss, or even death, since only beggars among men take without any return (Artem. 3.53). Not a very sympathetic discourse, but one that presupposes giving as a normative act (cf. Artem. 1.78). Similarly, Artemidorus says that seeing someone with a deforming disease such as scabies or elephantiasis means concern and grief for the dreamer, because repulsive sights wrench the heart and humble one (3.47). 28

Veyne (2000) 1192–3.

29

See Rostovtzeff (1957) 479.

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Moreover, the whims of a madman are indulged by all, and to dream of them signifies wealth for a poor dreamer, because everyone gives to madmen (3.42). Artemidorus associates beggars with disgust and fear, but also with grief and, arguably, pity. It has been claimed that Christians were the first people for whom pity was the deciding factor in almsgiving,30 but we cannot be certain of this, if we accept the probability that pagan almsgiving was mostly practised by non-elites who had no interest in stern Stoic precepts. There is a grave deficit of sources which represent the views and habits of those belonging to the lower strata of Graeco-Roman society, but such texts as can be gathered suggest quite the opposite of this claim. A counter-argument can be made that pity was certainly a factor in the impulse to give alms, and that this motivation may be glimpsed especially in evidence concerning particular subsets of the destitute. Artemidorus’ evidence suggests the first such category: people who were sick, frail or disabled. Certainly there is not much evidence that the infirm attracted pity, and aside from Artemidorus’ testimony, it is necessary to fall back on elite reactions, and elite representations of non-elite reactions. There is, however, enough evidence to treat with caution Veyne’s claim that ‘paganism had abandoned without much remorse the starving, the old and the sick’.31 Seneca urges his reader to fight feelings of distress at the sight of the disabled or elderly beggar, arguing that the good man will not turn away from someone with a disabled leg, or who is starved, dressed in rags, elderly and in need of a staff for support. Rather, he will aid the worthy and, godlike, look kindly on those in misery (Clem. 2.6.3). One thing that is highly suggestive of the likelihood that disabled people were pitied is the custom of faking injuries or disabilities, for which a little evidence for this period survives. Horace, for example, mentions a beggar with a feigned broken leg, while Martial lists among the people whom he finds annoying in city life shipwrecked sailors who lie about in the streets faking injuries (Hor. Epist. 1.17.58–9; Mart. 12.57.12).32 In Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Apollonius encounters an elderly beggar in the theatre at Ephesus, who is eventually stoned to death. We are told that when Apollonius first sees this man, he has his eyes artfully closed, as if blind (V A 4.10). We are also told that some of those who begged at 30 32

31 Veyne (1990) 33. Prell (1997) 268. W. C. A. Ker, the Loeb translator and commentator, understands this passage of Martial’s to imply that the sailor is faking a missing limb, but observes that others take the reference to be to a piece of the ship, or perhaps a painting of it (cf. Pers. 1.88; Juv. 14.302).

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Jerusalem in this period feigned their lameness or blindness, but this was a trick that depended on anonymity, and one could only get away with it in busy spots such as gates or at festivals.33 Faking illness or disability is a common stratagem if sick and disabled people are very successful in soliciting alms, as comparative evidence attests. John Chrysostom records this phenomenon in fourth-century Antioch, and Ambrose too complains of healthy people who attempt to improve their takings by deceiving people with their clothes and bodies (John Chrysostom, De Eleem. 6 (PG 51.269); Ambrose, Off. 2.76).34 Comparative studies of begging practices indicate that faking disabilities remains a common artifice, with beggars waving false limbs, and even mummified real limbs as ‘evidence’ of their disability.35 Aristotle writes that pity is the pain we feel when we see undeserved misfortune, of the sort we can imagine striking ourselves or those near to us, and this idea was picked up by Roman writers.36 There are two interesting facets to this conceptualisation of pity. The first is the implication that pity is contingent on innocence, the second that people felt pity when they imagined disaster affecting their nearest and dearest as well as themselves. Both of these points are strikingly illustrated in another of the Elder Seneca’s Controversiae – 10.4 – which discusses the culpability of a man who has made a living from mutilating and raising exposed children, sending them out to beg. This is a very interesting text, which provides evidence not only for attitudes to disabled people, but also for attitudes to child beggars, the second category suggested here as particularly provoking pity in this period. Controversiae 10.4 paints a sinister picture of child beggars with stunted frames, mutilated limbs and tongues cut-out because – as Seneca would have it – the inability to beg is in itself a sort of begging (10.4.6). It is unreliable evidence for social practice at the time: the Controversia is an old one, with Greek antecedents, although that in itself may of course be suggestive. If Seneca’s picture sounds far-fetched, a horror story invented to spur a good argument, it is worth noting that the sale or kidnapping and maiming of children still occurs among the beggars of modern Taipei, as does the lending of children as beggars’ tools.37 If children provoke 33 34 35

36 37

Hamel (1989) 217–18. Although there is no explicit mention of faking, this may also be implicit in CTh 14.18.1 (382 ad). Chaudhuri (1987) 32; Schak (1988) 30–31, 48: in the 1950s and 1960s the begging community in Taipei used to drive out fakers, wanting to maintain a good reputation. They begged, and wished it to be perceived that they begged, from desperation not dishonesty. Arist. Poet. 13.1452b34–1453a7; Rh. 2.8, echoed in Cic. Tusc. 4.18; Sen. Clem. 2.5.4. Ov. Ib. 117–20 is suggestive of the reaction provoked by those whose misfortune was regarded as deserved. Schak (1988) 46–7, 196–7. Cunningham (1991) 56 notes that poor parents were reputably claimed to be selling their children to work as beggars in Britain as late as the early nineteenth century.

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compassion, a society in which a social security network is unavailable or not comprehensive may see them used this way, and if the sick provoke more compassion than the healthy, then children are in danger of mutilation. Centuries after Seneca, John Chrysostom can be found claiming that poor parents were blinding their own children to make beggars of them (John Chrysostom, In I Corinth. 21.5 (PG 61.176–90) ). Begging children apparently might evoke pity, then as now. Consider the evidence of the jurist Paul on this point, who observes that equally culpable as the person who smothers a child is someone who abandons it, or denies it food, or displays the child in public places in order to arouse pity, which he himself does not arouse (D. 25.3.4). Of course, children did not necessarily command sympathy in the Graeco-Roman world: many were callously exploited in slavery without qualm. However, the portrayal of the reactions of the people from whom the maimed children beg in Controversiae 10.4 is interesting. Seneca cites the Roman orator Blandus as saying that a woman gives a beggar alms, if asked for them, especially if she has exposed a child. As she hands over the money, she thinks miserably ‘perhaps this is my son’ (Controv. 10.4.20).38 Does this indicate the empathy of the lower strata with the destitute generally, or specifically pity for begging children? Perhaps both: the child is pitiful per se, but loosely speaking it is also from, or potentially from, the woman’s own circle. If a reflection of historical reality, the Younger Seneca’s claim (Clem. 2.6.1) that women, especially elderly ones, were particularly prone to almsgiving could be explained in this light, since women were more vulnerable than men to impoverishment, just as the elderly were more vulnerable than the young. Those for whom the spectre of destitution held the most power were perhaps the most generous. The woman who gives alms in Controversiae 10.4 arguably gains catharsis through her charitable act. Beggars in modern Taipei often address their marks (that is, their targets) with terms of kinship connoting dependence, trying to imply a relationship between the beggar and the begged-from.39 In Blandus’ portrait are echoes of the rhetoric of kinship, the old sentiment that one’s own kin are owed aid, but they have been overlaid with the uncertainties of contemporary urban living, characterised by the fragmentation of families and severing of kinship ties resulting from migration and slavery. 38

39

Cunningham (1991) 55 provides striking parallels from the outcry over the sale or theft of children for chimney sweeps that swept England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Several respectable women were said to have identified their lost sons in the sooty faces of the climbing boys. Schak (1988) 49.

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However, the disabling of the children adds another dimension. Their maiming must have made them more likely to receive alms, and this link is made explicit in the rhetoric: the children receive alms because they are disabled (Controv. 10.4.19). The mutilation is depicted as raising a variety of reactions, from disgust at the beggar master’s inhumanity, to a resignation that he has at least saved the children’s lives, and that life as a mutilated beggar is better than death. Certainly the venture was imagined to have paid off well for its perpetrator: many felt pity, enabling him to live off the misericordia publica (Controv. 10.4.6). Blandus’ comment also suggests the most likely source of these child beggars. In all probability, most such children were the products of infant exposure: a source of no-cost workers who could be made profitable from a very early age, and about whose fate no one would be concerned. Children who were not raised because of physical disability were probably particular candidates for this fate if they lived. Many children must have fallen into destitution on the death of the family breadwinner.40 These children of the conjunctural poor, and particularly orphans, could have ended up begging. Martial and Juvenal both portray immigrant child beggars as a type at Rome. Willingness to perform lower-skilled, illegal or shameful types of work is one adaptation typically made in response to impoverishment, and such income-generating activity is characterised by high family-member participation. Infants employed as begging aids, and the use of older children to guide disabled parents or to work unsupervised as beggars are very widely attested in comparative contexts.41 However, the majority of such children probably did not become beggars. There were very many other forms of labour available which children could perform, either as a contribution to the finances of remaining family, or enabling them to be absorbed into other households. Although parents, and in particular widows, certainly were sometimes sufficiently desperate to sell their children or contract them into debt-bondage, handing them over to a gang master of the sort portrayed in Controversia 10.4 could only have been a last resort. On balance, from the primary evidence available for almsgiving among the lower strata, it appears to have been common, normal, although not compulsory, to give to the destitute when they presented themselves. Certain types of beggars – the elderly and frail, the sick or disabled, children – were given to at least in part from compassion. However, the argument that 40

41

Krause (1995) 130–31, 138, 141–2. Cf. Ter. Phorm. 93–9, 357–8 for the plight of a girl whose mother has died and who has no other relations; Firm. Mat. Mathesis 3.14.4–5, 4.4.3, 4.6.1, 4.10.4, 5.6.3, 6.29.3. Schak (1988) 195–6.

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most charity was given by the non-elite rests on common sense rather than on a mass of primary evidence. First, there were simply far more people in the lower strata than in the elite. Even in the cities, the elite were a tiny proportion, and individuals from the lower strata who had made good to the extent that subsistence was no longer a struggle were still a minority. Most people had to concern themselves with securing subsistence and were haunted by the spectre of slipping into destitution. Second, non-elite people had more exposure to beggars. In particular, people who worked in public places, or travelled about unaccompanied and on foot, were easy to approach. They were also more exposed, however, to forms of begging which did not depend on a moral or compassionate reaction. amoral motivations f or almsgiving The first part of this discussion of pagan charity has attempted to show that dismissals of moral motives for almsgiving are too simplistic. It is possible to argue further, however, that the whole assumption that there are no other motives for almsgiving is flawed. For this, it is helpful to make use of comparative evidence, which gives clues as to what trends we can look for, and how to interpret the scraps of evidence we have to work with. Even in a society that recognises a moral or religious imperative to give alms, there are many other reasons for which people give. At Kalighat in Calcutta, pilgrims and worshippers at the shrine there admitted, when interviewed, that they gave alms to the beggars out of disgust and frustration as well as for religious reasons.42 Importunity can be a powerful weapon, and the desire to shake the beggar off is conspicuous in these accounts. The fear of humiliation is another powerful motive. Several ancient sources comment on Cynics’ vicious abuse of those who refused to give, which can hardly have endeared the Cynics to the dignity-conscious Graeco-Roman elite.43 Philostratus tells the story of a man who made a living by accepting bribes not to heckle the sophists, but who ended up being beaten to death by one sophist’s retinue (V S 2.10 (587)). On the other hand, fear of abuse may have worked in a beggar’s favour, eliciting donations from those anxious to pre-empt or curtail public humiliation. Juvenal recounts that beggars who made camp by the Via Appia at Aricia would mob the carriages of the elite as they slowed down to climb the hill there. If the rich in their carriages gave 42 43

Chaudhuri (1987) 87. E.g. Gell. NA 9.2.6. Cf. Diogenes Laertius’ claim that Diogenes used to practise begging from a statue to accustom himself to rejection, but he considered alms his due, and would say so to his targets, getting angry and abusive if refused (Vitae Philosophorum 6.46, 49, 59).

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to the beggars who waylaid them, it may have been from fear, if not of actual violence, then of being harassed or shamed. This motivation should not be underestimated. A surviving medieval epic on the Arabian underworld, Abu Dulaf’s Qas¨ıda s¨as¨aniyya, illustrates the sorts of ways people can be shamed or threatened into giving. The product of a culture with a very strong religious exhortation to almsgiving, this text is a good reminder that pity and religious feeling are not the only motives that move people to give: He says that when [the beggars] go round shouting ‘Amen!’, they call down imprecations on the shopkeepers – ‘This is our greengrocer, strike him blind, O my Lord!’ . . . And [they also cry] ‘There is our butcher, strike him with paralysis, and there is the cloth merchant, do not ever cure him!’ . . . And whoever repels them, is anointed with the precious unguent of the anus [i.e. is pelted with faeces]. (Qas¨ıda s¨as¨aniyya 137–9)

Graeco-Roman society had a comparatively weak religious or moral charitable ethos, seldom recorded and probably haphazardly observed. The inhabitants of the empire may have given out of a sense of pity or solidarity at times, but we should probably expect a higher level of activity designed to provoke almsgiving from amoral motivations than in a society such as modern India or medieval western Arabia. It is possible, for example, that in our period also, tabernarii were bullied in their shops and stalls: shopkeepers crop up repeatedly in comparative evidence as easy targets. They are particularly vulnerable, because they operate in the public forum used by beggars, and because they fear having customers put off. Shopkeepers in modern Taipei may be seen to try to regulate times at which they are prepared to give, or to establish a reputation for being a ‘hard mark’. Beggars play on people’s fear of contagion at market stalls, threatening to defile goods, or actually defiling them to make them unsaleable, and thus win a forced gift. The Graeco-Roman perception that beggars were unlucky and repulsive could certainly have worked in their favour in this way. The shopkeepers in Taipei report that it is difficult to beat beggars off, because they have more time and manpower at their disposal, and not much to lose. The beggars scare off business by day, but they also inhabit the market at night, and if provoked can damage property in the owner’s absence. Surrendering to this protection racket and giving small amounts or waste products makes better economic sense.44 Artemidorus observes that it is a very bad sign to dream of beggars entering – as well as one’s house – one’s place of business, especially if they steal anything in the dream (Artem. 3.53). At Kalighat too, shopkeepers often dislike the beggars 44

Schak (1988) 60–62.

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because they think they deter customers. Others are more sympathetic, and forge personal relationships with individual beggars, allowing them to sleep in their shops at night in exchange for protecting the merchandise.45 There is no difficulty in imagining such scenarios for the Graeco-Roman world, especially since beggars are located, at least in late sources, in the marketplace.46 This sort of aggressive begging is particularly prevalent in cultures where destitute but able-bodied adult men have difficulty in securing support. There is no concrete evidence to suggest that people in the early imperial period were loath to give to adult, able-bodied men. Idleness is not explicitly linked with begging, beyond vague venom directed at urban mobs (for example, App. B Civ. 2.120; Sall. Cat. 37.7). It is possible, however, that in general healthy men were particularly disadvantaged, because they were perceived as capable of work they chose not to do. Able-bodied adult men – even in periods of chronic under/unemployment – often receive less sympathy from authorities and private benefactors than do the structural poor, and find themselves classed automatically as undeserving poor. Comparative evidence from later periods should prod us at least to look at this possibility. Ambrose, for example, expresses his outrage that healthy people, many of them itinerant, are asking the Church for charity, and depriving the sanctioned poor of their alms. These people are motivated by greed, says Ambrose, but they claim to be debtors, or to have been robbed by bandits, and their claims should be thoroughly investigated to ensure that recipients of charity are really deserving (Off. 2.76). The concept of examination of beggars’ individual circumstances, of validation and invalidation on the basis of health, is also seen in the earliest piece of legal evidence we have explicitly dealing with beggars: the rescript of the emperors Gratian, Valentinian II and Theodosius I dated 20 June, ad 382.47 This rescript was addressed to the urban prefect of Rome, Severus. It ordered that beggars were to be examined with regard to their health and age. Those who were found not to suffer from any debility if of slave status were to be given to those who had informed on them. If free-born, they were to become their denouncers’ coloni in perpetuity. This happens 45 46

47

Chaudhuri (1987) 87–90. Cf. John Chrysostom, Poenit. 7.6 (PG 49.332); In Gen. Hom. 65.5 (PG 54.564); In Gen. Serm. 5.4 (PG 54.603). Krause (1994) 166 n. 29 observes that this is a popular collection point for medieval beggars too. CTh 14.18.1; cf. CJ 11.26.1. See Grey and Parkin (2003). Cf. Justinian’s attempts to process the unemployed poor flooding into the city of Constantinople in 539 ad. The old and sick were to be maintained by the charitable, the rest were to be drafted into public building works, bakeries and so on if they were strong (Nov. Iust. 80.5.1).

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to be the oldest surviving reference to begging (mendicitas) in legislation, but the underlying mentality which privileges the elderly and/or infirm beggar appears to be much older. Our elite sources from the early imperial period certainly show a general lack of understanding of the realities of conjunctural poverty and underemployment, and a marked mistrust of the apparently idle unemployed, loitering in the streets. Unemployment had long been associated in Graeco-Roman thought with laziness and shame, poverty and criminality.48 To some extent this perception was gendered: the portrayal of unemployed men as a social and political menace is characteristic of the depictions of urban mobs in accounts of late Republican politics. It is common in such cases for able-bodied men who find themselves in distressed circumstances to develop compensatory strategies. First, they may fake wounds or illnesses, as has already been discussed. Second, ablebodied adult men may secure more sympathetic proxies to beg on their behalves, and there is some evidence for this strategy also in the early empire (Mart. 12.57.13; D. 25.3.4 (Paul)). The use of proxies can operate on a small scale: the display of infants by beggars is very common, and at Kalighat, the beggars make shows of family feeling, such as conspicuously pious treatment of their parents.49 On the other hand, exploiting others as a business proposition by becoming a gang leader like Seneca’s child mutilator is also very common in comparative evidence. Alternatively, able-bodied adult men may be forced by necessity to commit acts of extreme self-denigration or even self-harm, which evoke amusement or scorn, but which also provoke some return. John Chrysostom claims to have witnessed many such desperate acts in the fourth century. Poor men, hungry, desperate and mentally disturbed, unable to arouse any pity from passers-by, are reported by Chrysostom to have sought attention by chewing old shoes, banging nails into their own heads, and wading into icy water. Chrysostom castigates his flock for watching these displays, laughing and egging the men on by giving them money.50 It is clear from Chrysostom’s description that in the ancient world as today, begging is not a homogeneous category: it blurs with providing 48

49 50

Pleket (1988) 272 traces a trend from Hesiod through to an Egyptian papyrus dating from the sixth century ad (PFlor 295.5: an unemployed citizen is a mega kakon). Roug´e (1979) 339–47 claims that it is characteristic of western thought in general to criminalise itinerant beggars and hence to persecute them through the law. Chaudhuri (1987) 32. John Chrysostom, In Ep. I ad Cor. 21.5–6 (PG 61.177–8). Cf. Firm. Mat. Mathesis 4.14.3, 4.14.15 for links between intellectual disability, mental illness and beggary.

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entertainment and services, wanted or unwanted. Hence priests, magicians, quack medical practitioners, peddlers and buskers are all sometimes referred to in our sources as beggars.51 Begging, work and entertainment and extortion are generally a subject of semantic confusion, their divisions very much in the eye of the beholder. The begging community in Taipei, for example, do not consider busking to be begging, although most of their social superiors do. In fact, they view many of their regular activities, such as attending funerals, as work.52 The common denominator is a ‘request’ for money at some point in the proceedings. In the case of the Jewish woman in Juvenal’s sixth satire, itinerant work is portrayed as beggary (6.542–7). We could reject outright this description as bigotry on Juvenal’s part, and reclassify this woman as a dream interpreter, someone performing marginal work, but this renders reading our sources very difficult, because we are no longer thinking in the same language as them. It is more helpful to understand a vagueness in the categorisation of begging and marginal work in antiquity. Artemidorus maintains that he spent many years among dream interpreters working in markets and at festivals, although they were deeply despised and insulted by some people with a haughty air and raised eyebrow as beggars, charlatans and riffraff (Artem. 1.pr.).53 Seneca the Younger warns his reader that a wise man is not seduced by the flattery of a beggar (Constant. 2.13). The overlap between begging and providing services can be very hazy: the offer of a flower, a sweet, or simply a good-luck wish can serve either to incur obligation, or to ease the sordid fact that a gift to a beggar is at root a one-way transaction, and to translate it into the more pleasing idiom of exchange. Almsgiving in such a case is motivated by a sense of obligation if not actual gratitude: it is glossed as payment for services rendered. Exchanging alms for prayers might be acceptable, but a callous remuneration for self-harm-as-entertainment is not the relationship that Chrysostom feels his flock ought to have with the destitute. More appropriate would be pity for those perceived as genuinely unable to earn another way, but the extremity of the acts in which these beggars engage is well paralleled in broader comparative evidence. In modern China, 51 52

53

Cf. for example Apul. Met. 1.4 for a sword-swallower invitamento exiguae stipis to more dangerous feats. Schak (1988) 29, 188–90. Schak (1988) 50–4: forms of work for beggars in Taipei include keeping a stud pig, quack dentistry, prostitution, busking, making or selling small things: some genuine goods, some pseudo-services. Income is generally not derived solely from begging unless no other options are available. Cf. Vogelstein and Rieger (1895) 64: dream interpreters and soothsayers were regarded as only a higher form of aggressive begging.

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able-bodied adult men are forced into abject self-depreciation, verbal or physical, which wins scornful alms.54 It is a venerable tradition. Consider for example these observations on pre-industrial China: There are many reports of beggars mutilating themselves in front of others while asking for alms: striking themselves with sticks or bricks; cutting themselves to draw blood with sickles, knives, or razors, perhaps sprinkling the blood on a shop floor; driving nails into the head; pounding the head on a wall, a cobblestone in the street, or the head of another beggar; or lighting combustible materials on the head.55

The impact is potentially two-fold: the mark who feels pity will give money to prevent further self-harm, while the mark who feels no pity may pay for the entertainment. In pre-industrial China, beggars were viewed as be-sai, inadequate. It was a macho, competitive society, in which they were the weak. They were also dirty, contagious and repulsive, but contempt did not prevent giving: indeed, the total inequality in a sense allowed it.56 An interesting parallel can be drawn here with Graeco-Roman antiquity, also a competitive society, and in which beggars were also seen as repulsive and demeaned, and yet received alms. Giving to a beggar was, and had to be, outside the normal paradigm of return. Self-demeaning by able-bodied adult men is surely an attempt by those who might seem dangerously equal to belittle themselves, to associate themselves with the structural poor, and so achieve a paradigm shift. Another of the Declamationes falsely attributed to Quintilian describes a father who has bankrupted himself to ransom one of his sons, and who finds himself spurned by the son he was unable to ransom. The father is made to say that he does not require loving care of his son, merely alms. The son need not offer food with his own hands; the father will be content with scraps that are thrown to him, that he may carry away to eat. He muses that giving someone food without showing them any compassion is in itself a sort of revenge (Ps.-Quint. Decl. 5.9). The point is surely that this is how strangers provide support, rather than how kin should provide it: in a careless fashion. It actually sounds very similar to what Seneca advocates, a generous act without pity. To give without compassion is a performative reinforcement of the social hierarchy. Roman society was very concerned with status: giving without return is a way of declaring one’s superiority. Beggars were widely despised, yet this need not have ruled out giving to them. Indeed, it may have encouraged it. One could give as a symbol of despite: recognising need, and making scorn visible through action. 54

Schak (1988) 47, 60.

55

Schak (1988) 60.

56

Schak (1988) 30–31.

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If self-harm did not work, there was always violence against others, and fear of this must underlie the permission recorded in the Theodosian Code to raze the shelters of the homeless if it was perceived they were harbouring criminals.57 There was great unease over waves of begging peasants during rural crises in pre-industrial China: nineteenth-century Chinese scholars and literary authors alike claim that beggars who were not given sufficient alms turned to violent crime to make a living.58 In modern Taipei there are beggars who threaten passers-by with snakes, apparently a centuriesold trick. Cursing people is both common and feared.59 These curses, reminiscent of the arai Bouzygeiai, carry us full circle again into the realm of religion and magic. We know from Tacitus and Libanius that people were terrified of curses in the Graeco-Roman world.60 Superstition can be a powerful weapon. Families involved in public rites such as weddings and funerals crop up repeatedly in comparative evidence as easy targets for threats of this type, concerned for their dignity and that nothing inauspicious should occur. Jumping into the grave at funerals is popular among beggars in Taipei, where people involved in religious observances are considered vulnerable, because these are occasions fraught with status display and superstition.61 Of course, if there is a religious expectation of alms, these are even more powerful occasions (Buddhism and Taoism both actively approve of begging as an ascetic activity).62 Such behaviour is not all negative: Chinese beggars also take advantage of superstition by wishing people luck on auspicious days.63 The children in Seneca’s Controversia 10.4 were in the habit of appearing at both weddings and public sacrifices, where they were perceived to be unlucky omens (10.4.8). The most likely motivation for these appearances is that they were paid to go away again.64 The text also mentions that the children presented themselves on holidays, which were supposed to be cheerful occasions. Perhaps they too gained alms from superstitious goodwill. Glimpsing this behaviour is a rare opportunity to recognise that the poor are not always passive at the hands of their social and economic 57 58 62 64

Dio Chrys. Or. 40.8–9; CTh 15.1.39; cf. John Chrysostom, In I Cor. 11.5 (PG 61.94–5). See MacMullen (1959) 208–9. 59 Schak (1988) 59. 60 See Gager (1992). 61 Schak (1988) 59, 62. Schak (1988) 190–94. 63 Schak (1988) 54. Schak (1988) 17. Modern Chinese beggars deliberately associate themselves with the extreme taboo of death (Schak (1988) 34–5). As Graeco-Roman beggars were frequently characterised by ill-health, and sometimes ate offerings off graves and slept in cemeteries, they may similarly have been regarded as tainted by death.

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superiors. They can exploit societal disgust by manipulating it to their own advantage. conclusion In any society, the response to beggars is likely to be differentiated, but it remains worthwhile to beg even if only a tiny percentage of people respond. Comparative studies indicate that people give to beggars in payment for services rendered, or from fear or revulsion, or out of irritation, to persuade beggars to move on, or from compassion, especially for sick and disabled people. Compassion is also felt for those perceived to be unable to get subsistence from any other source: refugees, women without kin and so on. People do not give if they suspect dishonesty or laziness, if they consider that the beggars are making too much money, or are ungrateful.65 The givers’ motives are complex and vary from donor to donor, and from moment to moment. Similarly, pretexts for asking are varied, and include the religious, rendering services, threatening and abusing.66 We can posit a model of this sort for the Graeco-Roman world: tidy explanations do not ring true, and cannot help to explain the welter of conflicting views on begging evident in our sources. Some information can be extracted from elite philosophy and moralising to explain the presence of beggars in antiquity, in spite of minimal elite interest. Interpretation of these fragments is aided by taking into account evidence from better attested periods, since there is so little variation in the basic circumstances of the destitute, and such a startling degree of continuity in the tactics and responses of both those receiving and those giving. Elite self-representation and lack of interest in our sources mask a reality of desultory, but habitual, giving. There is more interaction between the elite and the structural poor in the early imperial period than appears in the primary sources if casually read, and more than modern scholars have implied, concentrating as they do exclusively on euergetism and beneficentia. Moreover, our tendency to view Graeco-Roman society as severely hierarchical and vertical and to assume that all giving must have come from the top has tended to blind us to the likelihood of low-level charity among the lower strata. Among the destitute, the structural poor, unable to labour, are the favoured targets for charity. The division of the indigent according to labour potential in the imperial edict of ad 382 is the oldest surviving official acknowledgement of this distinction, but it was not a new idea in 65

Schak (1988) 40–41, 46.

66

Schak (1988) 42–3, 45.

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the fourth century. On the contrary: the cultural currents that gave rise to this edict are clearly visible, albeit not programmatically stated in the early empire. Our sources indicate that unsupported sick or disabled people and the very young tended to be more likely to arouse pity that was manifested in almsgiving. Discourse surrounding the unsupported elderly of both genders is less clear-cut, but in many cases evident frailty may have provoked a similar response to illness or disability. But while the handful of pagan voluntary poor in this period received support despite being (in many cases) able-bodied males, in general such men were severely disadvantaged if they slipped from conjunctural poverty into destitution.

chap t e r 5

Writing poverty in Rome∗ Greg Woolf

It is the tenth hour of the Roman day. Business, siesta, bathing are done and now it is dinner, otium following negotium. Mingled with otium the careful performance of social officia as amici groom each other, the host balancing his reciprocal ministrations with his peers, feeding his lesser amici who in turn provide the audience that makes him great. All are ‘friends’, but the polite Latin of friendship and the etiquette of the table allows for subtle differentiations of status, just as each dinner offers the chance or risk of social demotions and promotions, of slights and compliments.1 The cena, where Roman ethics of patronage and deference met Greek symposiastic ethics of equality and frank-speaking, was a privileged space for such renegotiations. Literary cenae were natural vehicles for comment on these games of status and friendship, and on the culinary and social codes they employed.2 To modern readers none of the diners were social inferiors in any significant sense. Except for the grandest – and most offensive – banquets dreamed up by the satirists, we imagine a play around relatively slight differentials among men who all owned property, who shared the same educational background and so on. Yet images of poverty recur again and again in the literary games that are an essential component of all written cenae and also in the poetry performed at these and similar occasions, often composed by poets who themselves claimed to be impoverished, for all their facility at reading and representing the subtle gastronomic coding of the banquet. My subject is not the ritual of the table – even though that would be an appropriate subject with which to celebrate Peter Garnsey – nor ∗

1 2

This is a much better chapter than the paper presented at the conference held in Cambridge in 2003 thanks to the criticisms and comments of its audience, of the editors, of John Henderson, Emily Gowers and of the anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press. My thanks to all. Saller (1982). Oswyn Murray, especially in Murray (1985), has done more than anyone to show how this worked. See also the papers gathered in Murray (1990) especially D’Arms (1990). Dunbabin (1998) shows the implications for and of the physical settings of banquets and notes the increased emphasis on signalling hierarchy (rather than solidarity) through the arrangement of dining spaces from the early principate.

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the mimetic elaboration of those rituals in Latin texts.3 But the cena is a good starting point for a consideration of the representation of poverty in Latin literature.4 The dinners of the wealthy were both a key setting for the consumption of these images of destitution, and also utterly remote from the Realien of poverty. Yet even social historians who would rather rummage for evidence in the Subura or conduct interviews in the cramped attics of insulae or the shanty towns built in Rome’s cemetery belt, are often compelled to view the poor from the triclinia of the wealthy. It is a constant complaint – and an accurate observation – that the Roman poor are particularly difficult to see from this perspective. That is no surprise, given that no society has ever created a literature concerned with disinterested social reportage; that where the poor are prominent it is due to their peculiar moral valency in Christian – as in Jewish and Islamic – thought;5 and that many genres – epic and tragedy, erotic and elegiac verse, history and forensic oratory, to cite just the most obvious – had only occasional need for the poor. Perhaps it is more surprising that we have the images of poverty that we do have. Why bring the poor, even occasionally, into the concert halls? Why dramatise their plight over dinner or at a formal reading, a recitatio? Why should the rich man want to hear his slave read out laments for the lot of a sector of society that neither knew, or perhaps would ever know? For those who produced and consumed this textualised poverty, the poor must have seemed a distant and largely undifferentiated mass, the diachrony of their individual tragedies blurring into a static background of endemic misery. In the city, the houses of the rich were notoriously open, but not to all. Ianitores restricted access to the communal areas of the house. As the rich Roman ventured outside, he or she was escorted always by personal slaves, some of them simple attendants, others specialists like the nomenclatores whose role was to mediate between masters and chance encounters. On formal occasions a crowd of (respectable) clientes might escort their patronus out of doors, performing what Martial calls opera togata (toga-ed service).6 Candidati in the Republic might be accompanied around the forum by suffragatores. But often the wealthy were literally carried above the heads of the throng in litters. They never had unmediated contact with the urban poor. Lesser friends, and above all a mass of slaves, interposed themselves 3 4

5 6

Effects illuminated by Gowers (1993). Anneliese Parkin’s unpublished Cambridge PhD thesis offers by far the best discussion of conjunctural and structural poverty, the numbers of the various categories of poor, their health, their accommodation and their diet. Whittaker (1993) is an excellent introduction to the subject. Brown (2002) for an exploration of the ‘revolution in the social imagination’ that brought this about. Mart. 3.46.

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physically between the rich and the poor. Although there is every indication that in Rome, as in other towns, the rich lived physically rather close to at least some of the poor, they need never have met. Whatever tenuous business connections linked, for example, those who invested capital in trade with the men who unloaded cargoes in the emporium, all was managed through intermediaries of various kinds. Patronage never reached the abjectly poor, for they had nothing with which to reciprocate the beneficia of the rich.7 Ranks of seating in the theatre displayed a social order, but the key divisions were those it entrenched within Rome’s elite. Fundamentally undemocratic, Roman society was already fiercely segregated, fiercest of all at the top. None of this was unique to ancient Rome. The physical separation of poor and rich – and the dramatic effects of their occasional confrontation – is a trope we are familiar with from our own cultural life, from The Prince and the Pauper through many passages of Dickens to Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. But each (elite) society has its own way of imagining that gulf of misunderstanding and the effects of occasional encounters across it. Members of the Roman property-owning classes moved through their city as if sealed in protective bubbles. The poor were certainly visible. Dead and alive they must have communicated a faint stench of uncleanliness, and perhaps a raucous noise in the distance, but they remained at the edge of the wealthy’s field of vision, masked by drapes and perfume and the more elevated conversation of attendants. The poor could rarely get physically close. Steep hills on which wheeled transport and litters were forced to slow to a walking pace, and the bottlenecks at bridges, offered beggars rare opportunities to catch up with carriages. But even then the rich man was surrounded by his servile outer defences. All this is familiar territory of course. And the familiar illustration is the complaint Juvenal puts into Umbricius’ mouth in Satire 3: If duty calls the rich man rides there in a great litter, the crowd parting before him. All the while he sits inside: reading, or taking notes, or even snoozing: the blinds drawn over the window make him sleepy. Yet as we hurry along on foot, he overtakes us. The mass of people surges ahead. Those behind us buffet my rib-cage, poles poke into me. One man drops a beam on my head, another bashes me with a barrel. (Satire 3.239–46)8 7 8

Garnsey and Woolf (1989) make this point in relation to the rural poor. Si vocat officium, turba cedente vehetur / dives et ingenti curret super ora Liburna / atque obiter leget aut scribet vel dormiet intus; / namque facit somnum clausa lectica fenestra. / ante tamen veniet: nobis properantibus obstat / unda prior, magno populus premit agmine lumbos / qui sequitur; ferit hic cubito, ferit assere duro / alter, at hic tignum capiti incutit, ille metretam.

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Let’s defamiliarise this for a moment. For the word ‘illustration’ is a convenient camouflage that allows the historian to conceal some controversy over how we should, or might, legitimately use passages of this kind.9 I refer to the recent debates over the social ‘realism’ of satire and the legitimacy of mining it for vivid vignettes of urban experience.10 That debate is often played out in terms that are too simple, or at least too extreme. Satire cannot be convicted of unreliability simply on the grounds that it refers to other texts and shares tropes with them: after all, those criticisms apply to most academic papers. Nor can satire be defended simply by pointing to occasional correspondence with archaeological data, as if satire were a witness whose reliability on one matter can be established on the basis of whether or not it tells the truth about others. The issue is an important one. Martial, Juvenal and Pliny have been staples of the social history of the principate for nearly a century and a half since Ludwig Friedlander wrote his commentaries on them, and his analyses of it. Understanding how Latin poetry appropriated the social world within which it was composed, performed and read is an essential prerequisite for its use.11 Juvenal’s Satire 3 has been much discussed recently. It is common ground now to read Umbricius as himself an object of fun, his views a parody of viewpoints perhaps often expressed, his persona a figure inconsistent, extreme and far from committed to a simple life of retreat. His Rome is a travesty, and in its congested streets there is no one except dives and the populus. Either you are in the litter, or you are pushed off the pavement. Where should we place the narrator and Umbricius themselves? Not among the poor, certainly, if they are bothered by recitationes and can decamp to the Crater of Naples on a whim. But if they are wealthy, why does the traffic bother them? There is naturally no answer to this. Besides, the plight of the poor man is only a small part of Umbricius’ condemnation, just as the physical deficiencies of the city have to fight for airtime with its moral, cultural and social shortcomings. Much Roman writing on poverty is of this kind. Indeed, my main claim in this chapter is that there was no unified Roman discourse of poverty. Perhaps the best way to show what I mean by this is to contrast poverty with 9 10

11

Braund (1989) on the question. Henderson (1999) exposes the problems inherent in all attempts to extract social history from satire. Scheidel (2003a) against Laurence (1997) on Scobie (1986). Scobie is in fact rather careful about what inferences he draws from literary sources, and builds his picture largely on the evidence of the Digest and archaeological information. There is an urgent need, then, for a sociology of ancient literary practices, especially for the Roman world. Fantham (1996) is maybe the best overall account of these dynamics. For an attempt to locate literary activity relative to other aristocratic pursuits see Woolf (2003).

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objects of writing such as luxury or sexuality. Each of these may be said to have become well demarcated and densely packed discursive fields. As such they were cultivated for the many rhetorical ends they might be made to serve. Over time, they came to be well provided with canonical exempla, with stock citations and allusions, and they evolved their own classic formulations, loci communes, and inspired cunning elaborations on the same. Luxury and sex had many uses in the performative, deliberative and argumentative terrains in which Latin rhetoric was deployed. They offered fuel for political invective, they might make villains more magnificent or terrifying, they could even offer great culture-mythical narratives about moral decline, or the means of debunking an idealised past.12 Poverty, by contrast, seems to have been less central, a topic generally evoked only in passing. When poverty was needed, however, it could be evoked to great effect. Perhaps no account of misery is as vivid as Lucretius’ account of the collapse of the archetypal civilised society, classical Athens, under the impact of the plague.13 The account of the pathology of the disease, and of its progression day by day leads into a catalogue of horrors: self-mutilation by the afflicted, the rapid death of carrion birds after they have fed on the infected corpses, the spread of despair, the erosion of human values, neglect of the gods. The finale is the collapse of the burial customs that the pious Athenians had always followed, as each man looked after the burial of his own dead as best he could. Sudden disaster and ghastly poverty persuaded them to many new expedients. For with great weeping they would lay out their own dead on the wood piled on funeral pyres belonging to other families, and as they put the torches to the wood were fighting bloody battles over them, rather than abandon their dead.14 (Lucr. De Rerum Natura 6.1283–6)

Poverty here is collective, the condition of an entire society reduced by disaster, an accompaniment to the end of that civilisation the creation of which Lucretius had charted earlier in his work. Yet this is not an apocalyptic vision like the Norse account of the events preceding Ragnarok, the battle at the end of the world. All that it has taken to return Athens at its peak to original savagery is res subita et paupertas horrida, unforeseen disaster and ghastly poverty. Poverty is damage, as potentially horrific as it is collateral. 12 13 14

Edwards (1993) for some of these uses. I am grateful to my colleague Dr Emily Greenwood for drawing my attention to this passage. Multaque res subita et paupertas horrida suasit; / namque suos consanguineos aliena rogorum / insuper extructa ingenti clamore locabant / subdebantque faces, multo cum sanguine saepe / rixantes potius quam corpora deserentur.

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But poverty was not the plot, not the centre of attention, and it was never centre field when the Romans contemplated the world, civility and history. How then did Roman writers learn to evoke the plight of the poor? Just as in the case of those impassioned denunciations of Roman imperialism put into the mouths of barbarian enemies by Sallust and Tacitus, the voice of the poor was impersonated by those who had been trained in the standard exercises of the rhetorical schools. Poverty is in fact a common theme in Seneca the Elder’s Controversiae, a collection of ‘classic’ treatments of the stock themes of the schools, a collection that presents itself as a didactic tool aimed in the first place at the author’s sons, constituting a series of exempla of speech rather than of heroic action. A good example is provided by the themes of the ninth set piece in Book 2: A rich man disinherits his three sons. He asks a poor man to allow him to adopt his only son. The poor man wishes to agree, but his son refuses, and is disinherited.

A series of treatments follow, each treating the case from a different perspective, and each linked to the name of one of the famous orators Seneca commemorates in this work. One of the most vivid is produced by Arellius Fuscus the Elder.15 The youth first appeals to the rich man to choose a fatherless youth, then to his father to set him any other task, and then embarks on an attack on riches and praise of poverty. Riches do not bring happiness to those who have them. The poverty of Romulus and the filial love of Aeneas are cited. His father means more to him than riches ever could. Riches might have corrupted him ‘How I love you poverty, since through you I remain innocent!’16 Renewed protestations of love for his father are followed by exempla, those of Crassus and Croesus showing the risks of wealth, those of Tubero and Fabricius showing how ancestral virtue was associated with poverty in Rome. An even more striking version is given by Papirius Fabianus,17 whom Seneca describes in the preface as philosophus. The speech opens with a vivid portrayal of a bloody battle, a condemnation of all war as parricide (parricidium) and the allegation that the motive for war is greed for riches, riches that will be used pointlessly. Buildings are raised so high that they risk burning down or collapsing. The desire for luxury leads to desecration of the earth through mining and deforestation, the wealth extracted brings anxiety and fear. ‘O poverty, how little known a good you are!’ and so it goes on, cataloguing adynata and unnatural reversals of sea and land in 15 17

Sen. Controv. 2.1.4–8. Sen. Controv. 2.1.10–13.

16

Quam te, paupertas, amo, si beneficio tuo innocens sum!

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elaborate building projects. The speeches from the perspective of the son are followed by those taking the father’s part, in large part in defence of wealth. Porcius Latro has the father declare ‘It is the census that raises one to senatorial rank, the census that separates Roman knights from the plebs, the census that orders the army and decides who will judge in the forum.’ Arellius Fuscus claims that antique poverty meant nothing because ‘then, everyone was poor’. But in some sense it is Seneca’s subsequent discussion which is most revealing. The orators are differentiated not by how they treat poverty, but by the way they treat riches. Should the son attack the rich man or riches itself? Should the son declare that he does not wish to be rich, or that he would not know how to be rich? Controversiae were in their nature extreme. They employed hard cases, ostensibly to test the speakers’ ingenuity and teach them skills for use in less exotic contexts. Other uses of these training exercises have been more recently suggested.18 Apart from the internal dynamics of the genre towards competitive displays of virtuosity and written versions of ex tempore speeches to be read at leisure, the exercises perhaps also played a role in socialisation and acculturation. The stock exempla, it has been suggested, played in the Roman imagination a role analogous to myth or drama in that of classical Athens; the preoccupations with honour, masculinity and physical bravery perhaps helped form a public and masculine identity cast in those terms; the reliance on formal and traditional modes of argument maybe bolstered confidence in custom; the dilemmas that opposed rival officia modelled the moral dilemmas that characterised adult life; the insistence on filial pietas, on keeping one’s word, on obedience to the law all taught Roman virtues. Poverty has a prominent place in this schematic universe in which Roman boys learn to become Roman men. Rhetorical exercises mapped the social universe as populations of characteristic types: the general, the father, the slave, the magistrate and so on. In this gallery, the poor man and the rich man were prominent figures. Nor was this habit of thinking confined to the Schools. In the Dreambook of Artemidorus, a key tool for discerning the meaning of a dream was the identity of the dreamer affected by it: comparisons between what the same dream meant for a poor man and a rich man are frequent. So, dreaming of oneself as a baby was a good sign for a poor man (as it signified nourishment) but a bad sign for a craftsman, a wealthy man or a married man (1.13). Dreaming one was pregnant is good if one is a poor man, bad if one is a rich man, bad for a married man, good for a bachelor 18

Kaster (2001) for a brief introduction to this literature.

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(1.14). It is a good thing for a young woman to dream her breasts are full of milk, good too for an old woman if she is poor, bad if she is rich, good if she is unmarried but bad if prepubertal (1.16). Intermediate conditions were excluded from this world. As in the schematic and imaginary world of the controversiae, the rhetoric of dichotomisation set the wealthy perilously close to poverty. Discussions of poverty are generated in the controversiae as part of a discourse much more central to Roman culture, a discourse about wealth, its risks, advantages, moral consequences and ethical possibilities. As in New Comedy, to which the scenarios of controversiae often bear a striking resemblance, much depends on a drama of role reversal. The rich man is often threatened with impoverishment, and sons with being disinherited. The scenarios also often include cases of unexpected inheritances. Reversals of fortune are essential to the pocket narratives included in almost all the scenarios. The opening scenario of Book 1 is a good example: Two brothers were in dispute. One had a son. The uncle fell on hard times. Although his father forbade him to, the youth supported him. As a result he was disinherited, but made no complaint. He was then adopted by his uncle. The latter received a bequest and became rich. Now the father has fallen on hard times, and the youth is supporting him but against his uncle’s wishes. Now he is disinherited. (Sen. Controv. 1.1)

Characteristically, financial reversals are interlinked in the scenario with shifting relationships and apparently conflicting officia. The first speaker, adopting the persona of the son, ironically asks if he is being punished for luxuria (when he has spent all his money supporting two aged men). There follows a graphic evocation of the father, unable even to beg effectively since the uncle is known to be rich, and of the son starving to death because of the old men’s quarrel. The third speaker evokes Marius, a beggar at Carthage, a stock figure for the reversal of fortune but doubly relevant here to the theme of impoverishment. Speaker after speaker taking the son’s part evokes the pangs of hunger, the decrepit appearance of the beggar, the humiliation of begging and the double humiliation of begging in vain. The situation is fantastic, of course, but the anxieties about impoverishment are perhaps characteristic of this social class. They are prominent among the anxieties to which the Stoicism of Epictetus offers remedies.19 In his discussion of the various treatments of Controversia 2.9 Seneca devotes 19

For example Discourses 2.13.11 on the futility of worrying over things outside our control. ‘But we are anxious about our body, about our property, about Caesar’s opinion of us, but not about what is within us’; cf. 1.110.

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most attention to Fabianus the philosopher. These rhetorical set pieces drew on subjects debated at length by Stoics, Epicureans, Cyrenaics and Cynics among others. Are material goods indifferent or bad? Is the pleasure they bring to be sought, despised or actively avoided? Are desire and the fear of loss that goes with it, obstacles to contentment and detachment? Other ancient sciences offered alternative approaches to the ‘therapy of desire’.20 When Manilius in his Astronomica discusses the twelve athla (a technical term in astrology sometimes translated as ‘lots’) into which his astrological authorities divide human experience the first place is given to Fortuna: This is how it is known in astrology, because fortune contains in itself the main characteristics of the home [domus]. All that attaches to the name of home: the limit set on the number of one’s slaves, how much land you will own, the size of buildings it is given one to erect, all according to the degree of harmony in the wandering stars of bright heaven. (Manilius, Astronomica 3.96–101)

Wealth appears again as the subject of the sixth athlum while the twelfth offers advice on success in general, itemised as decisions on whether or not to take up positions, whether to go to law, whether to engage in overseas trade, and whether to invest in arable crops or vines. The Dreambook of Artemidorus offered itself as a manual to allow some categories of dreams to be used to predict the future. As with astrology, many of the outcomes deal with material prosperity or the reverse. The controversiae played on the fear of sudden reversals of fortune. The play they offer is at points fairly sophisticated. Desire for wealth was commonly condemned as avaritia and fear of losing it was for Stoics at least a sign of a deficiency in wisdom. The example of the doubly disinherited yet virtuous son, offered young Romans respectable reasons for valuing their wealth, along with the chance to play act at giving it all up for the sake of honour and filial piety. Concerns over wealth were central to the Roman moralising tradition from the creation of Latin literature onwards, not least for the reason Porcius Latro gives in the first case discussed. The census was in some respects the foundation for social order in the Republic.21 Under the principate, new property qualifications separated senatorial and equestrian orders, equestrian procurators took titles from their salaries, and provincial taxes incorporated censuses of a new sort. Wealth in Rome was not simply a focus of moral scrutiny (as it was in many ancient city states), nor was it important 20 21

Martha Nussbaum’s (1994) apt characterisation of much of the philosophy of this period. Nicolet (1976) is fundamental on the Republic. The means by which wealth marked social status changed but did not diminish under the Principate.

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primarily because it was convertible to social or political capital. The institution of the census made wealth one of the most explicit and formal measures of an individual’s social standing and a key component of his public identity. One consequence was that impoverishment carried with it the threat of a form of social death. For the grandest Romans it would entail formal expulsion from the senate, or even the equestrian centuries and a consequent check on careers in the public or the emperor’s service, as well as the inability to sustain reciprocal exchanges of the kind needed to maintain social intercourse with one’s social peers. Where other societies have envisaged the category of the nobleman fallen on hard times but sustained by his friends, or even the gallant figure who loses one fortune by accident and wins another through his own resources, Romans seem to have found it more difficult to imagine a return from penury by reputable means. Fear of impoverishment must have been difficult to separate from fear of the loss of one’s social identity. So maybe it is not surprising that the debate on wealth was central to the work of poets, orators and philosophers alike. Poverty entered the equation mostly as its opposite, sometimes even as an heuristic or rhetorical construct: Wealthlessness, as it were, rather than Destitution. Just as Peter Garnsey has shown how much ancient theorising on slavery was largely a product of a preoccupation with liberty,22 so poverty was evoked as a vantage point from which to scrutinise wealth. Once evoked, of course, there was more that could be done with the notion. But Latin writing about poverty almost never had anything to do with the actual experiences of those whom we would classify as the Roman poor. Seneca the Younger offers plentiful examples of the deployment of poverty in debates on the proper use of riches. Here is one from Letter 17: Doubtless what you seek from postponing your studies is that you may not fear poverty. But what if you should seek it instead? Riches have shut off many a man from the attainment of wisdom: poverty is unburdened and free from care. When the trumpet sounds the poor man knows that he is not being attacked, when ‘Water!’ is called for he only seeks a way of escape and does not ask what he can save; if the poor man must go to sea, the harbour does not resound, nor do the wharves bustle with the retinue of just one individual. No throng of slaves 22

Garnsey (1996). For recent examinations of the Roman discourse of slavery, see Fitzgerald (2000) and McCarthy (2000). Both studies in different ways show how literary representations of slaves are never principally ‘about slavery’. Yet the ubiquity of slaves in some genres – notably comedy and satire – set up expectations, norms and stereotypes that were richer and more complex than portrayals of ‘the poor man’ ever became.

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surrounds the poor man – slaves for whose mouths the master must covet the fertile crops of regions beyond the sea. It is easy to fill a few stomachs, when they are well trained, and crave nothing else but to be filled. Hunger costs but little; squeamishness costs much. Poverty is content with fulfilling pressing needs. (Sen. Ep. 17.3–5)23

It is easy to condemn passages of this sort as demonstrating a complete lack of concern for the poor on the part of the Roman elite. Seneca’s argument reads less offensively if we understand paupertas to be the absence of wealth rather than a condition of life. To be fair to him, he follows up ‘if you wish to have leisure for your mind, either be a poor man or behave like a poor man’. For the Stoic, the idea that wealth was not necessary for wisdom and that given a choice, wisdom was always preferable, was uncontroversial. To clinch his argument Seneca quotes, as he often does, Epicurus: ‘For many the acquisition of riches has not put an end to their miseries, but simply changed their character.’ Wealth or its absence is irrelevant. ‘It is a matter of indifference whether the sick mind finds itself in riches or in poverty. His malady goes with the man.’ Poverty in passages of this kind – and there are a lot of them – is constructed negatively, effectively as the absence of riches, rather than in terms of the actual content of the condition. Rhetorical modes of performance and composition, the dialectical character of philosophical writing, the comic technique of juxtaposing opposites – as in the Satyricon where Neronian aesthetes hang out with the low life – all these combine to construe poverty not as a clearly conceptualised condition of Deprivation, but negatively as the Opposite of Wealth. Projects of dichotomisation of this kind produce glimpses of a fantastic Roman world created to illuminate the real one in the manner of the imaginary lands of Gulliver’s Travels. It is no surprise that any literal reading of these texts (and so also all attempts to cut and paste them into reportage) fails miserably.24 If Seneca’s pauper seems reasonably comfortable to modern readers, then Umbricius paints a terrifying picture of the lot of even those whom we would regard as reasonably well off. The images do not add up because 23

24

Nempe hoc quaeris et hoc ista dilatione vis consequi, ne tibi paupertas timenda sit; quid si adpetenda est? multis ad philosophandum obstitere divitiae; paupertas expedita est, secura est. cum classicum cecinit, scit non se peti; cum aqua conclamata est, quomodo exeat, non quid efferat, quaerit; ut si navigandum est, non strepitat portus nec unius comitatu inquieta sunt litora. non circumstat illum turba servorum, ad quos pascendos transmarinarum regionum est optanda fertilitas. facile est pascere paucos ventres et bene institutos et nihil aliud desiderantes quam inpleri. parvo fames constat, magno fastidium. paupertas contenta est desideriis instantibus satis facere. Dupont’s (1992), 32–47 discussion provides a case in point, accepting the notion of a society divided into rich and poor, but then forced to allow her poor security, leisure, slaves and a degree of opulence.

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they are not part of the same picture. The sociologist misses any sense of the gradations of poverty or any depiction of kinds of poverty between that of the nobleman who has lost his fortune and is unable to keep up with his peers, and that of the beggar starving to death in the street. The declaimers in the controversiae deftly collapse the categories into one, as if disinheritance would really reduce a senator’s son to starvation. The absence of a unified and coherent view of poverty is very marked. Neither Juvenal nor Seneca have much to gain in these particular contexts from portraying a more gradated social hierarchy; elsewhere the condemnation that both show to social climbers implies forcefully that no unbreachable gulf existed between rich and poor.25 Poverty as Unwealth admitted many other uses. One was in the construction of various kinds of the virtuous poor. Republican aristocrats toasting turnips while receiving embassies, ploughing their own fields and dressed in rough home-spun linen are one such category. The poor but loyal citizensoldiery, farming tiny plots in the hills and raising huge families between campaigns of world conquest form another. Past virtue was often the past before riches, whether riches won by war or acquired by avarice. These themes have been well explored.26 Bucolic poetry and lyric too sometimes celebrate a simple life, rural rather than urban, an imaginary world in John Lennon’s sense, with no officia, no politics, no possessions but no real deprivation or hunger either. These worlds too were poor only in their remoteness from what did preoccupy their readers. The absence of struggles for wealth, status and security is noticeable. So too is their precarious existence, idylls which Roman history periodically threatens to disrupt.27 Many other texts could be evoked here, but I have chosen to conclude with the epigrams of Martial, partly because he is so often mined for Realien or just for nice ‘illustrations’ for an argument about social history, but partly because he shows what an ingenious and versatile poet could do with poverty. Poverty could be the basis of invective. Take Epigram 1.92, an obscene attack on a rival in love: Cestus often complains to me with his eyes full of tears that you have poked him with your finger, Mamurianus. You don’t need to stop at the finger. You can have Cestus all to yourself, Mamurianus, if he is the only thing you lack. If, on the other 25 26 27

Compare Scheidel (chapter 3) on the middling poor. For instance in Lintott (1972) and Levick (1982). Hor. Carm. 1.1, Verg. Ecl. 1 are loci classici, programmatically establishing their rural idylls just on the margins of contemporary political strife. The Good Life they portray is in any case more a matter of simplicity than poverty.

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hand, you have no hearth, fireplace nor bare bed frame; if you do not own even a chipped Chione or Antiope beaker; if your loin cloth is stained and patched and if a Gallic cloak covers only half your bum; if your only food is the smell of a grimy kitchen; if you lie on your belly with the dog to drink filthy water: why in that case I shall dig my finger into, not your bum – for a bum that never shits is no bum at all – but into your one remaining eye. Don’t call me the jealous type or ill-intentioned. Just wait until you’re full before you bugger about, Mamurianus.28

The epigram is very Catullan, in its subject matter, in the homoerotic theme and in the not so-casual Hellenisms, and in fact Catullan models have been suggested, most plausibly poems 15 and 21.29 Like Catullus 21 this epigram abuses its victim, called Mamurianus (another echo of Catullus?) for his lack of any comforts, but it goes further in painting a vivid picture of the physical squalour of poverty. Most striking is the image of the pauper lying on the ground to lap dirty water alongside a dog, or the outrageous suggestion that he has so little to eat that he has lost the (proper) use of his bum. The association of the poor with dogs recurs in different forms in other epigrams of Martial. The pauper lives like a dog, he eats like one, he competes with dogs for food, and will be eaten by dogs rather than buried.30 Martial could, in other words, offer much more graphic images of destitution than those evoked by either Seneca. Martial pushes the association harder. His paupers come to lead dogs’ lives, that is, they are dehumanised and made morally remote from those with money. Wealth here accompanies or maybe even ensures humanity. The ideological bestialisation of barbarians and slaves in Roman texts has been noted by others.31 Put otherwise we could see the association with dogs as a means of putting social distance between rich and poor, between reader and poor and of course between the rival lovers. Mamurianus’ abjection makes him an impossible competitor for his sophisticated rival, and also someone who can be intimidated with impunity. 28

29

30 31

Saepe mihi queritur non siccis Cestos ocellis / tangi se digito, Mamuriane, tuo. / non opus est digito: totum tibi Ceston habeto / si deest nil aliud, Mamuriane, tibi. / sed si nec focus est nudi nec sponda grabati / nec curtus Chiones Antiopesve calix / cerea si pendet lumbis et scripta lacerna / dimidiasque nates Gallica paeda tegit, / pasceris et nigrae solo nidore culinae / et bibis inmundam cum cane pronus aquam, / non culum, neque enim est culus qui non cacat olim, / sed fodiam digito qui superest oculum / nec me zelotypum nec dixeris esse malignum. / denique pedica, Mamuriane, satur. Catullus 15 and 21 both addressing and threatening Aurelius, a rival for Catullus’ puer. In 21 Aurelius is abused as starving and about to teach Catullus’ loved one poverty. Poverty is treated quite differently in 23 and 24. The image of dogs eating the bodies of the poor recurs more widely in Latin literature: see Scobie (1986). Wiedemann (1986) on barbarians, Bradley (2000) on slaves.

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The ferocious curse in Epigram 10.5 damns an abusive poet to exile even from the community of beggars: Let him wander through the city, an exile from the bridge and the hill Let him be the least among the raucous beggars Let him pray for the crusts of rotten bread thrown to the dogs. May December be long and winter wet May the shutting of the arcade prolong his miserable chill Let him hail as blessed and lucky, The corpses carried off on the litter of Orcus.32 (Martial, Epigrams 10.5.2–9)

The dogs get to eat this pauper even before he expires, and he goes on to the worst punishments of epic hell. The physical privations of life in the open are vividly enough portrayed here. But perhaps the most striking of these epigrams is 4.53 in which Martial throws together pauper as dog and pauper as philosophical hero. ‘He’s not a Cynic he’s a (real) dog.’ This poverty is for real. And this time it is not poverty on the bridges or beside steep inclines: the ragged man is inside the penetralia of Domitian’s sparkling new temple of Minerva, close in fact to the streets in which Martial claims elsewhere his books are for sale. Poverty is suddenly right up close. One of the poet’s comic creations, a familiar figure on the literary scene as Martial evokes it, turns out to be actually starving to death. (And I thought he was just a philosopher!) Martial gets much more mileage out of poverty. There are reworkings of conventional advice to spurn luxury and avoid the cares of wealth. The theme is picked up several times in runs of connected epigrams. Epigram 2.51 attacks Hyllas who has just one denarius but, although starving, spends it on buying sex: ‘your miserable stomach watches your arse pig itself ’. Epigram 2.53 offers the appropriately named Maximus advice on how to become free through frugal living . . . except that frugal means drinking wine from Veii and foregoing gold inlaid crockery. Epigram 2.57 presents an unnamed figure cutting a dash in the Saepta in an amethyst gown but then pawning a ring to buy his dinner. Epigram 2.63 winds up the sequence with the story of Milichus spending HS 100,000 on a prostitute. Martial seems to exploit the discontinuous nature of a book of epigrams to explore the same theme from different perspectives. Exact sums of money occur relatively frequently, making some contrasts exaggerated. Hyllas abuses one denarius, 32

Per urbem pontis exul et clivi / interque raucos ultimus rogatores / oret caninas panis inprobi buccas. / illi December longus et madens bruma / clususque fornix triste frigus extendat / voces beatos clamitetque felices / Orciniana qui feruntur in sponda.

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Milichus HS 100,000, yet each earns just one epigram of reproach. Gaurus in 4.67 is described as poor, possessing only HS 300,000, and denied the balance needed to acquire equestrian status by his praetorian friend who preferred to patronise charioteers. Other sequences return to explore again the ethical minefield of the cena, the types of stingy host and gluttonous parasite, the sportula and so on. Perhaps the most discussed play with poverty concerns Martial’s selfpresentation as a poor poet. The theme recurs often and in different contexts. Epigram 2.90 affects to apologise to Quintilian for the fact that Martial is still poor, and prefers a simple life, to slogging his guts out in the lawcourts. Yet in the next two epigrams he successfully begs for the privilege of the ius trium liberorum from Domitian. And there are many poems in which Martial advertises his poverty in the context of complaints about patrons behaving badly. One sequence occurs in Book 5, a book which professes a more serious tone in keeping with its dedication to Domitian. Obscenity is banished (temporarily, of course), Horace and Virgil for a while eclipse Catullus, and the emperor is held in view. So too is Martial. Epigrams 5.10 and 5.13 combine to claim that whereas most Roman poets have only been recognised after their deaths, all Rome reads Martial; 5.17 and 5.19 flaunt his imperial patronage and his equestrian status, so it is a surprise in 5.13 to read ‘I am, I confess, and always will be a poor man’ in a poem that contrasts Callistratus’ huge ‘freedman’s wealth’ (libertinas . . . opes), his 100columned house, his Egyptian ousiai and north Italian flocks unfavourably with Martial’s standing: quod sum non potes esse. Latin poets’ claims to poverty have been much discussed.33 It is certainly true that even if we know of some very rich men composing poetry, for many it offered a chance of upward social mobility. Yet this was mobility within the upper part of the property-owning classes. Martial was a Spanish landowner and a pupil of Quintilian before any patronage elevated or enriched him. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to all those other poets of allegedly slender means, Horace the ex-tribune, Tibullus, Catullus and perhaps Lucilius. There is no real sense in which these men were poor; indeed they often advertised the wealth and status their poetry had brought them. The poor poet trope is so pervasive that we have become desensitised to it. Interestingly it is not found with anything like the same intensity in the Greek models that Catullus and his successors claimed for their own new poetics. Was this because there was nothing quite like the Roman census in the Greek world? 33

Saller (1983), Hardie (1983). For a slightly more literal reading of the texts see White (1982).

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The puzzle remains: What are we to make of poems like the following epigram (again from Martial)? Rufus, a man just looked me up and down, as carefully as a slave merchant or a gladiator trainer would, and when he had his look and pointed me out said ‘You there, are you that Martial whose mischievous verses are known to everyone who does not have the ear of a Batavian savage?’ I smiled modestly and with a slight nod acknowledged that I was indeed the man he thought. ‘Why then’ he asked ‘do you wear such a rubbish cloak?’ ‘Because’ I answered ‘I am a rubbish poet.’ Please avoid this happening too often to a poor poet, Rufus, and send me a decent cloak. (Martial, Epigrams 6.82)34

However we envisage Martial’s exact wealth he enjoyed imperial patronage, that of many senators, a house on the Janiculum and a range of privileges including the tribunatus semestris, and he boasts of these, and of his fame, in many poems. He is not a senator, to be sure, and never casts himself in the role of patron as Pliny does, but by no stretch of the imagination is he poor. What is the function of this pretence? Put otherwise, why was poverty such an attractive persona for a Latin poet to adopt? Identifying poverty as a persona helps in several ways. For a start it alerts us to the generic conditions within which poets claim poverty: epigram, satire and other genres in which deference to patrons intrudes beyond the preface. There is a metapoetic nod, then, to the slender muse, but it is also the badge of false modesty, or the invitation ‘Let’s play patrons and clients’. Treating the poor poet as a persona also resolves the apparent contradictions between different poems, apparent that is to those bent on a biographical approach. Martial’s lack of a decent cloak in 6.83 doesn’t mean he can’t out compete Mamurianus for the favours of Cestus in 1.92 and we don’t need to invent a narrative of impoverishment to make the two add up. Poverty for Martial is a (tatty) cloak put on for some purposes and not others, and we should not expect coherence in his self-representation. Epigram means never having to be consistent. Other masks or cloaks served other purposes. When Martial puts on the poor poet’s persona it is almost always to achieve a distance from wealth, when his attack is directed against wealth, the wealthy or the abuse of riches. So in the poem attacking the wealthy freedman Callistratus, the affectation of poverty gives Martial a perspective, a kind of licence and marks out the vast moral gulf that (Martial claims) separates them. ‘I am what you cannot 34

Quidam me modo, Rufe, diligenter / inspectum, velut emptor aut lanista / cum vultu digitoque subnotasset / ‘tune es tune’ ait ‘ille Martialis / cuius nequitias iocosque novit / aurem qui non habet Batavam?’ / subrisi modice, levique nutu / me quem dixerat esse non negavi. / ‘cur ergo’ inquis ‘habes malas lacernas?’ / respondi: ‘quia sum malus poeta’. / hoc nec saepius accidat poetae, mittas, Rufe, mihi bonas lacernas.

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become.’ In the poems on patronage, Martial’s feigned dependence gives him the licence to criticise lapses of generosity.35 There were other routes to the same end. The poet of the Panegyric to Piso praises his patron as follows: Which of your admirers, eloquent youth, come to your door a pauper without being welcomed with generous indulgence and finding himself with an unexpected income [censu]? (Panegyric to Piso 109–11)36

The poet goes on to praise Piso for treating his clients as equals, for not patronising or mocking them – in short for behaving in exactly the opposite way to the boorish employer of Lucian’s Hired Intellectual forced to suffer indignities and sing for his supper. Most houses scorn the friend of slender means (tenuem amicum); his reputation (probitas) is a function of his poverty. Piso does not want a crowd of harsh or ill-educated clients (dura clientum turba rudisve) to precede him around the forum. We have returned at last to the banquets of the leisured rich. Eloquent poets, whose education and manners proclaim their status, play at paupers to amuse and tease their hosts and extract from them a little of the wealth about which they had been made to feel uneasy. The freedom of speech allowed between pretended equals permitted a play of exaggerated inequality. Wealth itself, so opulently displayed in the mansions of the capital, invited the scurrilous scurra and incited the praise of wealthlessness with its alleged absence of care. The poet offered the rich man one way of cleaning his wealth, just as Christian beggars would later allow bishops to present themselves as lovers of the poor.37 Poetic poverty illuminated the moral perils of wealth, answered and mocked anxieties over impoverishment, and introduced low comedy and vulgarity into their feasts. The poor themselves, abject and repulsive, were made innocuous because less than human and ridiculous. Poetic poverty also offered graphic reassurances of the absolute necessity of material wealth as a precondition of a civilised life. Here it fed on and elaborated the overt role wealth had in structuring Roman society, a role for which the census is a convenient symbol for us as for them. Poverty, finally, was the darkness against which Roman civilisation shone so brightly. For the wealthy, that is. 35 36 37

Cloud (1989) for a subtle demonstration of the stylised and non-realised nature of Juvenal’s poetics of patronage. Hardie (1983) pursues the theme more widely. Quis tua cultorum, iuvenis facunde, tuorum / limina pauper adit, quem non animosa beatum / excipit et subito iuvat indulgentia censu? Brown (2002).

chap t e r 6

Poverty and population in Roman Egypt ∗ Dominic Rathbone

introd uction In the broad history of ancient poverty Roman Egypt is no exception. Christianisation in the fourth century made poverty prominent. In Christian literature from Egypt charity to the poor is a virtue preached constantly and generally, enacted by individuals and the church itself. For instance, a late antique pilgrim found the porch of a church in Oxyrhynchus crowded with poor people sleeping over in anticipation of the weekly hand-out on Sunday morning. When papyrus documents re-emerge in the late fifth century after their curious near disappearance during the previous hundred years, they too attest regular support by church organisations for the poor – widows especially, but also orphans, the old and the infirm – mainly in the form of provision of foodstuffs and clothing.1 In Roman Egypt of the first to third centuries ad, as elsewhere in the Roman world, there is no comparable literature of poverty, no comparable ideology of charity and no comparable documented institutions of poor-relief. The same seems largely true of Ptolemaic Egypt.2 Three main hypotheses are on offer for this striking difference. All have been proposed for the Roman and Byzantine worlds in general rather than for Egypt in particular, but they are transferable as models. First, that poverty – structural and conjunctural, deep and shallow, or however it is categorised – existed in Roman Egypt no less than in late antique Egypt, but it is all but invisible to us because it was disregarded by the betteroff authors of our literary and documentary evidence, and perhaps also ∗

1

2

Without Peter’s friendship and gently acute advice, I would be a much poorer historian. I would have been poorer when I wrote this without the Research Professorship granted me by the Leverhulme Trust. Example cited by Brown (2002) 12. I cannot find any general study of Christian charity in later Roman Egypt. The role of the church and of bishops is discussed by Wipszycka (1972) 110–19 and (1998); cf. Krause (1994–5) vol. 4. Although I have a sneaking suspicion that investigation would unearth more Ptolemaic poverty.

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because we have little evidence from the megalopolis of Alexandria to which the poor may have drifted. I suspect that many ancient historians, if forced to bet on the issue, would put their money here, but the case is rarely argued. The principal exception is Krause’s exhausting study of widows and orphans in the Roman empire, which makes heavy use of evidence from Egypt. Second, that late antique poverty was a new phenomenon, and that poverty really was less prevalent in the Roman period. An influential example of this position is Patlagean’s book on economic and social poverty in Byzantium of the fourth to seventh centuries, although her Byzantium excludes Egypt. Patlagean’s basic argument is that there was enormous population growth from the fourth to the mid-sixth century, which, against a background of inelastic economic productivity and a rigid social structure which perpetuated inequality in the distribution of resources, created a new underclass of chronically poor people, especially in cities. Third, that poverty was not a significant phenomenon either in the Roman empire or in late antiquity. Peter Brown has recently argued that Christian leaders, spiritual and temporal, spun an exaggerated story of the poor and their charity to them as a means of justifying their leadership. Implicitly late antique socio-economic changes had not caused poverty; it was the product, in Brown’s neat soundbite, of ‘a revolution in social imagination’.3 This chapter is a preliminary exploration of the case of Roman Egypt in the first to third centuries ad, with the aim of clarifying from that chronological side how we might begin to choose between these three broad interpretative options or variants of them. Constraints of time and expertise oblige me to leave exploration of the late antique side to others. Because quantifiable direct evidence for poverty is scarce, inference from demographic conditions, insofar as we can reconstruct them, is an important weapon in our armoury; hence my title ‘Poverty and population in Roman Egypt’. wid ows The case of widows provides a useful introduction to the range of problems. Widows were a special interest of church charity, and a personal interest of some churchmen like Jerome. As we will see, the traditional focus on widows is emotive and may mislead; the category we should consider is single adult women. In the first volume of his study, Krause uses demographic evidence, 3

Krause (1994–5); Patlagean (1977); Brown (2002).

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much of it from Egypt, to argue that Roman society of the first to third centuries ad produced numerous widows who constituted up to 30 per cent of all adult women. In his second volume he argues that most widows were solitary and bereft of family support. Typically, in Krause’s view, women were married quite young, starting in their later teens, to older men; if they survived childbirth they tended to outlive their husbands considerably and, unlike widowers, they rarely remarried. The underlying assumptions of the last point are that both widows and widowers wished to remarry, and that widowers preferred and could get younger women. Krause’s presentation of the situation is open to some doubt. For Roman citizens, McGinn has drawn attention to the problem of the obligation to remarry imposed by Augustus’ legislation which, at least in intent, applied quite far down the social scale.4 Although Krause’s story of solitary widows has been endorsed by Hanson, the tale of the known declarations for the provincial census in Egypt, which was held every fourteen years from the early first century until 257/8, as presented by Bagnall and Frier in a study published in the same year as Krause’s work, is more nuanced.5 Women did marry young and to older men, with an average age difference of 7.5 years. Like men, however, women often did remarry in case of their first partner, and also after divorce – and we should add that divorce was quite common in Roman Egypt and generally on equal terms. The difference is that men routinely remarried well into their forties whereas women were less likely to remarry after the age of thirty-five. That means that remarriage formed part of the general pattern of an age-gap in marriage. Only older widows or divorcees passing child-bearing age tended not to remarry. Nonetheless, since elder husbands tended to predecease wives who had survived child-bearing, it is no surprise that around 65 per cent of the women in the census declarations aged over fifty are apparently single, that is ‘single’ in terms of legal status. And this is the real question, more than hair-splitting arguments over reconstruction of the demographic data: how solitary, how susceptible to poverty, were older single women? Women in Roman Egypt had some advantages. In divisions of family wealth Egyptian custom treated daughters fairly equally with sons. In 4

5

McGinn (1999) 622–4; cf. (2002) 66–8 on a possible shortage of socially desirable women. McGinn argues for class differences, but the Gnomon of the Idioslogos (§§29–30), from Egypt, specifies that the annual fine for not remarrying applied to citizen women down to those with the census of the fourth classis, and other penalties down to the third classis. A. Hanson (2000); cf. Rowlandson (1998) 269: ‘Most widows did not re-marry’. Bagnall and Frier (1994) 118–20, 123–7.

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contrast to most or all other provinces, they were not liable to the poll-tax. Women landowners were exempt from liturgies imposed on property, or at least from some liturgies such as the cultivation of unleased state land (epimerismos), as we learn from their complaints when officials tried to impose munera on them.6 We do have a fair number of petitions from single women to local and provincial authorities complaining of mistreatment by officials and private persons, which often include appeals such as ‘since I am a woman who is helpless and alone’, or ‘You give help to all, my lord Prefect, but particularly to women because of their natural weakness’. However, this plaint is now recognised to be a rhetorical ploy, analogous to farmers claiming that they will be forced to abandon the land to the loss of the annona (imperial grain supply). There is often reason to suspect that these supposedly single women were not solitary. A petition was not a formal legal document, and women petitioners did not have to use or name a male guardian (kurios) – indeed to do so would have undercut the rhetoric of helplessness. A rather brazen case has ‘a woman, widowed and weak’, repeatedly petitioning on behalf of her son-in-law.7 Where we have family archives, we discover that these same women could find kurioi when they needed them for other business, often relatives by blood or marriage. More generally, these archives show sons caring for their widowed mothers, in one case when the son was at Misenum and the mother in Karanis.8 Parkin has shown that caring for aged parents was custom in Egypt, not law, as some scholars had held. But the custom had official support. A few cases suggest that landowners were granted some exemption from liturgies if they were engaged in ‘feeding the old’ (geroboskia, gerotrophia), which I suspect was an exemption specific to land ceded to

6

7

8

Poll-tax: Rathbone (1993c) 87–8, 97. Nor were they liable to liturgies on the person, but this was presumably the case in all provinces. Exemptions: e.g. P Tebt. 2.327 = W.Chr. 394 (180s): ‘a woman without help, burdened with many years’; P Oxy. 6.899 (ad 200) = Rowlandson (1998) no. 149, with Rowlandson (1996) 91–2. E.g. P Oxy. 50 3555 and 1.77.ii (from which the quotations come); cf. 6.899; 2.261; = Rowlandson (1998) nos. 73, 177, cf. 149, 133, with comments at pp. 231, 354. Compare, e.g. P Oxy. 3.488 (2nd–3rd): a woman petitioner, using a kurios, does not claim helplessness but threatens to stop farming the land. Petition for son-in-law: P Oxy. 8.1120 (early 3rd). In P Oxy. 6.899 (n. 6 above) Apollonarion made two petitions in her own name, then a third through a kurios. From Karanis in the later 290s we have two petitions in the names of the sisters Taesis and Kyrillous, although they were minors, and agreements, tax-payments and another petition transacted through two male relatives (P Cair. Isid. 59; 62; 63; 64; 104; 105) (64 = Rowlandson (1998) no.176), and their papers were kept by the head of their extended family, Aurelius Isidoros. Caring sons: Rowlandson (1998) archive E (early 2nd), the mother of Apollonios the strategos; G (later 2nd), Taesis the mother of Apollinarios, a recruit to the Misenum fleet; J (late 2nd), Satornila the mother of several devoted soldier sons.

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offspring in the legal form of a mortgage in the old sense (donatio mortis causa).9 Hanson’s analysis of the residence of the women registered in the extant census documents adds some numerical detail.10 Of the 290 women aged 13 or over, no co-resident husband is mentioned for 145, of whom 37 are unmarried girls and 4 presumed partners of soldiers. That leaves 104 women (36 per cent) who may be widowed, divorced, separated permanently or temporarily, or never married. Of these 104, 63 are living with an adult son or other male relation, 39 live in predominantly female households, and only one, or possibly two, seem to have been lodgers in houses with no resident kin, and the one certain solitary had her freedwoman living with her.11 So almost all the 290 lived with kin, and the census declarations accord with the family archives that sons normally looked after widowed mothers. But women who lacked adult male relatives were not helpless. Some of the 13 per cent who lived in predominantly female households presumably had male friends, and maybe some had unofficially cohabiting partners. Marriage was a contract which regulated property arrangements; once a woman had passed child-bearing age, formal marriage had little point and would only have complicated existing arrangements for children by a previous partner. Direct evidence is predictably scarce, but cases must lurk among male lodgers of similar age, unrelated kurioi and affectionate male correspondents. Other women, perhaps most of them, managed without regular male assistance. Many unrelated kurioi, especially those of lower standing, may have been mere ciphers.12 Some entrepreneurial women devised their own methods of pension arrangement, such as having a young slave girl trained as a musician and singer ‘in the hope that when she came of age I would have her to provide for me in my old age’.13 A hypothesis worth considering is that, in relative historical terms, Roman Egypt was a prosperous and peaceful society in which many older women did not seek 9

10 11 12 13

T. Parkin (2003) 210–12. E.g. SB 8.9642/1 (Tebtunis, c. 112) = Rowlandson (1998) no. 147: Tamystha, aged fifty, gives half of her house to her daughter in return for lifelong accommodation and eventual burial. A. Hanson (2000) 151–2, 160–2, using the declarations listed and numbered by Bagnall and Frier (1994). Declaration 145-Ar-20, but the lodger may be a second cousin; 215-He-1, an eighty-year-old with her freedwoman. Lodgers in census declarations: 179-Ar-9; 187-Ar-10; 243-Ar-3. Correspondents: e.g. Charitous and her neighbour Pompeius Niger: SB 6.9120; P Merton 2.63. Ciphers: e.g. P Oxy. 6.899 (n. 6 above). P Oxy. 50 3555 (n. 7 above), cited above for the phrase ‘helpless and alone’, which A. Hanson (2000) 152 takes at face value. But the petitioner reveals that she had the use of Eucharion, freedwoman of Longinus, whatever his relation to her was. Cf. the ‘solitary’ woman living with her freedwoman (n. 11 above).

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to remarry because they could and did lead independent and not solitary lives. Did the position of older single women worsen in Christian Egypt? There was less divorce, it used to be believed, but instead there was moral pressure against remarriage and unmarried cohabitation. Also, the terms of marriage contracts became less favourable for women, supposedly as part of a general depression of their status. Possibly society as a whole became less prosperous and peaceful. On the other hand, recent studies paint a much rosier picture of the de facto position of women in this era, and Peter Brown has suggested that church support of widows was not part of general relief of the destitute so much as a reward and ‘protection from the danger of impoverishment’ targeted at this group of loyal and respectable churchgoers.14 I leave the question open to the widow-watchers of late antiquity. popul ation and resources It is a fact that poverty is barely heard of in the documents from Roman Egypt. The word penes, ‘poor’, denoting a poor person, occurs only four times in the papyri of the first to third centuries, which comprise nigh on 20,000 documents: once in a sub-literary text, and three times, used in place of the more usual aporos (‘resourceless’), in petitions from ‘poor’ men disputing their liability to liturgies allocated according to wealth.15 The cognates penia, ‘poverty’, and penesthai, ‘to be poor’, do not occur even once. The word ptochos, ‘beggar’, occurs three times in Roman-period texts, each time in a metaphorical sense, twice abusive. The alternative prosaites, and the verb prosaitein, ‘to beg’, do not occur at all.16 The occurrences of penes and its cognates in the works of the Alexandrian divines Philo (early first century) and Clement (late second century), and ptochos too in Clement, are almost all in the context of biblical exegesis or general moralising and are not a reliable index of poverty. Physical disabilities were not uncommon in Roman Egypt, but did not necessarily incapacitate or pauperise their sufferers. Ex votos and their moulds found in village temples show that eye problems and broken limbs 14 15

16

Status: Rowlandson (1998) 195–6, 212–13, with further references. Widows: Brown (2002) 58–9. Sub-literary: P Oxy. 3.471.95 (Acta Alexandrinorum). Petitions: PBrem. 38.21; P.Rein. 1.47.11; PSI 12.1243.18. These and the following comments about words are based on searches of the Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papyri (DDBDP) and Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG). Ptochos: O.Narm. 6.4 (magical text?); SB 10.10354.10; SB 18.13931.8. Prosaites: in Mark 10.46 and other Greek authors of the Roman empire.

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were common afflictions, but ones which the gods could cure, as, for example, Serapis did through Vespasian at Alexandria in ad 70.17 The papyri attest many cases of impaired sight, often in petitions and particularly to escape liturgies – ‘because I am old and blind’. However, while cataracts were doubtless common, full blindness was apparently rare, for in most cases the men were still working, like the old smith with failing eyesight who petitioned a large landowner to release him so he could return to his home village and finish training his apprentices.18 A number of men are described as ‘crippled’ (cholos and cognates), often meaning ‘lame’, or rather ‘with a limp’, but Cholos and Cholion were personal names too, and the men typically appear in documents because they are working or involved in business transactions.19 There was some fiscal relief for men officially registered as ‘disabled’ (see below), but it seems that most people worked round their disabilities with the support of family, friends and others. A nice example is a lady petitioning to protect a ‘disabled cripple’ resident in her orchard from fiscal hassle; presumably she was maintaining him as a live-in gardener.20 Elephantiasis, lastly, was rife in Alexandria according to Galen, who blames the hot climate and coarse diet (both exaggerations), but the only reference to a leper in the Roman-period papyri is to a modest landowner, perhaps a military veteran.21 The rarity of direct references in the Roman-period papyri to poverty, destitution or begging is striking. I can offer two indirect arguments that this makes more than a weak argument from silence for an actual rarity of poverty. First, the many accounts of assaults and thefts, penned as petitions by professional scribes in excited and exaggerated commonplaces, provide no evidence of a destitute and criminal underclass, or of any contemporary notion that one might exist.22 The perpetrators are normally craftsmen, neighbours, officials, sometimes ‘men whom I do not know’, but never ‘beggars’, ‘tramps’ or the like. There is no known imperial legislation or governor’s edict about begging or vagrancy (not to be confused with anachoresis: see below). Although some have seen the revolt of the Boukoloi 17 18 19

20 21

22

Ex votos: common in museums, but mostly unpublished. Vespasian: Tac. Hist. 4.81–2; Suet. Vesp. 7; Dio 66.8.1–2. P Rein. 2.113 (late 3rd). It is sometimes not clear whether cholos is an epithet or patronymic. E.g. a ‘cripple’ listed as a liturgist (P Lond. 12 (p. 155) 189.78; 2nd ad); ‘lame’ estate workers (BGU 3.712.i.8, ii.20; c .190). In Alexandria even the cripples work, in the imagination of the fourth-century SHA (Saturninus 8.6). SB 6.9105 (2nd ad). Galen 11.142 (K¨uhn). Maximus the leper, landowner at Karanis some time before ad 170: P Mich. 4.223.1189; 224 recto.2024; 225.1751. Scheidel (2001c) argues that Roman Egypt was wracked by chronic lethal diseases; for some doubts, see Rathbone (2003). Drexhage (1988) 314–16, but not accepting his vision of chronic banditry; Bagnall (1989) 211–14.

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(‘cowboys’) in the Delta in the 170s as the result of chronic poverty due to over-taxation, there are other elements, some perhaps millennarian, behind this ill-understood event, which coincided with the Antonine plague in Egypt.23 And it is taxation which provides the second reason for discounting chronic poverty. Soon after the annexation of Egypt in 30 bc, the Romans instituted an annual poll-tax in cash to which all male ‘Egyptian’ inhabitants of the province were liable from the ages of fourteen to sixty-two. The system deliberately privileged those of higher status: men with Alexandrian or Roman citizenship were completely exempt, the registered inhabitants of metropoleis, the urban capitals of the ‘nomes’ of Egypt, typically paid 8 dr. per head, whereas villagers typically paid 16 dr., twice as much (some nomes had different rates, but the same ratio).24 An interesting test of the extent of chronic rural poverty would be to check the rate of non-payment of the poll-tax. No exemption or reduction on account of poverty was granted for the poll-tax, whereas all other direct and indirect taxes were more fairly levied pro rata. To take one example, we have a large number of poll-tax records, unfortunately only partially published, for the Arsinoite (Fayyum) village of Philadelphia in the 30s to 50s ad.25 This provides a particularly tough test for two reasons. First, the Arsinoite rural rate of poll-tax was by far the highest in Egypt at 40 dr. per head, which with extras made up a ‘total charge’ (syntaximon) of 44 dr. 6 chalkoi, to which was added the annual ‘pig-tax’ of 1 dr. 1 ob., while the annual ‘dyke-tax’ of 6 dr. 4 ob. was booked separately. Altogether these taxes were equivalent to the average pay for around forty-five days of agricultural labour in the second century. It may be that Arsinoite villagers were free of some other taxes in compensation, but this is not certain. Second, the years follow the excessive inundation of autumn 45 which disrupted agricultural production in 46. In ad 46/7, of 122 poll-taxpayers at Philadelphia recorded in an incomplete register, 65 had paid their poll-tax in full by the end of the year, 21 had made part-payments and 36 (30 per cent) had paid nothing. A certain level of delayed payment was normal. These unusually high arrears persisted for a couple of years, but normal payment had resumed by 50/1. For normality we can compare Ibion Eikosipentarouron, another Fayyum village, where 23 24 25

Alston (1999). Wallace (1938) 116–34; see Parkin (2003) 154–63 on the upper age-limit – perhaps sixty under Augustus and Tiberius, and sixty-five in the third century. A. Hanson (1988). Frankly I cannot make coherent sense of all the various totals of taxpayers and defaulters which she cites; full publication of the records will help to clarify the systems of collection and recording.

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in September 57 the tax-collector requested the writing-off against his target for the poll-tax of the year just ended of some twenty-eight men whom he claimed he was unable to pursue, probably well under 10 per cent of the village taxpayers.26 There are some hints in the poll-tax records of conjunctural poverty, or at least cash-flow problems, but we would expect a greater amount of arrears if rural poverty had been chronic. The obvious objection is that the poor evaded registration or ran away, and the fiscal term of anachoresis (‘going away’) is standardly taken to denote decampment to escape taxation. However, evading registration in small village communities over the fourteen years from birth to the age of liability would have been very difficult, for Egypt did not have the uninhabited but liveable wilds known to Europe, and anachoresis in fact just denoted absence, mainly of young unmarried men, in the normal expectation that the taxpayer would either be registering and paying in their place of temporary residence, or would settle the arrears on their return, which they were allowed three years to do.27 This is not the place for full discussion of how the poll-tax worked and what changes were made to its collection over time, such as holding villagers collectively liable for their poll-tax (from the time of Trajan?). There is room for debate about how far taxpayers could, or did, evade the poll-tax, about how common amnesties for arrears were, and so on. My view, preliminary and instinctive, is that few villagers in Roman Egypt were chronically unable to pay the poll-tax. The relative absence of poverty in Roman Egypt cannot be attributed to any state policy to prevent or alleviate it, although mistaken ideas of some sort of poor relief still linger on in some modern studies.28 On accession an emperor might cancel tax arrears, as Nero perhaps did, while Hadrian, after the poor inundations of 134 and 135, permitted delayed payment of the poll-tax for five years in Upper Egypt, four years in Middle Egypt and three years in the Delta, but these were irregular and untargeted beneficia.29 In Egypt the poll-tax was not levied on women, boys to fourteen and old men 26 27

28

29

SB 18.13862. Ibion Eikosipentarouron was probably a significantly smaller village than Philadelphia which had around 900 adult male taxpayers. Braunert (1964) 149–94 remains fundamental. Payment of arrears: A. Hanson (1988) 273–4; e.g. P Tebt. 2.353 (Herakleopolite, ad 192): a man returns to his village and pays off four years’ arrears of poll-tax and other capitation taxes. E.g. the editors’ comments on P Lond. 3 (p. 126) 911, followed by Wallace (1938) 137–40 and others, which is in fact the start of a list of aporoi, propertyless men, probably who owe tax arrears. Wallace and others also take the merismos aporon, the collective imposition of individual arrears on a community, as a ‘poor tax’. Nero: A. Hanson (1988) 271; note also that arrears seem to be calculated anew from year 1 of Nero. Hadrian: SB 3.6944 (ad 136).

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over sixty-two, but this just focused its burden directly on adult males.30 Just as a propertyless man was free of liturgies assessed on property, so a man who was officially registered as ‘disabled’ (episines) or ‘incapable’ (asthenes) was exempt from liturgies on the person and also the poll-tax, although he may have paid a special cash tax in place of liturgic service.31 However, from the extant registers it seems that very few men achieved official recognition as ‘disabled’, and the most common fiscal exemptions were those granted on grounds of status and culture – to citizens of Rome, Alexandria and Antinoopolis, veterans, priests of main temples, public teachers, victorious athletes. Some private non-familial help with taxes is attested. One function of the associations formed by some priests, craftsmen and other workers was collective covering of the cash taxes of individual members ‘in distress’. After the tax reforms of the mid-third century fiscal patronage appears, first in the Heroninos archive for some workers on the estate of Appianus, but I know of no case in the preceding three centuries of a patron paying the poll-tax of poor men.32 There was no general system of fiscal relief for the poor, not least, in my view, because none was needed. Similarly, there was no regular public provision of foodstuffs or other necessities for the destitute. The Roman government, like that of the Ptolemies, made emergency distributions to the citizens of Alexandria, and from the second century there was a eutheniarch (civic food supply official) for each quarter of the city, which implies a more regularised system of supply. Only the members of the Museum, and maybe the gerousia (‘council of old men’, a selective honour), were permanently maintained by the state. Wheat distributions (siteresia), perhaps occasional, are known at Hermopolis in the 60s for the restricted gymnasial group only, then at Antinoopolis for its citizens from its foundation in 130 by Hadrian, and similar distributions in other metropoleis may be inferred from finds of lead tokens probably used as tickets of entitlement. Ambitions grew in the third century after the Severan municipalisation. We find eutheniarchs in the metropoleis 30 31

32

Parkin (2003) 171 over-charitably calls this ‘“tax relief” for the elderly’. Liturgies: e.g. P Flor. 3.312 (91); P Oxy. 36.2754.1–5 (111); P Phil. 29 (early 2nd); P Mich. 6.426.13, 22 (199/200). Poll-tax: e.g. SB 5.8025 (91/2); P Oxy. Census 220, 346 (91/2); SB 6.9105 (2nd ad; cited at n. 20 above). These (and other) exemptions still lack a proper study: see meanwhile Wallace (1938) 114 n. 95; Lewis (1966) 519–21 and (1982) 94–6. Against previous views, I take asthenes, like peros, to be a synonym for episines, not a separate category of ‘ill’. J. C. Shelton, P Cair. Mich. 2 pp. 22–3, acutely noted that at Karanis around ad 175 men exempt from liturgies (he says poll-tax) as ‘disabled’ paid an extra ‘guard-tax’ in cash instead. Associations: e.g. P Mich. 5.243 and 244 (mid-1st ad). Patronage: I think that OGIS 666.15–18 (Edict of Tiberius Julius Alexander, ad 68) is about third parties assuming the debts to the state of taxfarmers and other public contractors (cf. ll. 10–15); the interpretation of Chalon (1964) 110–22 does not fit well with the situation described.

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providing, as a liturgy, wheat, wine and olive oil (also pork at Alexandria), albeit probably still to groups defined by higher status. By the early third century Oxyrhynchus was maintaining permanently the members of its gerousia, and by the 270s it was operating a free monthly distribution of wheat restricted to a numerus clausus of 3,000 adult male metropolites in theory chosen by lot (plus 900 liturgists from villages, and 100 residents from other metropoleis); in practice there were just over 2,900 registered recipients which implies that all the potentially entitled males had been enrolled.33 Of course citizens, even citizens of the gymnasial group, could be poor, but these distributions were not designed to help the poor but to confirm and increase the privileges of status. Extant temple accounts record no regular support of the poor, but temple complexes may have been the prime location for the poor to seek and receive assistance in the form of foodstuffs (and cash?) distributed in the sacrifices and feasting at private and public festivals. Roman Egypt was a relatively civic and unpoliced society, where the Roman authorities and local notables recognised and acted on the need to solve food shortages, when they occurred, in order to maintain peace and order.34 Since the principle was admitted, the lack of more regular support implies that there was no substantial element of chronically poor to worry them into action, palliative or repressive. More general economic considerations concur in this tale of relative prosperity. Variation in the level of the annual Nile inundation affected crop yields, and excessive or insufficient inundations could severely decrease production. In macro-climatic terms, the Roman period should have been relatively beneficent, and indeed only one series of consecutive poor floods and crops is attested, admittedly in a very incomplete run of data, in the later 240s to early 250s.35 Broadly speaking, the pattern of good and bad crops can be tracked by looking at prices of wheat, insofar as some survive. It should be said that wheat prices in Roman Egypt show fluctuations typical of a free market, but with a certain notional element in that the ‘farmgate’ price always moved in multiples of 4 dr. per artaba (40 l / 30 kg). Archives from the Fayyum villages of Philadelphia and Tebtunis can be taken to indicate a ‘crisis’ in the mid-40s, which it is tempting to link to the so-called universal famine under Claudius. There does seem to have been a blip in payments of the poll-tax, and arguably there was a rise in the number of contracts made for short-term loans of cash, although the base 33 34 35

P Oxy. 40 (1976), with introduction by J. R. Rea; Alston (2002) 149–51, 191–2, 276; P Oxy. 43.3099– 3102 (gerousia); Milne (1908) on tokens. Festivals: Perpillou-Thomas (1993). Shortages: Garnsey (1988) 251–9, 265–6. For this and the following points, see Rathbone (1997) 190–4 and (forthcoming) with references.

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for comparison is suspect. However the local price of wheat rose by only 25 per cent, and only for a few months. So too in autumn 99, when in his hype of Trajan Pliny tells us that Rome was ‘sending’ wheat to Egypt (probably just cancelling shipments to Rome), the official purchase price in Egypt was temporarily doubled from 8 to 16 dr. per artaba, in a period when private farmgate prices normally fluctuated within the range of 6 to 12 dr. per artaba. In the more real crisis of the 240s, against a background of farmgate prices normally between 12 and 20 dr., wheat reached 24 dr. per artaba and the prefect ordered the compulsory registration of all private stocks of wheat with a view to state purchase at that price – a unique measure, although we do not know whether compulsory purchase actually occurred. Measured by the index of the price rises which they caused, these crises are relatively mild. There is an explanation. The time-lag between inundation and main harvest in Egypt gave over six months’ advance warning of a poor crop. The widespread availability of public and private granaries, a dry climate, a tradition of using grain to effect payments – including by giro between granaries, and the slow process of amassing tax-grain, shipping it to Alexandria, and then out into the Mediterranean, meant that there were always large private stocks of wheat from previous years to see the country through a poor year or two, and beyond that the vast safety-net of public stocks which the state was prepared to sell to cap price rises at or just over the upper limit of their normal range. In Egypt from the mid-first to the later third century on a crude average (median) it took an agricultural labourer seven days to earn the price of an artaba of wheat, which provided more than the basic subsistence for an adult male for a month. That is not a bad ratio. Recently Scheidel has argued that real wages rose even higher after the Antonine plague because of the shortage of labour; this is not proven, but it is certain that the doubling of prices and wages which occurred in the 170s/180s halved the real cost of fixed-rate cash taxes, until the fiscal reforms of the 250s replaced the old poll-tax, and probably other cash taxes too, with new systems of communal assessments by quota.36 Recent demographic studies of the Roman world, and of Roman Egypt in particular, have tended to reconstruct a natural fertility pattern with high rates of birth and mortality. Frier has proposed that research on the economy of Roman Egypt should look for data which support his hypothesis that it was, in demographic terms, a ‘high pressure’ r´egime, by which he means a society constantly on the brink of disastrous excess of population to resources. Scheidel too draws a similar picture in his latest monograph, 36

Rathbone (1996); Scheidel (2002), with Bagnall (2002).

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whose general vision, admittedly more implicit than trumpeted, is of a relatively high population, ridden with chronic diseases, on a relatively small area of land.37 In a high pressure demographic r´egime serious poverty of all types should be expected. Despite the biological determinism of the demographers, it seems to me that the economic, including demographic, data from Egypt point instead to a low pressure r´egime, where the population, while having the characteristics of a natural fertility pattern, reproduced itself up to a total ceiling well below the carrying capacity of productive resources available. I restrict myself here to some salient points. Scheidel has doubted the traditional estimate of 25,000 km2 of cultivable land in Roman Egypt as too high, but two recorded assessment totals of the land tax in kind, one on a division of the Arsinoite nome, the other on the Oxyrhynchite nome, and archaeological evidence from many areas, show that the traditional figure is more likely to be an underestimate. In the few cases when we have data for calculating population densities in Arsinoite villages of the Roman period, the figure never exceeds 120 persons/km2 , which is simply not compatible with any estimate of the total population above 5 million. Admittedly the Roman data are thin and weak, but the much denser data for the Ptolemaic Fayyum in the later third century bc, including its chief city, produce a rural average of around 60 persons/km2 , which implies considerable growth to reach the Roman population levels and underwrites the broad plausibility of the Roman data.38 Here again, as with the question of the number and age of widows, the exiguous data leave plenty of scope for arguments, mostly unproductive, about calculations of carrying capacity. Instead, I want to shift the focus to the distribution of resources, to what Sen called entitlement. Around the time of the Roman annexation of Egypt it seems that the public (royal and sacred) land in each nome, as distinct from the catoecic (‘settlers’) land which the Romans privatised, made up between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of the territory of the nome. Over the next three centuries, the papyri reveal a patchy but cumulative conversion of public into private land, albeit with some temporary reverse movement through confiscation of abandoned property, the property of errant liturgists, and so on. Also evident is a gradual growth of large private estates, with an explosion just after the Antonine plague which had provided a brief window in which to acquire land cheaply. By the fourth century, although some land was still called public and bore a higher rate of tax, all land was privately owned; the formal moment of 37 38

Frier (2001) (the utility of his proposal is debatable); Scheidel (2001c). Rathbone (forthcoming); P Count., ed. W. Clarysse and D. Thompson (forthcoming).

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change may have been Diocletian’s major tax reform of 297.39 Public land was subject to relatively high rents in kind compared to catoecic land, but it had been a protected resource for the poor. In the Arsinoite nome, at least in theory, plots of public land were periodically redistributed by lot among each village community (diamisthosis). The Oxyrhynchite nome had a different system, but a petition of ad 120 shows villagers defending their community against an attempt by a landowner to take over ‘their’ public land.40 Another opening for the poor, not restricted to members of a community, was land confiscated by the state. Registers of the late first to third centuries show that in every village there were always numerous small plots of land on offer. Applicants could make a cash bid to purchase them outright, or contract to pay a peppercorn rent for five years.41 There was also an extensive phenomenon of private tenancies. My conclusion is that the rural population of Roman Egypt had easy access to farmland, the basic means of gaining a livelihood, which was partly regulated by themselves with the protection and backing of the state. Roman Egypt had a prosperous economy, it was highly monetised and urbanised, there were numerous opportunities for earning cash in addition to the availability of land, and even the small man and woman enjoyed a reasonable level of state protection of their rights. This was not a breeding ground for poverty. In the case of widows I tentatively suggested that their situation may have changed for the worse in late antiquity, but that Christian rhetoric also exaggerated the problem. In general terms I believe that there was more poverty in late antique Egypt. That is not, as in Patlagean’s model, because of population growth and urbanisation, at least in Egypt. While a period of population growth from a trough in the fourth/fifth centuries to a peak in the sixth century can be discerned in Egypt, the peak population total was still much smaller than the average in the Roman period. And documentary and archaeological evidence both point to a dramatic repopulation of the countryside, especially in the sixth century, by large private and ecclesiastical estates founding estate villages, in tandem with a shrinkage of the urban population.42 Insofar as poverty got worse, it was the result of other social and economic changes: the extrusion of the poor from control of the land 39

40 41 42

Rowlandson (1996) 27–69 is the best recent survey of land categories, including some comments on the disappearance of public land, a major development which has never been properly investigated. Documents also show villagers ceding their holdings to others ‘in perpetuity’, perhaps meaning their right to the share represented by the plot they currently farmed. Rowlandson (1996) 80–88. P. Oxy. 24.2410. E.g. W Chr. 371 (late 1st ad); P Petaus 13–23 (184/5); P Pheretnuis (195/6); cf. Rowlandson (1996) 48–53. Rathbone (2001); contra Alston (2001).

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in favour of large estates, the virtual disappearance at the everyday level of a monetised economy providing cash wages for casual labouring, a heavier and less user-friendly form of state. But again the written testimonies for poverty may be suspect to some extent. In the last years of Byzantine Egypt John the Almoner, bishop of Alexandria, had officials seek out and register all ‘beggars and needy’ in Alexandria in order to facilitate delivery of his charity, and perhaps also to publicise it. The total came to over 7,500, a number which his biographer meant to impress, but if we guess that the population at that time totalled 0.5 million, only 1.5 per cent wished and were deemed suitable to receive John’s alms.43 Even in Egypt of late antiquity poverty may have been a bit of a poor show. 43

Leontius, Life of John of Cyprus 2 (Gelzer pp. 8–9).

chap t e r 7

A pragmatic approach to poverty and riches: Ambrosiaster’s quaestio 124∗ Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe

introd uction Ambrosiaster, the author of a set of quaestiones and of commentaries on the Pauline epistles,1 appears to have been writing in Rome2 in the last third of the fourth century ad.3 There is a long-running scholarly quest to establish a personal identity for Ambrosiaster,4 but it seems unlikely that this will ever be determined conclusively. Nonetheless, it is possible to locate Ambrosiaster more generally in an ecclesiastical context, for many of his quaestiones exhibit stylistic tics which suggest that they were delivered orally in church as sermons or catechetical lectures. Normally this would indicate that Ambrosiaster was a bishop, since only bishops preached. However, there is firm evidence that in Rome special dispensation was made for presbyters to preach, since it would have been impossible for a bishop to minister equally to the large number of churches in Rome.5 It thus seems ∗ 1 2

3

4

I am grateful to Margaret Atkins for her incisive and helpful comments on several drafts of this chapter, and to Gavin Kelly for helping to elucidate some tricky corners of Ambrosiastrian Latin. Ambrosiaster, Quaestiones Veteris et Novi Testamenti, ed. A. Souter CSEL 50 (1908) and Commentarius in xiii Epistulas Paulinas, ed. H. I. Vogels CSEL 81 (1966–9). There are several pointers within Ambrosiaster’s oeuvre to the place of his writing. First, two phrases, Amst. q. 115.16 and Rom. 16.4.1 explicitly state that the author is writing in Rome. Second, two recensions of his Commentary on Romans, α and β, have urbs, where version γ has Roma, at for instance Amst. Rom. 1.10.4 and 1.13.1; it may be that γ is a later recension of a text originally written for a Roman audience, which is clarifying the city in question for an extra-Roman audience. Third, Ambrosiaster uses venire and advenire to describe the journeying of people to Rome – Amst. Rom. argumentum 3 and ibid. 1.10.4. This suggests someone writing at Rome, envisaging people ‘coming’ as opposed to ‘going’ there. Finally, Ambrosiaster displays a detailed knowledge of current events in Rome; see, for example Amst. qq. 101, 105 and 114. The dating of Ambrosiaster’s floruit is difficult, but the key pointer must be his reference at I Tim. 3.15.1 to ‘the church . . . whose ruler today is Damasus’. Damasus was pope from ad 366–84, which provides us with a rough dating for at least the Pauline commentaries. There is nothing to date any of his work beyond the mid-380s, and a cluster of evidence for dating to around the 370s–early 380s. 5 See De Blauuw (1994). See Burn (1899); Morin (1899), (1903) and (1914).

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quite likely that Ambrosiaster was a presbyter at Rome, possibly at one of the outlying cemetery churches.6 David Hunter has demonstrated convincingly that Ambrosiaster’s works fit into a Roman tradition of resistance to extreme asceticism, and of a defence of human sexual relations; he also suggests that Ambrosiaster is the anonymous opponent with whom Jerome, during his brief sojourn in Rome in the 380s,7 engages on such matters.8 If we accept the proposition that Ambrosiaster adopted a moderate position towards marriage and childbearing, this provides an interesting point of comparison for his quaestio 124 (‘One work differs according to persons, whether it is to be praised or condemned’).9 This is a brief treatise which deals with another important subject of ascetic debate in late Roman Christianity – wealth and poverty, and how these affected the moral worth of one’s actions. From the earliest days of the church, Christians had agonised over wealth and whether they should possess it. Biblical texts, ranging from Christ’s injunction to the rich young man, ‘Go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor’ (Matthew 19.21), to the picture of the apostolic community in Jerusalem holding things in common (Acts 4.34–5), presented Christians with an acute problem of interpretation; was it incumbent on all Christians, or only on those with high spiritual ambition, voluntarily to adopt a life of ascetic poverty? Rigorists like Jerome counselled rich Roman women like Eustochium to renounce their wealth: ‘You must also avoid the sin of covetousness, and this not merely by refusing to seize upon what belongs to others, for that is punished by the laws of the state, but also by not keeping your own property, which has now become no longer yours’(Jerome, Letter 22.31).10 But there was plenty of opposition to ascetic conversion in Rome, particularly among the aristocracy. John Curran shows how the offloading of property and the renunciation of marriage (and the heirs it would hopefully produce) threatened the security 6 7 8

9 10

Hunter (1989) also proposes that Ambrosiaster was a presbyter. On Jerome, the classic account is still Kelly (1975). See Hunter (1989). The moderate tone which Ambrosiaster adopts with regard to fasting in his q. 120, as well as his defence of marriage and human sexuality in q. 127, could be read as an attack on those of Jerome’s party. The two clashed on other matters too; Jerome seems to allude in his Letters 27, 38, 45 and 73 to positions taken by Ambrosiaster on matters theological, ascetic and exegetical. Unum opus differre secundum personas sive in laudem sive in condemnationem. Avaritiae quoque tibi vitandum est malum, non quo aliena non adpetas – hoc enim et leges publicae puniunt – sed quo tua, quae sunt aliena, non serves. This letter was written in Rome in ad 384, quite probably coinciding with Ambrosiaster’s floruit there.

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and continuity of rich noble families, and united pagans and Christians in opposition.11 Ambrosiaster’s quaestio 124 should be located within the context of this Christian debate about the relative worth of poverty and riches, which was part of a wider debate between moderates and ascetics in late fourthcentury Rome. In this quaestio, he addresses pragmatically the advantages and disadvantages of rich and poor men’s actual earthly status, rather than programmatically trying to encourage rich men to strip themselves of their wealth. He develops a moderate line which neither privileges the wealthy, nor simplistically privileges the poor; instead, he evaluates the different advantages of and temptations besetting rich and poor. He even leaves room for the possibility that the rich man’s actions will sometimes be enhanced by his wealth – a position which Jerome, that proponent of extreme renunciation, would have found unacceptable. Finally, while challenging the social assumption that poverty is morally shameful, he nonetheless honours voluntary poverty more highly than involuntary, precisely because of its religious motivation. This involves a tricky balancing act; Ambrosiaster admits that voluntary poverty has a high spiritual value, but does not present it as the only way of life for Christians. This tallies with his view of celibacy as a good, but as appropriate for clergy rather than for all men.12 Ambrosiaster’s moderate and pragmatic approach to asceticism, covering poverty and celibacy, has perhaps been eclipsed by the more dramatic and universalist brand of asceticism found in the works of Roman contemporaries such as Jerome. I should acknowledge here the problematic way in which Ambrosiaster polarises society into two categories, the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor’, although he occasionally hints at a broader range of experience within poverty and wealth than suggested by the predominance of the simple categories of rich and poor.13 As has been amply demonstrated, most recently by Peter Brown, historians run the danger of adopting these crude rhetorical divisions when social reality was in fact rather more complex.14 I leave to others the task of establishing the boundaries between areas of ‘shallow’ and ‘deep’ poverty, 11

12 13

See Curran (2000) 280. Curran proposes, 294, that ‘on the question of the disposal of property and the continuation of family lines these moderate Christians [in Rome] and their non-Christian colleagues found common ground, in the shape of their ancient senatorial values, on which to reject extreme asceticism.’ Hunter (1989) 294 shows that Ambrosiaster links celibacy with a sacramental ministry, and thereby ‘undercuts the value of lay asceticism’. 14 Brown (2002). See Amst. q. 124.6.

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and the problem of defining exactly who was ‘rich’, who ‘poor’ and to what extent. My purpose here is to deal with the categories that Ambrosiaster uses on his own terms.

q u a e s t i o 12 4 In quaestio 124, Ambrosiaster considers eight actions, virtues or vices, and applies to them the general logic of the parable of the widow’s mite at Luke 21.1–4. In this story, rich men contribute abundantly to the collection box, and a widow contributes but two small coins. Jesus explains that the widow ‘has cast in more than all of them’, for she has donated all that she had, whereas the rich men, who contributed much larger amounts, did not give all that they had. The parable shows starkly how almsgiving should not be praised or blamed according to the amounts being donated, but rather relatively to the wealth of their donor, and it is this principle, of evaluating a man’s moral worth relatively to his means, which Ambrosiaster exploits. The ‘persons’ under consideration in this quaestio are the rich man and the poor man – dives et pauper. It might seem at first glance that the title of Ambrosiaster’s quaestio is strangely vague, stating that ‘one work [opus] differs according to persons, whether it is to be praised or condemned’.15 However, opus in early Christian usage had acquired the very specific meaning of charitable work, particularly almsgiving, and thus the quaestio revolves around the issue of dispensing from one’s own property, and the vices and virtues associated with wealth and want.16 Ambrosiaster considers eight virtues, vices or actions in turn, and assesses why each is to be seen differently in the poor and the rich man. The first three paragraphs concern wealth and almsgiving. In the first, he commends the pauper’s misericordia, his generosity in giving, above the rich man’s,17 and cites Luke 21.1–4.18 In the second paragraph, on theft, he explains that a pauper may be driven by need to rob and is thus not subject to 15 16

17 18

Unum opus differre secundum personas sive in laudem sive in condemnationem. On opera as standing for bona opera, see P´etr´e (1948) 257–9. The Christian vocabulary of almsgiving involves the employment of words which would seem to have a wider application to a more specific end. For example (again, see P´etr´e (1948) 229–39) many early Christian authors, including Ambrosiaster (as I discuss below), use misericordia not to mean ‘mercy’ generally, but ‘almsgiving’. Una est misericordia in divite et in paupere, sed aliter inputatur diviti et aliter pauperi, quia plus laudanda est in paupere quam in divite. Pauper enim de exiguitate sua largiri non timuit.

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the same blame as a rich man, who has no such excuse.19 Indeed, rich men are wont to rob the poor, a multiplication of their crime.20 The third paragraph considers iustitia, a term which here refers back to almsgiving and the idea of ‘giving to each his due’; Ambrosiaster himself says elsewhere that misericordia ‘is called iustitia’ (Amst. II Cor. 9.9). Here, he commends the poor man’s almsgiving, because he is in a greater state of neediness.21 We then turn to pride and humility. Superbia is ‘insane’ in the poor man since he has nothing apart from want to be proud of,22 and humilitas is more admirable in the rich man because he needs to dismiss the elevating possibilities of riches, whereas the pauper is already humbled with regard to his means.23 The rich man is also more commendable in matters academic (something which may give us pause for thought): he doubles the honour of his wealth by applying himself to doctrina and studium, whereas the poor man has nothing apart from his academic labours to recommend him.24 This is a rare instance when we are given an insight into the variety of experience within the broad category of ‘poor’; a poor man who could recommend himself through study is a very different spectacle from the beggar on the street.25 Finally, Ambrosiaster covers lust (libido) and chastity (pudicitia). A pauper is to be condemned the more for lust, since he does not have the means to satisfy it and will be drawn into committing further sins in his quest for satisfaction;26 the rich man is also to be condemned for lust, since he can sin safe in the knowledge of his probable immunity.27 Chastity is praiseworthy in both the poor man and the rich man, but it is especially commendable 19 20 21 22 23 24

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26 27

Furtum in paupere et divite unum peccatum est, sed divitem plus facit reum, quia pauper per inopiam facit furtum, dives autem, cum habundet, non contentus suo tollit aliena. Et, quod peius est, solent pauperes expoliare. In egestate enim servare iustitiam magnifica res est. Superbia una est, sed plus damnanda in paupere est quam in divite, quia dives copia elatus est, pauper autem in egestate superbus, quod ad insaniam pertinet . . . Quid enim magnum est si pauper humilis videatur, quem ipsa inopia humilem facit? magnificum autem si hic, qui dignitate et copiis commendatur, inclinet se non sibi vindicans quod mereri se novit. Pauper enim, cum nulla praerogativa commendaretur, operam dedit ut haberet unde posset requiri; dives autem, cum non deesset unde commendaretur, adhibito labore auxit se, ut duplici genere necessarius esset. The possibility of raising oneself socially through study reminds us of Aurelius Victor, De Caesaribus 20.5: ‘for I was born in the country of a poor and uneducated father yet I have achieved distinguished status in these times through such important studies’. Pauperem enim ipsa egestas revocare debet a cupiditate luxoriae; cogitare enim debet quia unde hoc impleat non habet et, dum hoc festinat implere, alia multa mala admittat necesse est . . . Divitem autem deliciarum copiae lacessunt ad voluptatem libidinis, praeterea quia securi sunt de inpunitate scientes venalia esse iudicia et nec redargui se ab aliquo.

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in the latter.28 There then follows an ample digression on the rex pudicus. If a king resists temptation, this is particularly worthy of glory, since he has all men and laws in his power, and might do as he wishes on earth.29 luke I turn now to consider the biblical cadences of quaestio 124. Ambrosiaster takes the moral of Luke 21.1–4 – that virtue is affected by one’s means – and assesses whether a range of actions, virtues and vices should be praised or condemned, whether they are worthy of gloria or poena, depending on the financial standing of the man who performs them. Ambrosiaster does not consistently present the poor man as morally advantaged by his poverty, as one might expect if this were to be a straightforward piece of inversion whereby a poor man is counted spiritually richer because of his poverty. The whole quaestio appears to be inspired by the parables in Luke which circle around the problems besetting poor and rich men with regard to salvation. Ambrosiaster alludes to the New Testament explicitly only twice. Initially, he summarises the moral of Luke 21.3–4: ‘Whence also the poor woman, when the rich men gave many things, alone deserved to be praised by God, because she did not fear to dispense from her penury’ (Amst. q. 124.1). At the end of the quaestio, he also alludes to Luke 18.2: ‘but this [rich] man, who in domination neither fears the laws nor blushes on account of men, is of great glory if he holds himself in check’ (Amst. q. 124.8).30 There is also a distinct echo of Luke 12.47–8 in the first paragraph: ‘For the rich man, if he does not do this [dispense to the poor], will be flogged [vapulabit]’ (Amst. q. 124.1); vapulabit echoes the Vetus Latina text of this passage which Ambrosiaster would have used.31 Ambrosiaster may be inspired by the Lucan story of the widow’s mite in this quaestio, but his attitude towards the rich and the poor is not as stark as that of Luke, who was the most socially radical of the evangelists, and whose Gospel features several stories criticising the vainglorious rich. For instance, in his account of the sermon on the plain, there occurs after the beatitudes (Luke 6.20–22) a series of warnings to the rich and powerful ‘But 28 29 30 31

Pauperem enim potest humilitas revocare, ne quod vult possit implere, aut timor legum; dives autem, cum multis suffragantibus causis ad voluptatem possit inlici, laudabilis est . . . Quod si rex pudicus sit, multum est gloriosum, ut omnia in potestate habens non contingat, quod scit impune a se posse fieri. See Luke 18.2: ‘there was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man’. Compare Amst. q. 124.1: dives enim, si hoc non fecerit, vapulabit with Luke 12.47 in the Vetus Latina, itself quoted elsewhere by Ambrosiaster (at his Col. 3.5): qui autem scit voluntatem domini sui, et non paruerit ei vapulabit multis.’

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woe unto you that are rich!’ (Luke 6.24–6), in the manner of Ecclesiastes 10.16–17;32 this is wholly absent from Matthew’s version of the beatitudes (Matthew 5.3–11). Where Matthew has ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’, Luke has simply ‘blessed are the poor’. All in all, Luke insistently promotes the righteous poor and condemns the wicked rich to an extent not found in any of the other Gospels, although it is also a feature of the epistle of James.33 His Gospel contains an unambiguous message that the rich man will find it more difficult to be saved than the poor man. Ambrosiaster deploys allusions to Luke to produce a rather different, more nuanced, picture of poverty and riches. He allows that, as the widow’s poverty rendered her meagre offering generous, thus sometimes a rich man’s greater wealth renders his virtue more laudable than that of a poor man. He saves some possibility of virtue for the rich, rather than suggesting that their material riches always spiritually impoverish them. Ambrosiaster not only ‘saves’ the rich man in this quaestio; it is striking that his substantial oeuvre34 does not refer to the scriptural passages which condemn riches most explicitly. There is no direct reference in any of his writing to Mark 10.17–31/Matthew 19.16–26 (where Jesus says ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God’), nor indeed to Luke 1.46–55, which we know as the Magnificat, wherein the mighty are put down and the humble exalted. We find a similar reluctance to engage with ascetic biblical texts in the Cento of Proba, a Roman noblewoman whose floruit coincides with Ambrosiaster’s. Proba says nothing about the renunciation of riches, and urges the distribution of wealth among relatives, not among the wider poor.35 Clark has pointed out that Proba’s telling of the story of the rich young man omits Jesus’ injunction to sell his goods for the sake of the poor, instead urging the youth more vaguely to ‘learn . . . contempt for wealth’.36 But where Proba chose to interpret her texts in a moderate and selective fashion, Ambrosiaster completely omitted to mention the most famous scriptural texts dealing with the renunciation of wealth. This should perhaps not surprise us, given that Ambrosiaster opposed the 32

33 35 36

Ecclesiastes 10.16–17: ‘Woe to thee O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning! Blessed art thou O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness!’ Tobit 13.12, 14, and Isaiah 3.10–11 also exhibit this antithetical scheme, on which in general see Dodd (1968) 1–10. 34 Ambrosiaster’s writings fill four fat volumes in the CSEL series. See Countryman (1980). Proba, Cento 475–481. E. A. Clark (1986) 140. For a translation of Proba’s Cento, see Plant (2004).

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general imposition of another related ascetic practice, celibacy, on ordinary Christians. clement of alex andria We shall now turn to an important text in the pre-Ambrosiastrian tradition of defending the rich man’s possibility of achieving salvation. Clement of Alexandria, one of the very few writers with whose work Ambrosiaster had at least a passing acquaintance,37 appears to have written Who is the rich man that shall be saved? for a wealthy audience. In this piece he is striving to direct his flock away from a literal interpretation of Mark 10.17–31, in which the rich man is admonished by Jesus to sell all he has and give to the poor. He shows that it would not benefit the church if all rich men were to give away their wealth: ‘For if no one had anything, what room would be left among men for giving?’ (Clement, Quis Dives 13). They must relinquish the passion for their possessions rather than the possessions themselves: Riches, then, which benefit also our neighbours, are not to be thrown away . . . So let no man destroy wealth, rather than the passions of the soul, which are incompatible with the better use of wealth. (Clement, Quis Dives 14)

Clement argues along Stoic lines that riches are morally indifferent (adiaphora) of themselves, and affect one’s virtue only as far as one uses them well or badly:38 That then which of itself has neither good nor evil, being blameless, ought not to be blamed; but that which has the power of using it well and ill, by reason of its possessing voluntary choice. (Clement, Quis Dives 14)

Thus a rich man is not to be condemned automatically for being rich, but for whether or not he dispenses alms, and if so, how generously and in what spirit. Clement begins his sermon (as it undoubtedly was) with a condemnation of those who ‘bestow laudatory addresses on the rich’, and suggests that ‘it appears to me to be far kinder, than basely to flatter the rich and praise them for what is bad, to aid them in working out their salvation in every possible way’. He continues by explaining how virtues alone affect one’s salvation, not means: 37 38

See Amst q. 127.33, referring to Matt. 8.14 and Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 3.52, although this is admittedly a very passing reference to the fact of Peter’s being married with children. See Countryman (1980).

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Salvation does not depend on external things . . . but on the virtue of the soul, on faith, and hope and love and brotherliness and knowledge and meekness and humility and truth, the reward of which is salvation. (Clement, Quis Dives 18)

In this respect we can see that Ambrosiaster stands in the tradition of Clement when he defends the possibility of the rich man being saved, but refines the general principle that wealth should not be condemned of itself, but only if it is used badly. Ambrosiaster, in a blow-by-blow analysis of different vices, virtues and actions, applies the principle of relative praise and blame in a series of pragmatic examples. In all, he explains that one’s degree of wealth must be taken into account because it makes some virtues harder and others easier to pursue, some vices harder and others easier to avoid. roman l aw Quaestio 124 does not take its structuring device of differential reward and punishment solely from the example of Christian texts. An altogether different world also informs the tone of this piece: that of the law-courts. Again, the problem of Ambrosiaster’s identity intrudes. His interest in legal matters has been conclusively demonstrated, although it is impossible to ascertain from this what, if any, personal involvement he might have had in the legal system.39 There are obtrusive references to advocates and men in court in paragraph six of quaestio 124, and the text is underpinned by the general legal principle of differential punishment. We must assume that this principle would have been familiar to his Roman audience. The title of the quaestio sets out its purpose: to establish how far an action differs according to persona. Roman legal practice discriminated according to a variety of factors,40 as Claudius Saturninus, cited in the Digest, lists: These four categories [of punishments: for things done, said, written or counselled], however, must be considered in seven aspects: the motive, the person, the place, the time, the quality, the quantity and the outcome. (D. 48.19.16.1) 39

40

Ambrosiaster’s interest in and knowledge of Roman law and legal procedure has been the source of critical comment over the years. Humfress (1998) demonstrates convincingly that the prominence of legal language and argumentation in the writings of ecclesiastics in this period is a result of their receiving a career-orientated education in forensic rhetoric. Applying this principle to Ambrosiaster, we can surmise that although he may never have practised as an advocate or iurisconsultus, he probably received an education in forensic oratory. It has been suggested, on the basis of shared references to otherwise lost laws, that Ambrosiaster was also the author of the Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanorum; see, e.g. Souter (1927) 41. See Garnsey (1970).

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Among these factors, persona was extremely important. Persona may be taken as one’s status in society, as one of the honestiores or humiliores, which was determined by a number of factors, including birth, wealth and office, although it could also indicate whether one was slave or free, alien or citizen. In Roman law, persona was a factor taken into consideration during a trial, as a man of lower status was more likely to be impugned as an unreliable witness. The persona of both perpetrator and victim was also taken into account when determining punishment: The person is looked at in two ways: the person who did the act and the person who suffered [it]: for slaves and freemen are punished differently for the same crimes, and differently, too, someone who dares [to wrong] a master or parent as opposed to an outsider, and who [offends] a magistrate as opposed to a private person. (D. 48.19.16.1)

Thus a man of lower status would, if judged guilty, be punished more harshly than a person of higher status who had committed the same crime. There is ample evidence in the Theodosian Code that men of high and low status were punished differently; for instance, harbourers of robbers were threatened with corporal punishment or forfeiture of property, ‘in accordance with the rank of the person and at the discretion of the judge.’ (CTh 9.29.2) Ambrosiaster’s explicit use of a discriminatory policy by wealth alone in quaestio 124 is somewhat unusual, partly because persona was only one aspect of the usual raft of factors determining punishment of a crime, and partly because wealth was only one factor determining one’s persona. More striking still is Ambrosiaster’s rejection of the Roman legal principle of discriminating consistently in favour of the privileged and against men of low status. He proposes instead that judgement in the afterlife will be more flexible and less biased, sometimes favouring the rich man, and sometimes the poor man. A final distinctively novel legal aspect of this quaestio is its concern with reward as well as punishment; since Ambrosiaster is dealing with the judgement of God rather than that of an earthly law-court, he considers salvation as well as damnation. I shall focus here on the surprising threat that Ambrosiaster makes, referring to Luke 12.47–8, that a rich man who fails to dispense to the poor will be whipped, presumably in the life to come. Despite its scriptural inspiration, the idea of a rich man being whipped would have been an unlikely and unwelcome prospect for the privileged members of Ambrosiaster’s audience. Men of high status were exempt from corporal punishments in most cases apart from more serious crimes, and this was itself one of the most

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important privileges of being a notable, as much for reasons of pride and honour as physical suffering.41 Men of high status who submitted to degrading punishments such as whipping and hard labour (originally inflicted on slaves and aliens) suffered a concomitant loss of honour (existimatio).42 So Ambrosiaster’s offhand remark would have been somewhat controversial, ignoring the fact that, on earth at least, rich men were generally exempt from such degrading and potentially lethal forms of punishment. Furthermore, the story he alludes to in Luke focuses on a slave who failed to serve his master correctly, and whose whipping would probably not have unnerved Ambrosiaster’s audience; that is, a punishment originally meted out to a slave in a parable is now deemed appropriate as a post-mortem punishment for the rich man whose virtues and vices he is dissecting. Ambrosiaster has imaginatively deployed a biblical allusion to subvert Roman legal expectations. Ambrosiaster also contradicts current legal practice in his assessment of the relative gravity of a rich man and a poor man committing theft, excusing the pauper to some extent on the grounds that he was driven to crime by need. Another expression of this idea is found in Ambrose: ‘the question may be asked of the robber: “you were rich, why did you seize on the goods of others? Need did not force you, poverty did not drive you to it. Did I not make you rich, that you might have no excuse?”’ (Ambrose, Off. 1.16.63). This is a Christian attitude towards mitigating circumstances, not a Roman legal one; punishment of theft never took into account the means of the thief, and in fact a lower status thief was liable to harsher punishment than a higher status thief. rich and poor: blessed or shameful? Thus far I hope to have demonstrated the interaction (or perhaps collision would be more accurate) of two very different thought-worlds: that of Luke’s social radicalism, and the principle of differential punishment enshrined in Roman law. There is a further context in which Ambrosiaster’s attitude towards wealth and poverty must be considered: the conflict between received Roman ideas of shameful poverty and blessed riches, and the Christian figure, inverting such norms, of the blessed pauper. 41

42

Brown (1992) and Bauman (1986). Harries (1999) 141 argues that towards the end of the fourth century ‘for serious crimes of violence, treason, magic or forgery [and adultery] members of the elite, if convicted, could now be liable to the same, or similar penalties as their social inferiors’. Bauman (1986) 151, citing D. 48.19.28. pr.

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We should not seek monolithic ideologies of poverty in Christian writers, especially those like Ambrosiaster who never wrote on poverty or riches per se, but rather appreciate that the rhetoric of paradox (you think the poor are shameful, but actually they are exalted in the eyes of God) only works if the social assumption that is being inverted, namely that the rich are worthy and the poor are to be despised, was still widely held. The inversion of received values was not achieved once and for all by the first Christians, but was in constant need of reassertion and renewal. For every reference exalting the humble, lowly and despised, there is another which will demonstrate that humility, lowliness and disgrace continued to dominate perceptions of poverty. This may be a function of the very language of poverty, as Denise Grodzynski has shown that vilitas (lowliness, poverty) was a category for use in penal law. It associates economic poverty, obscure birth, and dubious morality.43 Ambrosiaster shows us that many still considered involuntary poverty to be shameful, but he argues for a more humane attitude towards the poor, stressing that the disgrace of poverty is only an appearance. First, what attitude did Ambrosiaster take generally towards rich men? Although he accommodates the possibility of a virtuous rich man in quaestio 124, elsewhere he denounces a class of wicked rich people. Their sins are overwhelmingly carnal – they are indicted for feasting greedily on fatted animals and banquets (Amst. I Tim. 4.7) and are oppressed by excess. In a memorable image, he describes the man weighed down by feasting and drinking as like a man looking at himself in a dirty mirror, in which he can only dimly perceive his real self (Amst. q. 120.3). This is complemented by an apocalyptic picture of social relations: Why is it that here sinners are safe through their power, while some mock the law, paupers are oppressed, an indictment is composed against the just, those acting well are [seen as] a scandal, the pious go without, the evil flourish, the wicked and corrupt are held in honour, greedy and rapacious men are enriched, and the judge is venal? [In the next world] those who used their power to despise the statutes or made a mockery of the law by sharp practice in their pursuit of wickedness, so puffed up in these ways that they might have appeared to trample on justice itself – they shall be brought low and overthrown and shall be subjected to torments. (Amst. q. 4.2)

We are reminded of the pagan Ammianus’ and the ascetic Jerome’s appalled denunciations of the self-indulgence, frivolity and excess of Rome in this 43

Grodzynski (1987). A significant problem with this article (which she herself admits) is that it is restricted to analysis of the Theodosian Code.

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period.44 More generally, there is in this period plenty of criticism, literary and legal, of the potentiores abusing their power, although whether such criticisms signify a real shift in behaviour or not, is more difficult to establish.45 Ambrosiaster thus falls in line with some of his contemporaries in his denunciation of the actual excesses of the rich. He also explicitly connects rich men’s avarice and the high prices responsible for poverty in his commentary on Ephesians: . . . the miser usurps and hoards those things which are God’s for himself, so that avarice denies those things which [God] granted to the use of all communally, when thus it gathers them to itself so that others might not use them. This matter means that all things are sold at a high price with the result that paupers cannot live. For if these things were not hoarded, abundance of all things would create cheapness. (Amst. Eph. 5.5)

This is a rather simplistic chain of causation, but one which excuses paupers from responsibility for their situation, and shows that the acquisition of wealth can be sinful. Ambrosiaster also repeatedly explains that the poor, although they may seem contemptible and shameful, are in fact to be helped and honoured for their poverty. In a disconcerting piece of exegesis of Paul’s body–church metaphor, he compares the poor with male genitalia. Paul writes ‘And those of our members which are unseemly, have greater respectability’, which Ambrosiaster interprets as follows: It is clear that our private parts, which seem shameful, cover themselves with respectability in avoiding public display, so as not to obtrude irreverently. In a similar way, some of the brothers, who are, through their neediness and way of dressing, unseemly, are nevertheless not without grace, because they are members of our body. For they are accustomed to go about girt up in dirty little garments and barefoot. Although, therefore, they seem contemptible, they are more to be honoured, because they usually lead a cleaner life; for what seems to men despicable, is generally judged by God to be beautiful. (Amst. I Cor. 12.23)

Here he employs the familiar device of inversion; what is disgraceful among men is honoured by God. He stresses that what seems to be shameful, is not actually so, and then advances an interesting, and subversive thesis, that despising lowly people will only encourage them to further fecklessness: But regarding the despised and lowly, an exhortation is necessary, to ensure that some honour is given to them, so that they may become useful; otherwise, through 44 45

See Ammianus, Res Gestae 28.4, on the vices of Roman society, and Jerome, Ep. 22 on the vices of Roman Christian society. See Harries (1999) 143.

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the fact of their being despised, these people, in whom there is a need for further progress, will become more negligent about themselves. (Amst. I Cor. 12.24)

If Ambrosiaster expresses a certain sympathy for the despised poor, he reserves his highest praise for the ascetics who have reduced themselves to poverty: the ‘saints’ of II Corinthians. He writes approvingly of them as ‘subjected not to beggary, but to God’ (Amst. II Cor. 9.13–14), and characterises the differences between voluntary and involuntary paupers thus: For people who are publicly in need are those who can be called ‘the poor’. The saints are distinguished from them, because these are servants of God, devoting themselves to repeated prayer and fasting. (Amst. II Cor. 9.9)

It would seem that, much in the vein of the relative merits of the pauper and the rich man of quaestio 124, a once-rich pauper is more to be esteemed than an always-poor one, for the former has had to give something up, whereas the latter has never had anything to lose. But Ambrosiaster was not a zealous promoter of asceticism. As we have seen, he was an ascetic moderate, preaching celibacy as appropriate to the clergy,46 and he nowhere suggests that voluntary poverty is incumbent upon all Christians. It is certainly not necessary for achieving glory in the next life; as quaestio 124 demonstrates, gloria could be achieved by dives and pauper alike, although each should be ready to be judged for their particular virtues, vices and actions, relative to their wealth. conclusion Ambrosiaster adapts the Roman legal principle of discriminating according to personae, proposing that the rich man will, in God’s judgement to come, not always be punished more lightly than the poor man because of his status, as was established practice on earth. Instead, the rich man will be judged according to whether his richness makes his virtue more or less laudable, his vice more or less reprehensible. That is, the principle of differential punishment remains, and the comparison is still between two different classes of men, differentiated by means, but discrimination is not consistently in favour of the rich man. I suggested in my introduction that Ambrosiaster was probably a presbyter, and that a number of his quaestiones have the appearances of sermons. There is, however, nothing in quaestio 124 to show explicitly that this too 46

See Hunter (1989).

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was preached, either as part of a service, or more informally as, for instance, a lecture for catechumens. It could equally well be a private communication to a particular individual, or a more general, abstract meditation dealing with a specific problem. However, its tone and message show clearly that Ambrosiaster himself was a moderate and pragmatic Christian thinker, who was willing to deal with the actuality of the differing wealth of his fellow Christians, rather than merely condemning wealth outright and praising poverty as always spiritually superior. This puts him in a long Christian tradition of ‘defending the rich man’, of whom Clement of Alexandria is perhaps the most famous. It also identifies him firmly as less icy and more flexible in his attitude to renunciation than his more rigorous ascetic opponents, such as Jerome.

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Portraying the poor: descriptions of poverty in Christian texts from the late Roman empire Richard Finn, OP

It is now rightly taken for granted that in their promotion of almsgiving Christian preachers of the late fourth and fifth centuries gave a new visibility through and in their texts to the poor and the very poor. This was the thesis ably advanced by Michael De Vinne in his still unpublished work, The Advocacy of Empty Bellies: Episcopal Representation of the Poor in the Late Empire, and cited with approval by Susan Holman in her recent discussion of how the poor are portrayed in sermons by the Cappadocian Fathers: ‘Because the better off throughout the Roman empire largely fail even to see the many destitute that wander through the streets of their cities, clergymen strive to render these unfortunate fully visible.’1 This heightened visibility is indeed of great potential importance to the social historian seeking to construct an image of the poor and an account of the various forms of poverty experienced in this period. Chrysostom’s assessment of how many at Antioch were rich, poor or between these two extremes is well known: ‘if both the wealthy, and those who rank immediately behind them, were to distribute amongst themselves those who lack bread and clothing, you would have difficulty in finding one poor person for every fifty or even every hundred of the others’.2 Yet such ‘visibility’ in Patristic texts is not because the texts offer any simple window on the past or constitute a distortion-free mirror in which to view late antique society. Judith Lieu aptly put the point in her book, Image and Reality, on the Christian presentation of Judaism in the second century: ‘literary presentation cannot automatically be taken as directly mirroring external reality but frequently meets particular needs, internal or external to the literature itself’.3 Michael Devinne pointed out the way in which preachers repeatedly drew on images from the theatre, from gladiatorial games and shows, in order to claim for the poor the gaze which otherwise 1 3

De Vinne (1995) iv. Lieu (1996) 2.

2

Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew’s Gospel, 66.3; PG 58. 630.

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avoided them. The poor were to be dramatised, even heroised, in this way so as to distract people from immoral spectacles. If the poor become visible, in what guise are they seen? If to be made visible is to be seen from a given vantage point, in a limited perspective, what is hidden as well as revealed by the strategies of late antique preachers and writers? In this chapter, I examine the nature and extent of the heightened visibility given to the poor in many Christian texts of this period, looking at how the poor appear but also disappear in two different genres: sermons, and lives of the saints. In the case of sermons I shall largely restrict my examples to a single corpus: Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos. I shall suggest that rather than seeking simply to heighten the visibility of the poor, Augustine seeks to foreshorten social distances, and to present in a certain light those whom the sermons aid among the urban destitute. They must not simply be seen, but seen to be worthy beneficiaries. In the case of saints’ Lives I shall range more widely, but focus mainly on two Greek ‘lives’ from the fifth century: Mark the Deacon’s Life of Bishop Porphyry, and the Life of Hypatios by Callinicus. These lives of the saints do offer heightened visibility of the poor, in particular the conjunctural poor, those who did not live for the most part in destitution, but were vulnerable to destitution. Yet here, too, we must recognise how biblical models and figures hide at least as much as they reveal about poverty in the late empire. I begin with the Enarrationes. It is not, I admit, a wholly representative corpus of late antique sermons – not least because a number of expositions are not sermons at all, but are either brief exegetical notes, such as exist for Psalms 1–32, or detailed written commentaries, such as the thirty-two expositions of Psalm 118 which were composed for a clerical elite and with which I am not here concerned.4 Michael Fiedrowicz and Anne-Marie La Bonnardi`ere have pointed out that ‘relatively few’ of the sermons originated in eucharistic celebrations at Hippo, and that while only a very few appear to have been preached in Lent or Eastertide, including one in Holy Week (En. in Ps. 21, s.2), a seventh, some seventeen, were delivered on vigils or feasts of the African martyrs, when time was not such a pressing issue. Many sermons, Fiedrowicz surmises, were probably delivered at Matins or Vespers.5 Yet, there is no wholly representative corpus of late antique sermons; and the size of the corpus offers a broad sample of Augustine’s popular preaching. It includes sermons preached on a variety of occasions in a number of different places, whether in Hippo, Utica or at Carthage, 4 5

Kannengiesser (1962) 364. M. Fiedrowicz, ‘Introduction’, in Boulding (2000a) 17; La Bonnardi`ere (1971) 73–4.

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and over a period of at least several decades before the early 420s, if not the thirty-five years suggested by La Bonnardi`ere.6 It may be said at the outset that neither the notes nor the sermons offer detailed or extended description of the destitute or of the conjunctural poor, though Augustine offers the occasional glimpse into the lives of the latter. They probably include the Christian shopkeepers or stall-holders who set up in the streets when the festival games were held in the circus at Carthage.7 Further on in the same sermon we can sense the drudgery, the sheer hard work, which was the lot of many poor men and women, as Augustine notes the different uses of baskets for ‘washing, spreading dung, and earth-moving’.8 Elsewhere we are reminded of the ordinary work from which the saints in heaven are freed: ‘sowing, ploughing, cooking, grinding, and weaving’.9 It is the world of harvest songs, but in which a man slackens and skives as soon as the employer looks the other way.10 Among the servants working on the great estates are those who have to clean out the drains and latrines.11 The fate awaiting some of the suddenly impoverished is seen when Augustine mentions the debtor who is due to be flogged or perhaps hanged unless someone first steps in to pay off his debts.12 The vulnerability of many to the depredations of the powerful, and the search for security through patronage which it fostered, is seen in the plaques (tituli) which Augustine describes as placed by the front door and naming some magnate whose wrath might pursue anyone attacking the property and household.13 The Enarrationes repeatedly return to a defence of God’s justice from the charge that he leaves the rich to flourish through wickedness and the poor to suffer their injustice, and this theme is another indicator of that vulnerability to violence and impoverishment to which many were exposed.14 The absence of extended description should certainly not be taken to imply that the Enarrationes are unconcerned with the poor, or simply fail to describe them, though the latter would be true in large part of slaves and children. The concern with the free poor becomes clearer when we examine the promotion of almsgiving to be found in these texts. 6 7

8 9 12

13

La Bonnardi`ere (1971) 73–4. Casas in vicis faciunt, August. En. in Ps. 80.2. Where there is only one sermon on the psalm, I give the psalm number followed by the section of the sermon; where there is more than one sermon, I give the psalm number, then the sermon number, followed by the section of the sermon. I give the reference for the critical edition of the Latin text only when discussing the sense of larger passages. Mundare, stercorare, terram portare, cophino fit, En. in Ps. 80.9. 10 En. in Ps. 99.4; 93.12. 11 En. in Ps. 103, s.4.10. En. in Ps. 85.24. The Latin (suspendendus) can bear either reading. A further technical sense of the verb meaning ‘to freeze assets’ should be rejected: the rhetorical context makes clear that Augustine envisages a major calamity. Boulding (2002) 238, translates as ‘due to be hanged’. En. in Ps. 85.18. 14 E.g. En. in Ps. 93. En. in Ps. 21, s.2.31.

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Of the forty-three expositions of Psalms 1–32, eleven of which appear to have been given as sermons in something close to their extant form, only one contains unambiguous promotion of almsgiving.15 By contrast, of the next seventy-six expositions on Psalms 33–98, among which only seven are noted by Possidius as having been dictated and are unlikely to have been delivered as sermons,16 thirty-two, a little under half, contain to a greater or lesser degree direct or indirect promotion of almsgiving. These are not sermons wholly devoted to almsgiving or the use of wealth, but almsgiving is either one topic among others, is validated in passing,17 or is promoted at the close of a sermon on other topics.18 One might be tempted to explain the contrast between these groups of texts as a fluke due in part to the content of Psalms 32–98, such that the latter themselves referred more often to the poor, but this is an unlikely explanation given Augustine’s explicit hermeneutic principle in the Enarrationes: he does not read as a reference to the materially poor verses which we might take as plainly referring to them: ‘it is by no means the poor who have nothing whom scripture seems to speak of when praising the poor’.19 The contrast in promotion between these two groups is more likely to be an indication of a bishop’s duty to raise alms through preaching, his need to be seen to act in this way as a champion of the poor. We may usefully compare these figures with that for the promotion of almsgiving in Augustine’s other collected sermons, where 113 sermons of 567, a little under one-fifth, contain some such promotion. How visible are the poor and very poor in this promotion? How does Augustine choose to describe them? In a few cases they are wholly invisible. The beneficiaries of almsgiving in these cases are not adverted to at all.20 In a much larger number of cases the very poor who feature in the sermons among the Enarrationes as worthy recipients of alms are described only in the most general or abstract terms as being in need; they are indigentes or egentes, where that need is normally understood rather than said to arise from material deprivation.21 The language may seem unexceptionable, but it is far from neutral and has much work to do. Evelyne Patlagean long ago saw with respect to the Greek-speaking eastern empire that this tendency 15

16 18 21

The eleven are those indicated as sermones ad populum or ad plebem in the judgement of the Maurist editors (En. in Ps. 18, s.2; 21, s.2; 25, s.2; 26, s.2; 29, s.2; 30, s.2–4; 31, s.2; 32, s.2–3). They make explicit mention of their liturgical context and differ markedly in style from either the more extensive written commentaries (En. in Ps. 1–10) or the briefer exegetical notes. 17 E.g. En. in Ps. 66.7. On Psalms 67, 71, 77, 78, 82, 87 and 89. 19 En. in Ps. 93.7. 20 E.g. En. in Ps 53.3; 72.26; 76.4. E.g. En. in Ps. 90, s.2.13; 95.15. E.g. En. in Ps. 36, s.1.2; 37.24; 64.8.

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of Christians to use the language of need to describe the poor was to be contrasted with the pagan preference to describe them in terms of their social identity.22 So, by not presenting the listener with specific groups, with named or otherwise delineated individuals, from a given social stratum, the promoter of almsgiving removes or mutes a traditional interpretative frame which taints the very poor with that contempt due to inferiors, while avoiding the question of whether any particular individual is a worthy recipient of alms. A frame which distances the rich or better-off from the poor, or the conjunctural poor from the very poor, is replaced by one which draws them together as sharing a like plight, equally needy in different respects. Augustine is a master of this rhetoric: Give alms, atone for your sins, let the needy person rejoice in your gift, so that you may rejoice in God’s gift. That man is in want; you, too, are in want; he is wanting something of you, and you are wanting something of God. When you despise the person who wants something of yours, will not God despise you for wanting something of his? Supply, then, what the needy person lacks, so that God may fill your inner being.23

Augustine mutes the contempt which otherwise threatens to frustrate the call to almsgiving by removing the social frame in which such an attitude is a conventional response, but he further seeks to engage with and turn this response to his own charitable advantage. The analogous relationships between rich and poor, God and man, force the rich to find themselves in the same place as the poor, all too easily on the receiving end of that very contempt which they would visit on the destitute. Their own position can be secured only by eschewing such contempt in the practice of almsgiving. The better-off are deftly hoist with their own petard. One may question Maria Boulding’s translation at this point, because where I translate ille literally as ‘that man’, she specifies the person as ‘the pauper’.24 To be so specific is to do the opposite of what Augustine intends at this point, to reopen a social distance he has foreclosed. To step outside the Enarrationes for a moment, we see Augustine playing a similar game in Sermon 389 where the congregation are urged to give ordinary bread to the needy (panem terrenum) so as to receive the bread of life: 22 23

24

Patlagean (1977) 25ff. Fiant eleemosynae, redimantur peccata, gaudeat indigens de dato tuo, ut et tu gaudeas de dato Dei. eget ille, eges et tu; eget ille ad te, eges et tu ad Deum. tu contemnis egentem tui, Deus non te contemnet egentem sui? ergo impleto tu egentis inopiam, ut impleat Deus interiora tua. En. in Ps. 37. 24; CCSL 38.398–9. Boulding (2000b) 164.

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How is it that he will give to you when you do not give to someone in need? One wants something of you, you want something of another. And although you want something of one, and another wants something of you, he wants something of someone needy, but you want something of one who lacks nothing. Do as you would be done by.25

What happens here, however, is that the analogous relationships so insisted upon by Augustine’s short and alliterative parallel phrases, suddenly and finally give way to an uncomfortable dissimilarity. The poor man stands before a man who is himself in need. The other man stands before God who lacks nothing. The social divide between the needy and the self-sufficient, dishonouring the former and honouring the latter, is relocated to place men side by side before God. More frequently Augustine, like many other Latin preachers, chose to speak simply of the very poor as poor, pauperes, with little or no further specification as beggars, widows, orphans, the sick, disabled, debtors or the elderly infirm – specification he could easily have given.26 It is indeed noticeable how little he has to say about widows, whatever Peter Brown’s expectations of him. Augustine’s common practice in the Enarrationes is in fact to describe recipients of alms in terms combining pauper with a further expression of general need or want, a combination which may suggest beneficiaries low down the social strata, but which remains ambiguous about just how far down.27 The language of unspecified need and unquantified poverty presumably allows the preacher to win alms for distribution without restricting his own freedom to determine those beneficiaries. It allows what may be the limited and targeted almsgiving to certain groups and individuals to represent or stand for gifts to the poor in general, thereby fulfilling the demands of the Gospel. For, as Margaret Atkins has pointed out, Christ did not command his disciples to aid only some and not others. Pauper, as we know, can stretch from the relative poverty of a smallholder (in classical Greek usage, the penes) to the near-total destitution of the beggar. We can see the former sense when Augustine invites his listeners to imagine the ‘poor man’ whose small house and land are desired by a rich neighbour to whom he is accustomed to bow and defer, in whose presence he is expected to stand, but whom he can approach for financial help with some limited expectation of success: 25

26

Quomodo tibi dabit qui non das egenti? eget ad te alter, eges ad alterum. et cum eges ad alterum et eget ad te alter, ille ad egentem eget, ad quem tu eges nullius eget. fac quod circa te fiat. Serm. 389, Revue B´en´edictine 58, p. 51. 27 E.g. En. in Ps. 36, s.2.21; 38.12; 49.12; E.g. En. in Ps. 36, s.3.6; 44.29; 49.8 and 20; 66.9;

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If his immediate neighbour happens to be a poor man, who either finds himself in difficulty, so that he might sell, or who can be squeezed, so that he is forced to sell, then, the rich man’s eye is drawn, he has hopes for the villa. His soul conceives the plan: he hopes that he can acquire the small farmstead and lands of the poor man next door. And when this poor man is in real difficulties, he comes to his richer neighbour, whom he is perhaps accustomed to oblige, give way to, and greet with head bowed, rising at his approach. He says, ‘I beg you, give me something; I am in real difficulty, I am being pressed by my creditor.’ But the rich man only answers: ‘I don’t have the ready means to hand.’28

The passage again suggests the insecurity to which many in the late empire were exposed by debt and the impoverishment they might suffer as a result. Elsewhere Augustine speaks of a poor man who may be a ‘dependent, tenant farmer, or client of the rich man’ (cuius inquilinus, cuius colonus, cuius cliens est).29 I realise that these terms have both technical and nontechnical senses, but my interest here is in the range of material and social deprivation that is covered. Pauper clearly need not mean pauper; those so named may be free from the obloquy associated with destitution, and may not be social pariahs. It is possible that promoters of almsgiving favoured the suitably vague or elastic term pauper because it lent the limited but real respectability of the penes (borrowing the Greek term) to those who were far poorer. The more graphic or detailed the portrayal of the destitute in sermons the greater the risk of triggering that conventional response of contempt already mentioned. Augustine refers on a number of occasions to Dives and Lazarus, and follows his biblical text in calling Lazarus a pauper. We may note, however, that where he describes the scene in greater imaginative detail, and elaborates on the story by inviting his congregation to picture those wealthy individuals who pass by Lazarus, he thinks that his hearers will imagine the rich as holding their nose and spitting at the man: How do you imagine those execrable men who passed by the poor man covered with sores as he lay in front of the rich man’s door? Were they perhaps in the habit of holding their noses and spitting at him?30 28

29 30

Si vero iuxta vicinus sit pauper, qui vel in necessitate positus est, ut possit vendere, vel premi potest, ut cogatur vendere, inicitur oculus, speratur villa; impraegnata est anima, sperat se posse adipisci villulam et possessionem vicini pauperis. et cum patitur iste pauper necessitatem, venit ad ditiorem vicinum suum, cui forte obsequi solet, cui deferre, cui venienti adsurgere, quem inclinato capite salutare: da mihi, rogo te; patior necessitatem, urgeor a creditore. et ille: non habeo modo in manibus. En. in Ps. 39.28, CCSL 38.445–6. En. in Ps. 93.7. Quomodo putatis detestatos homines transeuntes ulcerosum pauperem iacentem ante divitis ianuam? Quomodo forte hunc occlusis naribus conspuebant? ibid., 36, s.2.7; CCSL 38.351.

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It is possible that the passers-by are attempting to ward off evil on coming into near contact with such an unlucky figure.31 But I doubt that such apotropaic behaviour is free from contempt, value-free. What I find intriguing is that Augustine encourages his congregation to redirect their contempt at these rich passers-by. The adjective applied to them could so easily have been used by them of Lazarus. We can test the thesis that Augustine must avoid too great a visibility for the destitute by examining how he uses a normal word for a beggar, mendicus. The word occurs thirty-three times in the Enarrationes in sixteen different texts. It is noticeable how rarely the word is used to describe the poor recipients of alms – in only five of those texts. Beggars so-called appear in the Enarrationes primarily for other reasons. The beggar is someone who steals because of destitution.32 He is insolent or proud.33 The Exposition of Psalm 75 offers an interesting juxtaposition: Augustine first represents or redescribes the wealthy who are obsessed by love of material goods as like a poor man ‘or perhaps a beggar’ dreaming of a wealth which he does not truly enjoy. The preacher goes on to contrast such people with Zacchaeus, citing Luke 19.8, how the tax-collector donates half his property to the poor, pauperes, and goes on to urge the congregation not to disdain the outstretched hand of the poor man or pauper.34 The beggar carries with him the bad odour of social humiliation which Augustine has turned in this example against the rich. He repeatedly uses the figure of the beggar as an image of the Christian, the preacher or the church before God, thereby communicating the essential humility of the Christian life and the great gap between creatures and Creator. A word which would in other circumstances measure the social gulf within the Christian community instead sets that entire community over and against God. Social distance within the community is as nothing compared with this. So, just as the language of unspecified poverty when used literally foreshortens social distances, so, too, does this language of specific poverty when mendicus is used metaphorically of the Christian community. What about the cases where the beggar, mendicus, does figure as the recipient of alms? In one case the beggar features as the third recipient in a series of three – he is the hardest challenge: ‘let each one of you ask yourself how you behave towards a poor holy man, to a brother in need, how you behave towards a needy beggar’.35 In two other cases, the ‘beggar’ 31 33 35

32 En. in Ps. 72.12. I am grateful to Gillian Clark for alerting me to this interpretation. 34 En. in Ps. 75.9. En. in Ps. 48, s.1.3; Interroget se unusquisque vestrum qualis est erga pauperem sanctum, erga indigentem fratrem, qualis est erga indigentem mendicum; En. in Ps. 121.11; CCSL 40.1811.

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who comes up seeking alms is contrasted with the ‘just man’ whom the donor must look for, and by giving to whom the donor can hope to be welcomed into heaven:36 You give to the beggar who accosts you as he passes; you look for the just person to whom you should give, thanks to whom you will be welcomed into the eternal mansions. For the one who welcomes a just person in the name of the just one, will receive the just person’s reward. The beggar looks out for you, you must look out for the just person. ‘Give to everyone who asks you’ is said of one person; ‘let your alms grow sticky in your hand, until you find the just person, to whom you should give it’ is said of another. And if they are not found for a long time, look out for them for a long time, and you will find them.37

Both types of almsgiving are distinct, though both are required. Augustine insists: ‘let no one tell you that Christ commanded that we should give to God’s servant but not to the beggar’.38 Elsewhere Augustine castigates the Manichees for their refusal to give even a bread roll (buccella) to starving beggars;39 but the general impression given in these examples is that the beggar is a less significant and less worthy recipient, all too likely to be a rogue; it is possible that some Christians had been advocating what Augustine expressly forbids – giving only to fellow Christians through the church and refusing beggars in the street. We might determine from all this that the presentation of the poor in Christian sermons reveals less about them than it does about the attitudes of those supposed to be their donors and benefactors. It measures the strength of ill-will easily excited against the destitute. And such a conclusion chimes with a comment by Basil in one of his sermons that beggars trod a tightrope between appearing too well-dressed to need alms, as a result of clothes they had been given, or so ill-clad in ‘rotting rags’ as to excite only disgust.40 Elsewhere Basil berated the wealthy for punching beggars.41 Christian donors were by no means exempt from the temptation to lash out at those they were meant to help. This is the context in which to assess Jerome’s famous description to Eustochium in Letter 22 of that wealthy Roman matron punching the old woman at St Peter’s who had the temerity 36 37

38 41

En. in Ps. 102.12 and 103, s.3.10. Das mendico transeunti et petenti; quaeris et iustum cui des, per quem recipiaris in tabernacula aeterna; quia qui recipit iustum in nomine iusti, mercedem iusti accipiet. mendicus te quaerit, iustum tu quaere. de alio enim dictum est: a omni petenti te da: et de alio dictum est: desudet eleemosyna in manu tua, donec invenias iustum, cui eam tradas. et si diu non invenitur; diu quaere, invenies. En. in Ps. 102.12, CCSL 40.1462. 39 En. in Ps. 140.12. 40 Basil, On Detachment; PG 31, 556. En. in Ps. 103, s.3.10. Basil, On the Wealthy, 6 in Courtonne (1935) 61, PG 31 296C.

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to beg for a second coin in alms.42 Our pugnacious matron reveals the knifeedge between compassion and disgust. If the visibility of the very poor in these sermons is strictly limited, and much about them remains necessarily hidden, this is of course partly because they come clothed in the language of the Scriptures. Such language is the ‘natural’ idiom of Christian discourse, but has the happy consequence of underpinning almsgiving by appeal to the authority of Scripture. Patristic preachers could and did appeal to well over 100 different scriptural texts in their defence of almsgiving. Augustine avoids texts which emphasise redemptive almsgiving in atonement for sin. Among the texts most frequently cited by him to promote almsgiving in the Enarrationes is Isaiah 58.7 (‘Break your bread to the hungry . . . clothe the naked’), a text which his congregation were used to hearing in the liturgy on fast days.43 He also makes frequent appeal to Matthew 25.35–6, and 25.40 (‘what you do to the least of these, you do to me’). Here we see the further theological value in rendering the poor in indefinite terms: the face of Christ can more easily be super-imposed on those who are themselves faceless. As Augustine puts it: ‘you have Christ seated in heaven, but beseeching help on earth’.44 The identification of Christ with the poor was of course commonly used by promoters of almsgiving, and to observe this is to make a point made many times before. But it may be worth noting that in Augustine it has a theological value beyond its moral worth as a stimulus to generosity. By looking on the poor and needy of their own society Christians are to grow in their understanding of the humble Christ: Look with favour on the poor, the needy, the hungry and thirsty, those who travel, the naked, the sick, those in prison; have in mind a poor person like this, because if you have one like him in mind, you are mindful of him who said: ‘I was hungry, thirsty, naked, a traveller, sick, and in prison’.45

The Enarrationes are texts in which Augustine is at pains to stress our common identity as members of Christ’s body under a common head. The foreshortening of social distance which aids almsgiving is an integral aspect of this Christology. To conclude this part of the discussion, if the many sermons among the Enarrationes are in any sense typical of wider preaching practice, they 42 44 45

43 La Bonnardi` Jerome, Ep. 22.32. ere (1971) 98. Habetis Christum in caelo sedentem, in terra petentem. En. in Ps. 36, s.3.6. Respice et pauperes, egentes, esurientes et sitientes, peregrinantes, nudos, aegrotos, in carcere constitutos; intellege et super talem pauperem, quia et si super talem intellegis, super illum intellegis qui dixit: esuriui, sitiui, nudus, peregrinus, aeger, in carcere fui. En in Ps. 40.2; CCSL 38.450.

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throw into relief those few far more graphic descriptions of the poor with which we are familiar, above all, the portrayal of the starving in Basil of Caesarea’s sermon In Time of Hunger, but also the topos found in sermons of Chrysostom, Pseudo-Chrysostom, and occasionally in Augustine’s sermons outside the Enarrationes, which describe the sufferings of the very poor from extreme cold in winter. We should be wary of mistaking the exceptions of ‘full visibility’ for the rule of what is at best a disguised visibility. Augustine sacrifices the visibility of specific poor individuals or groups to the foreshortening of social distances. This of course returns us to the thorny relationship of text to life: does the preacher, like a painter, offer merely a subjective perspective on an objective social scene, even a trompe l’oeil, or does the preacher, unlike the painter, actually shorten the distances he describes, using the authority he holds in the Christian community to rewrite the social contract? If marginalisation is a social construct, such that how we speak of people by placing them under a certain description is a determinant of how we treat them more generally, then what we are witnessing here is an attempt to deconstruct that treatment. I now turn from the indefinite portrayal of the poor in Christian sermons to contrast their more specific portrayal in saints’ Lives. Let me make clear at the outset that I do not presume that saints’ Lives are always wholly historically reliable documents. Certainly not everything in the Life of St Porphyry is true, and some have questioned the bishop’s very existence, but I agree with Claudia Rapp, Raymond Van Dam and others in believing that most of that text is historically trustworthy and was composed shortly after the bishop’s death in around 420.46 In any case the conventionality and verisimilitude which characterises many of the portrayals I shall discuss in this and other texts mean that they both reveal and occlude forms of poverty regardless of whether they are fact or fiction. Saints’ Lives are at first glance far more revealing of the circumstances in which the very poor were to be found in late antique society. They seemingly allow us to place the destitute on the civic map. It is noticeable, for example, how often they report encounters with the sick destitute in the street or along the roadside. The monk Hypatios found peasants weak from hunger or disease lying in the road whom he brought into his monastery.47 According to Mark the Deacon, in the late fourth century Porphyry, the future bishop of Gaza, found a young man, Barochas, lying dangerously ill in the street at Jerusalem, whom he rescued, nursed back to health, and 46 47

Claudia Rapp in Head (2001) 55. Callinicus, Life of Hypatios 4.6 and 9.4; Bartelink (1971) 86 and 104.

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kept on as a household servant.48 The anchorite Julian Saba was famed for healing a cripple whom he found begging at the palace gates in Antioch.49 The Alexandrian scholar Eulogius came across a beggar without hands or feet who was found accosting people in the marketplace, and whom Eulogius took home as a (not wholly willing) companion in the ascetic life.50 Martin found the beggar with whom he shared his cloak at the city gates. This should not in itself surprise us. You expect beggars to be found on thoroughfares, at crossroads, because they will search out or be left in places where the large number of people who encounter them increases how much they are likely to receive in alms. The picture tallies with what we know from pagan sources. Libanius in Oration 7 portrays the naked and half-naked beggars, some crippled, sitting and standing in the cold at Antioch, probably near the entrance to the baths, who cry out for alms in the hope of receiving a piece of bread or an obol from the passers-by.51 There is clearly a question, however, about how far this heightened visibility of the sick or crippled in saints’ lives is influenced in different ways by biblical modelling, by Christ’s healing of the blind beggar Bartimaeus on the road out of Jericho (Mark 10.46–52), by the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.30–37), and by the story of the apostle Peter’s encounter with the crippled beggar at the temple gate in Jerusalem (Acts 3.1–10). The influence of biblical models may operate first at a literary level: authors of saints’ Lives sought to show the conformity of their heroes and heroines to Christ and his apostles, so that they are shown giving help to the poor in the same way as their biblical exemplars. In this context, however, we should note the judgement of Valerio Neri that the high number of sick and disabled beggars in Christian texts of the period cannot be explained solely in terms of biblical stereotyping, and reflects one facet of late antique poverty.52 That is surely correct, but leads to consideration of a further type of biblical modelling: Christians may have modelled their own behaviour on the scriptural episodes. If not all the very poor are equally visible to modern eyes in late antique Christian texts, were they equally visible to Christians in the late Roman world? Biblical models may not only now determine what we see of poverty in these texts, but may also then have influenced the shape of Christian poor relief, as holy men and women thought to relive or re-enact episodes from the Scriptures. The Lives offer intriguing evidence in particular for the ‘adoption’ and later employment 48 49 50 51

Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyry 14, in Gr´egoire and Kugener (1930) 13. Theodoret, Historia Religiosa 2.19, in Canivet and Leroy-Molinghen (1977–9) 1.238. Palladius, Lausiac History 21, in Bartelink (1974) 106. 52 Neri (1998) 54. Libanius, Or. 7.1–2, in Foerster (1903–23) 1.2, 373–4.

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of the very sick. This form of charity practised by Bishop Porphyry and Eulogius is paralleled in the story found in a letter by Paulinus of Nola: Paulinus took in a near-starving old man from the rural peasantry (ex rusticanis) whom he then placed with his friend Victor. The man was later ‘reborn’ – presumably in baptism. This form of Christian poor relief has so far received very little attention.53 Saints’ Lives have the great merit of allowing us to see something of the conjunctural or episodic poverty which threatened those who lived not in destitution but on its margins, whether as farmers in the countryside or as labourers or artisans in the cities. The Life of Hypatios tells how in winter especially the rural poor crowded into Rouphinianes in search of food – grain that had been stored for use as alms by Hypatios and his monks.54 Paphnutius, in his Histories of the Monks of Upper Egypt, allows us to see the ever-present threat of impoverishment for the rural poor through debt and the inability to repay debts, like the poor man in southern Egypt who sought out Abba Aaron when his creditor had threatened to seize his vineyard.55 Theodoret in the short life he presents of the famed ascetic Abrahames allows us to glimpse the violence or bullying to which villagers in Lebanon were exposed when the tax-collectors arrived.56 The latter text also suggests the power of Christian almsgiving to reshape social relations among the rural poor. From outright hostility towards Christianity and to the monks who have settled near them, Abrahames’ pagan villagers are won over to acknowledge him as their prostates or patron, when he pays their taxes for them; they build the church in which he then serves for some three years. The Life of Porphyry, however, offers a helpful corrective at this point to what might otherwise be a simplistic vision of the benefits conferred by Christianity. It recounts how a tenant farmer in one village attacked Barochas, now acting as an agent for the bishop of Gaza, when Barochas refused to give him further time with which to pay what he owed to the church. The pagan first pleads for extra time. When he turns to violence he is helped by his fellow farmers.57 Such violence may reveal the belief that pagans in authority would shield the perpetrators from justice, but is also a measure of the desperation inspired by conjunctural poverty – a poverty which enriched the church. Income which among other things supported almsgiving to the urban destitute was drawn in part from the hard labour of the rural poor. 53 55 56 57

54 Callinicus, Life of Hypatios 31.5, in Bartelink (1971) 206. Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 23.9. Paphnutius, The Histories 109, in Vivian (1993) 125–6. Theodoret, Historia Religiosa 17.2–3, in Canivet and Leroy-Molinghen (1977–79) 2.36–40. Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyry 22, in Gr´egoire and Kugener (1930) 19.

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Elsewhere the economic realities behind almsgiving tend to be obscured. We can compare the fate of Barochas with what Synesius relates in one of his letters to Theophilus, the all-powerful bishop of Alexandria, about the virtues of Dioscorus, a bishop in Cyrenaica: ‘I think that the destitute of Alexandria owe him a great debt of gratitude for labouring in their fields, quickly going everywhere, winning harvests from unproductive ground and making the most of his opportunities.’58 It was not in fact Dioscorus who laboured for the poor of Alexandria. The Life of Porphyry gives a brief glimpse into the conjunctural poverty to be found within the cities. It tells how the bishop, forced to climb across the roofs at Gaza so as to escape lynching from a pagan mob, came across an orphaned girl. The girl, fourteen years old, lived at home with her elderly and paralysed grandmother, presumably a widow, and the girl worked to support them both.59 The house and the food which the girl provides for her visitors show that the women are far from destitute, though their state is said to be one of destitution (ptocheia), and they later accept a generous daily alms from the bishop of four miliaresia, some 192 ob., indications of relative poverty. As the story suggests, episodic poverty threatened wherever illness and death weakened a household’s ability to gain an adequate income. In a society where perhaps some forty per cent of children had lost their father by the time they were fourteen or fifteen a great many such widows and orphans were to be found among the penetes at risk of destitution.60 But if it is sheer chance that Bishop Porphyry encounters a widow and orphan on his roof-top journey, is it a coincidence that these women, biblical archetypes of the virtuous poor, appear in the Life? Where are the many other urban poor? Some are the destitute who receive smaller sums in alms, 6 ob. at the dedication of the new church, 10 ob. during the Easter fast.61 Others are probably to be found working on the new church at Gaza rising amid the ruins of the pagan temple complex, the Marneion. Mark the Deacon was concerned to show Porphyry’s generosity to these workers, paying them their wages, and paying them more rather than less.62 This might suggest that non-payment of wages was a common risk faced by labourers; it might also indicate the need to pay more if people were to be engaged on a project 58

59 60 61 62


            
    !"  #
$,  
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& ( &  #)"( #' $ # $
 . Ep. 66, in Garzya and Roques (2000) 3.183. Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyry 97–100, in Gr´egoire and Kugener (1930) 74–7. Krause (1994–5) 3.9. On the high number of children who lost their father before puberty and even higher number who lost their father before the age of twenty-five, cf. Saller (1994) 189. Mark the Deacon, Life of Porphyry 94, in Gr´egoire and Kugener (1930) 72–3. Life of Porphyry 83, in Gr´egoire and Kugener (1930) 66.

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viewed with violent hostility by a great many pagan citizens. But the author’s interest is in displaying the bishop’s virtue, not in the labourers’ plight. To conclude, there is no doubt that Christian writers and preachers gave the poor a new visibility in the late empire, but this visibility is not necessarily the portrayal of specific individuals and groups; furthermore, the type of visibility differs between genres. We do wrong to think typical of sermons the oft-quoted graphic accounts of shivering beggars; it is the indefinite poor who are recalled to mind. Preachers might indeed do the destitute poor a disservice by describing them in specific terms likely to excite contempt. If some things were hidden as well as revealed, this was to the benefit of those to be aided by alms. Not all visibility is a virtue, and Christian preachers and authors had to tread a careful line between the need to make the poor visible and the need to make them attractive as recipients of alms. Saints’ Lives allow us to see poverty in far greater detail than is possible in sermons. They reveal something of the widespread conjunctural poverty endemic to the period as well as of utter destitution. Yet in each genre there is no escape from the gravitational pull of the Scriptures, whether in describing or in selecting the poor who are presented to view.

chap t e r 9

Throwing parties for the poor: poverty and splendour in the late antique church∗ Lucy Grig

This chapter seeks to address a big question: how were ideas of poverty transformed by the church in late antiquity? In approaching this question it also asks how this church was itself able to come to terms with its own teachings on poverty in the light of its own ever-increasing wealth and splendour. This in turn leads us to consider how Christian writers, often themselves bishops, the princes of the church, represented both poverty and splendour. In this way I hope to provide something of a new take on the well-trodden subject of Patristic debates on poverty, particularly by focusing on questions of aesthetics and representation, through examining discourses regarding church decoration and its relationship to poverty and charity. At the heart of the discussion is a slightly contrived conceit: the comparing and contrasting of two texts which give accounts of what I have admittedly loosely described as ‘parties for the poor’. These two texts provide interesting takes on early Christian approaches to poverty and wealth. While both the events depicted within the texts and their historical status differ, this juxtaposition nonetheless provides a striking introduction to the complex web of ideas and ideologies to be found in late antique Christian texts. In the course of my discussion I shall be considering what might be considered both ‘representation’ and ‘reality’, remaining alert to the power of metaphor and allegory while trying to avoid the problem of the occlusion of the late antique poor themselves. My first account of a gathering of the poor comes from one of the bestknown Christian martyr stories: that of St Laurence. The passion of this popular martyr was told in a number of late antique texts but the version of the story I am interested in comes from the Peristephanon of Prudentius, ∗

This chapter benefited from the astute comments of its various readers and listeners, both known and anonymous, with particular debt to Margaret Atkins and Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe. Translations of Paulinus make use of those of P. G. Walsh.

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written at the start of the fifth century.1 The scene is set in the city of Rome during the age of the persecution of the Christians. The urban prefect, the cruel agent of a ruler consumed with a fames pecuniae, summons Laurence, a deacon, to present the riches of the church of Rome before him. Our hero Laurence asks for three days in which to assemble his hoard and the prefect agrees in covetous anticipation. At the appointed time, instead of bringing the fabulous riches the avaricious prefect is expecting, Laurence presents him with a horde of the poor and suffering, clamorous for alms, explaining that they constitute the true treasures of the church. As a result, this being a martyr story, he is martyred horribly. The Laurence story is a neat fable about the transformation of worldly values in Christianity, but its apparent simplicity is of course deceptive. This is a story told by an establishment poet of the Theodosian r´egime,2 against the backdrop of a church that did not necessarily look like the church of the poor and suffering. This church was patronised by the emperor and his family; its basilicas gleamed with mosaics and precious metals, which play a leading role in the account of our second party. The scene of the second get-together is again the city of Rome, this time at the end of the fourth century. Pammachius, a devoutly Christian senator, had lost his wife, Paulina, and as part of the funerary rites he gave a banquet for the poor of Rome in the basilica of St Peter’s. Our account of this party comes from the letter of consolatio written to Pammachius by his friend Paulinus of Nola, ascetic, poet and saint.3 A description of the banquet forms a set piece at the heart of Paulinus’ literary letter. And so you gathered together the patrons of our souls, a multitude of poor people, all those deserving of alms from the whole of Rome, in the basilica of the Apostle. (Paulinus, Ep. 13.11)4

This ‘poverty party’ is often cited by ancient historians discussing the charity of the rich.5 However, I am here really more interested in the literary construction of this party, rather than the event itself. The way Paulinus describes the gathering is revealing of broader discourses embracing both poverty and Christian aesthetics. 1

2 4 5

Prudentius, Peristephanon 2. Near contemporary accounts and discussions include Ambrose, Off. 1 and Hymn 13 and August. Serm. 302–5 and Serm. Denis 13. The earliest prose passiones are the P. SS. Xysti, Laurentii et Yppoliti and the Passio Polychronii. See further Grig (2004) 136–41. 3 Ep. 13, written 396. Prudentius himself discusses his imperial preferment: Praef. 19–21. Itaque patronos animarum nostrarum pauperes, qui tota Roma stipem meritant, multitudinem in aula apostoli congregasti. A recent example is its discussion in the Cambridge Ancient History: Marcone (1998) 342–3.

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First, we may point out that Paulinus himself was not present at this event: he writes that he has only just heard of the death of Paulina, via a letter from a friend (13.1). So why does Paulinus choose to describe Pammachius’ own party to him? One part of the answer is provided by Catherine Conybeare: that this letter was actually intended for an audience wider than its ostensible single recipient, and aimed both to publicise Pammachius’ charity and to encourage others to act likewise.6 However the event also gives Paulinus an ideal opportunity to use his imaginative powers. Physical absence seems to pose no problem: Paulinus almost suggests that the event is created in his imagination, and has been summoned up by his powers of visualisation when he writes ‘for it seems to me I see . . .’ (13.11).7 A concentration on the visual and on the spectacular is a striking feature in a number of late antique texts and in this sense we can see Paulinus’ letter as both typical and characteristic.8 Paulinus describes the banquet as a spectacle, writing ‘For my part, I feast on the lovely spectacle of this great work of yours’ (13.11).9 He then goes on to develop an extended ekphrasis where the massed poor are played off against the splendour of their architectural background, the venerable basilica of St Peter’s. Paulinus begins his account by leading us into the basilica, taking us through its splendid entrance, ‘through that venerable hall, with its deep blue front which smiles from far off’ (13.11).10 A little later on we come through the colonnade to admire the next range of architectural features, as well as the gathered paupers: You brought the apostle himself so much delight when you filled the whole of his basilica with dense companies of the destitute, either where under its lofty height it stretches far beneath the central ceiling and from far off the glittering tomb of the apostle draws the eye and gladdens the heart of those who enter, or where, under the imposing roof, twin colonnades spread forth at the sides, or where, stretching out, the shining atrium is merged with the entrance, where a rotunda roofed with solid bronze adorns and shades a fountain, which rushes forth to minister to our hands and faces, not without a mystical appearance, surrounding the gushing waters with four columns. (Paulinus, Ep. 13.13)11 6 8 10 11

7 Videre enim mihi video. Conybeare (2000) 45–6. 9 Pulchro equidem tanti operis tui spectaculo pascor. See on this theme Roberts (1989) passim. Per illam venerabilem regiam cerula eminus fronte ridentem. Quanto ipsum apostolum adtollebas gaudio, cum totam eius basilicam densis inopum coetibus stipavisses, vel qua sub alto sui culminis mediis ampla laquearibus longum patet et apostolico eminus solio coruscans ingredientium lumina stringit et corda laetificat, vel qua sub eadem mole tectorum geminis utrimque porticibus latera diffundit, quae praetento, nitens atrium, fusa vestibulo est, ubi cantharum ministra manibus et oribus nostris fluenta ructantem fastigatus solido aere tholus ornat et inumbrat, non sine mystica specie quattuor columnis salientes aquas ambiens.

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The basilica as constructed by Constantine had been built to impress. The apse was covered in gold foil, the altar was gilded silver and the tomb of the Apostle was enclosed with bronze plaques, further decorated with porphyry pilasters and imported Greek columns, while gold and silver lighting fixtures adorned the nave.12 Further additions or moderations by the time of Paulinus’ letters seem to have included a coffered ceiling, doubled aisles, a vestibule and a substantial atrium, and a fountain roofed with a bronze baldacchino.13 What is pleasing to the eye is not just the beauty of the basilica: the poor themselves provide a ‘happy spectacle’ (laetum spectaculum) for God and the company of heaven (Ep. 13.14). This emphasis on spectacle appears frequently in late antique Christian texts and here, as elsewhere, its use is polemical. This ‘happy’ spectacle can be profitably contrasted with the traditional sort of spectacle which many clergymen saw as a powerful enemy.14 More particularly, the spectacle put on by Pammachius can be contrasted profitably with those put on by his fellow senators: ‘You give spectacles for the church; you are a candidate not for vainglory in the arena but rather for eternal praise’ (Ep. 13.16).15 The key word here in this discourse about Christian euergetism is munerarius: as we shall see, the word munus and its cognates crop up frequently in our texts. The party at St Peter’s makes for a striking contrast with the gathering put together by St Laurence as narrated by Prudentius.16 To start with, the settings differ greatly. The church building which serves as the location for Laurence’s gathering is unspecified,17 and its very unremarkableness is key as this is how the deacon can have his fun confounding the prefect’s covetous expectations. Laurence summons the prefect, promising a nave (atrium) gleaming (fulgere) with gold, its colonnades (porticus) gleaming with piled-up coins (Per. 2.173–6). What he actually presents, of course, 12 13 14 15

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As described in the Liber Pontificalis 34. Poetic descriptions can be difficult to fathom but see the literary documentation on St Peter’s assembled in Krautheimer (1977) 165–279. Augustine, for instance, insistently presented Christian narratives as offering spectacles superior to those of the ludi in his sermons, e.g. Serm. 301.1; En. in Ps. 39.9. Ecclesiae munerarius, non harenae nec inanis gloriae sed aeternae laudis ambitor. Cf. Ambrose in a similar vein, contrasting the works of Christian charity (hospitality and the ransoming of captives) with traditional works of euergetism (paying for circus games, theatrical performances and gladiatorial and beast shows): Off. 2.109. One thing they have in common is claims to comprehensiveness, to totality. Pammachius had gathered ‘those from the whole of Rome deserving of alms’ (qui tota Roma stipem meritant), Ep. 13.11, so too had Laurence found ‘all who ask for alms’ (omnes . . . qui poscunt stipem), Per. 2.143. It is clear, nonetheless, that the gathering takes place in a church: reference is made to the paupers gathering pro templo, 2.164, while the prefect follows Laurence ad sacratam ianuam, 2.178, to see the wealth lying in sanctis, 2.172.

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is a ‘ragged sight’ (inculta visu examina, 2.180): the deacon’s ‘gangs of the poor’ (catervae pauperum), lovingly described in all their suppurating glory. (There is a man with empty eye-sockets, another with a shrivelled arm, one with legs of unequal length, another with ulcerated limbs, 2.145–56.) These paupers are not only seen but heard: the prefect is greeted by a cacophony of their cries for alms (fragor rogantum, 2.181). By contrast, Paulinus’ (Pammachius’) paupers are a different matter, somewhat less gruesome, a lot less vocal, and decorously arrayed within a sumptuous basilica. Paulinus’ description of St Peter’s, as we have seen, focuses on its ‘shininess’: ‘glittering’ ‘gleaming’ (coruscans, nitens); he evokes the bronze roof, the fountains, the colour of the fac¸ade. The vision of a church shining with money that was ironically expounded by Laurence in Prudentius’ poem seems to have been made un-ironically material. Moreover, Paulinus was clearly not exaggerating in his praise of the setting. If we look at the list of precious donations made to St Peter’s by the Emperor Constantine, listed in the Liber Pontificalis, we quickly get wearied by their sheer weight. A small sample will suffice. 3 gold chalices each with 45 prase and jacinth jewels, each weighing 12 lb . . . . . a gold paten with a tower, of finest gold with a dove and adorned with prase and jacinth jewels and with pearls, 215 in number, weighing 30 lb . . . the altar itself, of silver chased with gold, weighing 350 lb, decorated on all sides with prase and jacinth jewels and pearls, the jewels 400 in number . . . a censer of finest gold, decorated on all sides with jewels, 60 in number, weighing 15 lb. (Liber Pontificalis 34)18

The focus on brightness in churches, emphasised in many late antique and Byzantine ekphrases, is about more than just pounds of weight in precious metals. Churches were seen not just as receptacles but indeed as generators of light.19 While today a small number of brightly coloured mosaics remain in situ, we have to imagine all the glittering liturgical accoutrements also provided,20 as well as the effect of the many silver lamps which once hung from the ceilings of churches and chapels.21 Artificial light both represents 18

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Calices aureos III cum gemmis prasinis et yacintis, singuli qui habent gemmas XLV, pens. sing. lib. XII . . . patenam auream cum turrem, ex auro purissimo cum colombam, ornatum gemmis prasinis et yachintis qui sunt numero margaritis CCXV, pens. lib. XXX . . . ipsum altarem ex argento auroclusum cum gemmis prasinis et yaquintis et albis ornatum ex undique, numero gemmarum CCCC, pens. lib. CCCL; tymiamaterium ex auro purissimo cum gemmis ex undique ornatum numero LX, pens. lib. XV. See here Gage (1993) 39–40. Some examples of ecclesiastical silver plate from this period do survive; for an interesting discussion of the corpus see Leader-Newby (2004) ch. 2. A beautifully evocative description of this effect is given by Prudentius in his hymn ‘On the Lighting of the Lamps’, Cath. 5.141.8.

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and evokes natural light, and in itself could constitute an offering to God, original source of all light. One of the reasons why gold was such a powerful and resonant material was its perceived close relationship to light; as Dominic Janes has put it, gold ‘suggested or embodied light which was sent by God as a metaphor of faith’.22 For many late antique Christians the shiningly obvious metaphorical powers of light corroborated the idea that material beauty was a natural and indeed necessary counterpart to spiritual enlightenment. Describing the entrance of St Peter’s, with its nitens atrium and impressive furnishings, Paulinus comments: Such adornment is appropriate for the entrance of a church so that the performance of the mystery of salvation within may be indicated by a striking construction without. (Ep. 13.13)23

Paulinus’ attitude here was certainly put into practice when it came to the decoration of his own church. Paulinus was the proprietor of a pilgrimage complex at Nola, which hosted the visits of the aristocratic and ascetic elite of the empire who came to call, as well as a mass of more lowly pilgrims.24 Paulinus directed and oversaw a whole host of improvements and renovations at Nola. He was understandably proud of his domain, and enjoyed expounding on its glories in symbolically charged ekphrases for the benefit of those who had not been able to view the embellishments with their own eyes. He dedicates, for instance, two of his Carmina (27–8) to providing virtual tours of the new buildings at Nola.25 The original basilica and shrine, Paulinus tells us, have been elaborately renovated and extended. The new improved complex benefits from the interplay of courtyards, colonnades, porticoes and fountains, while the interiors of the cult buildings are decorated variously with figural and decorative paintings, panelling and marble. In his descriptions, moreover, Paulinus makes a point of contrasting the new splendour with what it replaced: marble replaces cheap stucco in one case (Carm. 27.393–4), and the cabbages and manure of a vegetable plot in another (Carm. 28.276–8).26 The material and spiritual go 22 23

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Janes (1998) 146. Decet enim ingressum ecclesiae talis ornatus, ut quod intus mysterio salutari geritur spectabili pro foribus opere signetur. We can compare the idea of the sacrament as an external sign of internal grace; for one expression of this notion see Augustine: Sacrificium ergo visibile invisibilis sacrificii sacramentum, id est sacrum signum est, De civ. D. 10.5. 25 For a useful commentary see Goldschmidt (1940). See here Mratschek (2001). This is a favourite theme of Paulinus’: cf. Carm. 18.168–9 and the metrical inscriptions he wrote as an integral part of his decorative programme, given in his Carm. 30.

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together: Paulinus hopes that these material renovations will spur on his own spiritual improvements. He asks rhetorically ‘How, therefore, can this construction present me with a model, by which I can cultivate, build, and renew myself inwardly, and make myself a suitable lodging for Christ?’ (Carm. 28.279–81)27

Despite all this material splendour, Paulinus is famous, in his own time as well as in modern historiography, for his renunciation of the world.28 A wealthy aristocrat who had attained consular rank through his governorship of Campania, he made a public renunciation of his secular position and wealth in 394.29 However, on occasion, as an aesthete as well as an ascetic, Paulinus was able to have it both ways. As he himself boasted (somewhat disingenuously, it must be admitted), as proprietor of the lavish domus of St Felix he possessed more as the saint’s servant than as a senator (Carm. 21.458– 9). Meanwhile, as a poet as well as the leader of a monastic community, Paulinus was able to play on his ‘poverty’ in sophisticated fashion, as we see in his Carmen 18, which takes as its biblical motif the Gospel story of the widow’s mite (Mark 12.41–4; Luke 21.2). This poem is one of Paulinus’ Natalicia, his birthday poems for St Felix: it represents, as he tells us at its start, his gift of service owed to the saint, to whom he has made a vow of service. The poem is hence an explicit carmine voto or carmen pro muneribus: an annual poem which constitutes his munus as client of the saint.30 It is in this munus context that Paulinus gives something of a miniinventory of the precious donations which adorn the shrine of St Felix. I grant that others may outdo me in the precious gifts they bring and in the lavishness of their service, when they provide fine curtains, made of gleaming white linen or of material coloured with bright shapes, for covering the doorways. Let some polish smooth inscriptions on pliant silver, and overlay the holy portals with the sheets of metal they affix there. Others may kindle light with coloured candles, and attach lamps with many wicks to the vaulted ceilings, so that the hanging torches cast their flickering flames to and fro. (Carm. 18.29–37)31 27 28 29 30 31

Quoniam igitur nunc ista modo mihi fabrica formam / praebebit, qua me colere aedificare novare / sensibus et Christo metandum ponere possim? For the comments of Paulinus’ contemporaries see Trout (1999) 2–10; note too the striking accusations of Frend (1969). Paulinus himself discusses his renunciation in his Carm. 21.413f. On Paulinus’ adaptation of this classical theme see Witke (1971) 83–9 and Junod-Ammerbauer (1975) esp. 18–21. Cedo, alii pretiosa ferant donaria meque / officii sumptu superent, qui pulchra tegendis / vela ferant foribus, seu puro splendida lino / sive coloratis textum fucata figuris. / Hi leves titulos lento poliant argento / sanctaque praefixis obducant limina lamnis. / Ast alii pictis accendant lumina ceris / multiforesque cavis lychnos laquearibus aptent, / ut vibrent tremulas funalia pendula flammas.

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In this description colour, metal and light abound: silver lamps hang by the altar, expanses of silver line doors, which, in turn, are decorated with inscriptions. Even the textiles are special: Paulinus evokes glimmering white linens, and brightly patterned and coloured cloths. Such descriptions (however valuable for art historians) are undercut, however, by Paulinus’ rhetoric: even while lovingly listing the precious gifts at Felix’s shrine Paulinus is keen to contrast them with his own, superior, poverty. With an artfully backhanded compliment, he praises the charity of the rich: I give place, indeed, to all those richer in worthless gold, who empty up their pockets, heavy with coins, to give the poor their fill, who open up their rich store rooms with generous hand. (Carm. 18.40–42)32

It is only rhetorically, of course, that Paulinus claims to give place (cedo) to the rich, whose gold he declares worthless (vacuo . . . auro). Paulinus is only too aware of the true value of his poetic eloquence as he contrasts his munus with that of these rich givers: Nor are they slow to offer various gifts, dishes rich in food, candles, curtains, lamps – certainly generous but mute; I, having nothing, pay my debt, as a servant, from my own resources: offering service with the gift of my tongue. Though I am a lowly victim, I offer my own person, on my own behalf. But I shall not fear rejection, for the offering of a poor man’s service does not seem lowly to Christ, who happily received two coppers, the wealth of the holy widow, and praised them. (Carm. 18.44–51)33

So far we have only had the preliminaries: Paulinus’ ‘gift’ proper is a miracle story: the comically touching tale of a poor man who has his two oxen stolen, but has them returned by St Felix. The humour lies in the presentation of the stubborn persistence of the ‘rustic’, who holds Felix responsible, and tells him so, vowing that he won’t stop bothering him unless the cattle are returned. The amused saint leads the oxen home in order that he might get some peace. The farmer shows his thanks to the saint not with a gift to his shrine, but through praise and prayer. The moral of the story links in neatly with the Gospel story, as well as with Paulinus’ own self-presentation: he identifies himself with the poor peasant, who fulfils his gift to the saint ‘not 32 33

Cedo equidem et vacuo multis potioribus auro, / quis gravis aere sinus relevatur egente repleto, / qui locuplete manu promptaria ditia laxant. Nec segnius illi / fercula opima cibis, ceras aulaea lucernas, / larga quidem sed muta dicant: ego munere linguae, / nullus opum, famulor de me mea debita solvens / meque ipsum pro me, vilis licet hostia, pendo. / Nec metuam sperni, quoniam non vilia Christo / pauperis obsequii libamina, qui duo laetus / aera, piae censum viduae, laudata recepit.

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with a heavy coin or an insensate tribute, but with the spontaneous, living gift of tongue and mind’ (Carm. 18.443–4).34 Now Paulinus’ identification with the poor rustic is a neat performance to tie up the themes of the poem, but is scarcely to be taken seriously: the comic nature of the story precludes any real identification between the ‘tactless’ yokel and Paulinus, auctor and skilled practitioner of Christian eloquence.35 Paulinus’ poverty, moreover, as I have already noted, is a rather specialised form: certainly not to be compared with that of the unfortunate indigents invited to Pammachius’ poverty party. In Patristic discourse voluntary poverty is always rated far above its involuntary counterpart. Paulinus believed that material renunciation was not as important as its spiritual counterpart. He claimed on several occasions, moreover, that material renunciation was, ultimately, the easy bit: intellectual and spiritual renunciation of the matters of the world was harder to achieve and to maintain. For instance, writing to his friend Sulpicius Severus on the quest for ascetic perfection, Paulinus deployed an athletic metaphor to this effect: Wherefore, having abandoned or parted from the temporal things honoured by this world is not the end of the stadium course but rather the start; it is not the winning post but the starting gate. (Ep. 24.7)36

According to Dennis Trout: By emphasising, instead of complete renunciation, intellectual detachment from wealth and mastery over, or proper use of, riches, Paulinus’ writings frequently obscured the more radical implications of the ascetic project.37

However, other Patristic writers would doubtless have agreed with Paulinus when he asked rhetorically, ‘What good will come of doing without riches, if I remain rich in sin?’ (Ep. 40.11).38 The parable of the camel and the needle was consistently read allegorically and its significance was understood to lie in relation to the quest for Christian perfection rather than as a call to material renunciation.39 34 35 36 37 38 39

Non aere gravi nec munere surdo, / munere sed vivo linguae mentisque profusus. I see more distance between Paulinus and his rustic than does Witke (1971) 88–9. Quamobrem temporalium quae in hoc saeculo habentur honorum relictio sive distractio non decursus stadii sed ingressus nec ut meta sed ianua est. Trout (1999) 133. Et quid proderit caruisse divitiis, si remanemus divites vitiis? This persistent allegorisation of the camel and the needle pericope is attacked in the Pelagian treatise De Divitiis 10.1; on its Patristic interpretation generally see Pizzolato (1986).

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Ultimately Patristic writers agreed that neither poverty nor riches held intrinsic moral or spiritual worth, or indeed its opposite. The idea of the importance of intellectual and spiritual detachment from riches was not, of course, unique to Paulinus, but was favoured by Augustine among others. A corollary to this was the view that it was the use rather than possession of riches that was significant.40 Paulinus was in the Patristic mainstream when he wrote to Pammachius that ‘it is not riches but man’s use of them which is blameworthy or acceptable to God’ (Ep. 13.20).41 The rich man could be virtuous; moreover, the existence of both rich and poor was part of the divine scheme where they were bound to each other in a symbiotic relationship. After all, as Paulinus wrote elsewhere, God could have made all men equally rich, had he wished to: For, dearly beloved, the all-powerful Lord could have made all men equally rich so that no man would have need of another. But, in his infinite goodness, the merciful and pitying Lord devised a plan so that he might test your intentions in that regard. He made the one man wretched, so that he might recognise the man of mercy. He made him penniless in order to exercise the wealthy. (Ep. 34.6)42

While the poor clearly needed the charity of the rich in order to survive, the rich needed the poor for the good of their souls (Paulinus called the poor in St Peter’s ‘the patrons of our souls’: patroni animarum nostrarum), it being their religious duty to feed the poor from their own superfluity.43 For Paulinus, material splendours and renunciation, riches and poverty went together. There was without doubt a range of Patristic approaches to the issues of wealth and renunciation. Jerome, a correspondent of both Paulinus and Pammachius, often expressed more rigorous views. Jerome wrote to Paulinus in 395, having heard of his public act of renunciation, on the subject of the ascetic life (Ep. 58). While congratulating Paulinus on his decision Jerome, typically, could not avoid giving plenty of advice and admonitions.44 Most interestingly, Jerome criticises the spending of lavish amounts of riches on the decoration of churches and advises Paulinus that he would do better to concentrate on spiritual improvements: 40 41 42

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See for instance August. Ep. 157. 23–31, written in response to Pelagian teachings. Non divitias sed homines pro earum usibus esse culpabiles vel acceptos deo; cf. August. Ep. 157.23f.; Serm. 39.4. Nam potuerat, dilectissimi, dominus omnipotens aeque universos divites facere, ut nemo indigeret altero; sed infinitae bonitatis consilio sic paravit misericors et miserator dominus, ut tuam in illis mentem probet. fecit miserum, ut agnosceret misericordem. fecit inopem, ut exerceret opulentum. Cf. Augustine, Superflua tua necessaria sunt alii, Serm. 39.6. For instance, Jerome advises Paulinus immediately to disburse himself of all his worldly goods (Ep. 58.7); it seems that Paulinus did not in fact do so, for practical reasons: see here Trout (1999) 145–6.

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The true temple of Christ is the soul of the believer; embellish it, clothe it, offer it gifts, welcome Christ into it. What use are walls shining with jewels while Christ, in the person of the poor, is dying of hunger? (Ep. 58.7)45

This is an important theme for Jerome, who elsewhere criticises lavish spending on church decoration not just as a misdirected priority of the clergy but as a serious vocational failing.46 The differing approaches to aesthetics in these two eminent Christians are clear. While Jerome’s epistolary friendship with Paulinus never really developed beyond the superficial, that with Pammachius seems to have been more profound. Jerome, like Paulinus, wrote Pammachius a letter of consolation after the death of Paulina (Ep. 66). Here the famously acidic critic of the Roman aristocracy is full of praise for Pammachius, particularly in the light of his charitable activities. Like Paulinus, Jerome makes much of the contrast between Pammachius and his fellow senators. Pammachius is willing, we learn, to associate with the indigent. His home is thronged with the poor, not with clients, likewise he mixes freely with paupers, instead of being surrounded by a sycophantic entourage (Ep. 66.5–6). While, characteristically, taking the opportunity to warn against pride and complacency, he gives a picture of Pammachius as the friend of the poor, willing to slum it with the most humble: Certainly, you go on foot, you dress in a dark tunic, you make yourself the equal of the poor, you enter courteously into the apartments of the poor, you are the eye of the blind, the hand of the weak, the foot of the lame, you carry the water yourself, you chop wood, you build up the fire. (Ep. 66.13)47

As well as this ‘hands on’ approach Jerome also praises charity of a more mainstream kind. For instance, he praises the xenodochium (hospice) built by Pammachius at Portus (Ep. 66.11).48 It is the charity exercised by Pammachius on the death of Paulina, however, which lies at the heart of the discussion in this letter. While other husbands put flowers on the tombs of their wives, Pammachius honours Paulina’s memory with almsgiving (Ep. 66.5). The paupers of Rome have become the co-heirs of the childless 45

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Verum Christi templum anima credentis est: illam exorna, illam vesti, illi offer donaria, in illa Christum suscipe. quae utilitas parietes fulgere gemmis et Christum in paupere fame mori? Cf. the very similar comment in a despairing letter written after the Sack of Rome: Auro parietes, auro laquearia, auro fulgent capita columnarum et nudus atque esuriens ante fores nostras in paupere Christus moritur, Ep. 128.5. Cf. Ep. 52.10; for a more conciliatory comment on the same theme see Ep. 130.14. Esto, incedas pedibus, fusca tunica vestiaris, aequeris pauperibus, inopum cellulas dignanter introeas, caecorum oculus sis, manus debilium, pes claudorum, ipse aquam portes, ligna concidas, focum extruas. We learn in Ep. 77.10 that Pammachius had built this as a joint venture with Fabiola, a Roman aristocrat who had undertaken dramatic public penance after the death of her second husband.

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Paulina, they are fed by her jewels, clothed thanks to her silks (Ep. 66.4– 5). You might expect a harsh social critic of the aristocracy like Jerome to observe that it is easy to hand over jewels and silks once one is already dead, and that Paulina would have done better had she donated them while she was alive, but Jerome here is not in satirical mode.49 Pammachius’ party for the poor is not mentioned by Jerome, although we might at first sight think that it would have been an obvious subject. For one thing, the banquet provides a neat counterpoint to Jerome’s famous vignette about the fake charity of the rich, narrated in his letter to Eustochium. In this anecdote ‘the noblest woman in Rome’ ostentatiously hands out single coins to a line of poor people outside St Peter’s but punches an old woman in the face because she tries to procure a second coin (Ep. 22.32).50 It is of course dangerous to argue ex silentio51 but perhaps we can speculate that Pammachius’ poverty party is passed over by Jerome because he considered such a visible and ultimately tokenistic act rather too reminiscent of ‘typical’ aristocratic charity? Pammachius was really something of an ‘ascetic lite’ but he was a pillar of the community and of the church. He was precisely the kind of figure that the church hierarchy in the late fourth century needed to cultivate, and was beginning to have considerable success in so doing.52 The contradictions embraced by the late fourth-century church, contradictions that are so strikingly embodied in the contrast between Pammachius’ party for the poor and that of St Laurence, can be further illuminated by returning to the story of Laurence as told by one of the most successful Christians of the time, Ambrose of Milan. Ambrose uses the story of St Laurence and his paupers in his treatise of c. 390, Off. (On Duties).53 The bishop seems to have been an eager devotee of the Roman martyr, writing a hymn to him (Hymn 13) and also providing a neat version, perhaps the first, of the saint’s famous quip, delivered while being grilled alive: ‘turn me over, I am done on this side’ (Off. 1.207).54 49

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In his famously vituperative letter to Eustochium Jerome satirises ‘ascetic’ women who wear threadbare dresses for show but nonetheless maintain trunks full of lavish clothing: Ep. 22.32. However, as Curran (1997) observes, Jerome was, perhaps unsurprisingly, far softer on his friends than on his enemies! Cf. Ep. 58.2; Vita Hilarionis Eremite 10. We should perhaps also bear in mind that Jerome is writing two years after the death of Paulina: he writes biennium tacui, Ep. 66.1. On the ‘aristocratisation’ of Christianity at this time see Salzman (2002) ch. 7. This work has generally been known in modern scholarship as De Officiis Ministorum although this longer title has no validity in the manuscript tradition, nor in the works of other early Christian writers; see here Davidson (2001) 1–2. ‘Assum est’, inquit: ‘versa et manduca’.

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However, the Laurence story also serves a more substantive function for Ambrose in his discussion of the proper use of the riches of the church. In his actions Laurence was of course enacting two of the traditional duties of the deacon: acting as steward of church funds and as minister of alms to the needy.55 However, for Ambrose the emphasis falls entirely on the sacerdos: it is the sacerdos who holds the wealth of the church in stewardship and all uses of the church’s wealth lie at the priest’s discretion. There are several key uses of this wealth: to help those in need and to decorate the church: ‘Above all, this becomes the priest: to decorate God’s temple in a fitting manner, so that through this finery the dwelling of the Lord is resplendent’ (Off. 2.111).56 It is important to note that it is not the use of church funds for lavish decoration that is the moot point here. The Laurence story is in fact used to stress the importance of using the church’s resources for the succour of the needy. Ambrose argues ‘The church has gold not to keep, but to pay it out, and to come to the assistance of those in need’ (Off. 2.137).57 Laurence, Ambrose reminds us, preferred to distribute the church’s gold to the poor, rather than to conserve it (Off. 2.140). While this constitutes a favoured principle of the bishop’s,58 the episode is also cited in self-defence in a specific case. Ambrose was eager to justify the fact that in 378 he had taken a unilateral decision to melt down the church plate in Milan in order to ransom prisoners of the Goths, far away in the Balkans.59 This had not been one of the bishop’s more popular acts and it is notable that even some twelve years later Ambrose still feels the need to defend himself (Off. 2.136–42). As discussed by Peter Brown, this dispute constitutes just one episode in an ongoing battle over who was to be the authorised giver in the church: the bishop or the influential members of his flock. In melting down the church plate, after all, Ambrose would also have been obliterating the names of the Christian family donors whose names were doubtless engraved on the vessels.60 Now there is more to the episode than naked one-upmanship. (For one thing, we should bear in mind that the obliterated names would have been there for intercession as well as self-aggrandisement.)61 The key 55 56 57 59 60

Unlike Ambrose, Prudentius makes this explicit in his account: caelestis arcanum domus / fidis gubernans clavibus / votasque dispensans opes, Per. 2. 42–4. Et maxime sacerdoti hoc convenit, ornare Dei templum decore congruo, ut etiam hoc cultu aula Domini resplendeat. 58 Cf. Ep. 18.16. Aurum ecclesia habet non ut servet, sed ut eroget, et subveniat in neccessitatibus. Ambrose, Off. 2.136–42; cf. 2.70; Socrates, Hist. Eccl. 4.25. 61 I owe this point to Richard Finn. Brown (1992) 96.

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point remains, however, that, according to Ambrose and other episcopal colleagues, the bishop held stewardship over the riches given to the church, as God managed all riches on earth.62 The sacerdos, therefore, reserved the right to use ecclesiastical resources as he saw fit.63 Here we have an extreme example of the exercise of stewardship. The specifically episcopal angle to this debate, as elucidated by Brown,64 is doubtless important, but the issue of poverty and splendour went far deeper than the prerogative of bishops and went to the heart of the nature of late antique Christianity. God and Gold65 were generally able to go together quite nicely. The symbolic and metaphorical spell cast by both earthly and heavenly riches was protected as it was inverted, even while stories like the Laurence fable were popular and aristocrats like Paulinus divested themselves of their worldly goods. Ideas of poverty and the poor were undoubtedly transformed by the church in late antiquity. A final example shows this strikingly, and concerns a third poverty party, back in the neighbourhood of St Peter’s. This gathering took place around sixty years before Pammachius’ (c. 335–40) and was hosted by a very different kind of senator. Our author this time is Ammianus Marcellinus, our benefactor, the politician Lampadius: Being unable to tolerate the agitation of the plebs, who often urged that many things should be given to those who were unworthy of them [i.e. performers], in order to show both his generosity and his contempt for the mob, [Lampadius] summoned some beggars from the Vatican and enriched them with valuable gifts. (Amm. Marc. 27.3.6)66

Lampadius had something of a tricky relationship with the plebs Romana: on another occasion a mob tried to burn down his house (Amm. Marc. 27.3.8). His party at St Peter’s was a demonstration of contempt because he was refusing to play by the traditional rules of civic euergetism, which determined that the generosity of the rich was not supposed to be aimed at those who truly required it. The episode functions as a salutary reminder of just how far the world had changed by the time of Paulinus and Pammachius. However, as I have sought to argue, the late antique transformation 62 63

64 66

Defending himself over a local dispute in a letter Augustine carefully discusses the bishop’s lordship over the patrimony of the church, using the noun dominus and the verb dominare: Ep. 126.7–9. Interestingly, Possidius tells us that Augustine also melted down church vessels in order to support the needy; moreover, he tells us that Augustine actually used Ambrose as an authority when justifying his act against ‘carnal’ opponents: Vita Aug. 24; further on this theme, and for other examples, see Sternberg (1996). 65 To quote the title of Janes (1998). Now see also Brown (2002) passim. Plebis nequiens tolerare tumultum, indignis multa donari saepe urgentis, ut et liberalem se et multitudinis ostenderet contemptorem, accitos a Vaticano quosdam egentes, opibus ditaverat magnis.

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preserved the social and economic hierarchies of Roman society even as they were inverted metaphorically.67 The rich, dealing with their property in the manner approved by the clergy of the church, remained the assumed audience, as well as the imagined subject, for and of Patristic discourse.68 This argument was made in an influential article of Ramsay MacMullen’s.69 MacMullen examined the sermons of preachers from both East and West and observed that they were consistently aimed at the ‘haves’ rather than the ‘have-nots’. Eminent preachers like John Chrysostom and Augustine told their wealthy congregation how they should use their property correctly. We should imagine our bishops as addressing ‘persons very much like themselves’, fellow honestiores all.70 Even rare instances of total material renunciation preserved the order of things: the whole point of renunciation was that you had to have something to give away in the first place. (Moreover, as Augustine said, even the poor could be guilty of avarice: in which case they were just like the rich who happened not to have any money!)71 The involuntary poor, meanwhile, remained the Other, even if their importance had been radically transformed by the rise of the Christian church. The church needed the rich and the rich needed the poor. (The poor of course also needed the rich but they were always constituted as the object rather than the subject of Christian discourse.) The church as an institution also needed the poor: poverty provided a key justification for the ‘stewarded’ wealth of the church. The imaginary poor served a valuable metaphorical function in Christian discourse, while dealing with the real poor, of course, required a more complex strategy.72 This discussion is perhaps guilty of having fallen under the spell of Patristic discourse in continuing to focus on the poor in just such a metaphorical way. As ever, one feels bound to comment that the poor were 67

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69 71 72

It could of course be argued at this point that the emergence of the bishop as a new social actor constituted a great change in the social and economic hierarchy of Rome; however in many respects the bishop slotted into this hierarchy in highly traditional fashion. See now on the bishop as social leader in late antiquity, Rapp (2005) esp. ch. 7. It is of course misleading to speak of the ‘rich’ as a unified group as such, not least because so many of those so-called would have denied the label; other chapters in this volume provide a more nuanced account of the gradations among both rich and poor, while this discussion must, due to limited space, concentrate on other matters. 70 MacMullen (1989) 511. MacMullen (1989). E.g. En. in Ps. 51.4, 83: the problem lay in the desire for, rather than the possession of, wealth in itself. As Peter Brown aptly comments ‘The theme of the “love of the poor” exercised a gravitational pull quite disproportionate to the actual workings of Christian charity in the fourth century’: Brown (1992) 78.

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good to think with. Yet it must be acknowledged at the same time that the poor were very rarely used to think with in pre-Christian Rome. Here we have an enormous conceptual, as well as institutional change. The power of metaphor held its sway over Christian discourse, however. Just as the church Fathers argued that the camel and the needle needed to be understood metaphorically, so Paulinus argued that material renunciation was less valuable than its spiritual counterpart and that beautiful ecclesiastical buildings could stand as a model for interior transformation. Ascetics, as we have seen, often went in for aesthetics. From one angle at least, we can see Pammachius’ party in St Peter’s as a neat encapsulation of the role of the poor in the late antique church. While the poor presented by Prudentius in his account of the Laurence story were deliberately made gruesome to fit the demands of the fable, those assembled by Pammachius have become decorously invisible amidst the splendours of the imperially adorned basilica of St Peter’s.73 The deeply symbolic nature of Paulinus’ description of the party has the effect of obliterating the actual poor still further. The real poor of course really existed, both inside the church and without. More or less face-to-face encounters with the indigent would have made up an unavoidable part of daily life. (Though one remembers the infamous comment of the (then) Housing Minister, Sir George Young, who said ‘the homeless are the sort of people you step over when you come out of the opera’.) The problems involved in face-to-face charity were ironically highlighted in Jerome’s satirical account of the noble lady in St Peter’s (Ep. 22.32). On another occasion, however, we find Jerome sympathetically74 acknowledging the distaste suppurating indigents provoked, even in the most charitably disposed.75 Fabiola looked after the poor and deformed in person while I know of many wealthy and devout persons who, on account of their weak stomachs, carry out this work of mercy by the agency of others, showing money with their purse, rather than with the hand. (Ep. 77.6)76 73 74 75

76

It is ironic that while he describes a spectaculum the spectated actually seem to have disappeared from view. That is, sympathetic towards the sensibilities of the rich. The infirmities listed by Jerome are reminiscent of those attributed to Laurence’s paupers, for instance: Describam nunc ego diversas hominum calamitates, truncas nares, effossos oculos, semiustos pedes, luridas manus, tumentes alvos, exile femur, crura turgentia et de exesis ac putridis carnibus vermiculos bullientes? Ep. 77.6. Scio multos divites et religiosos ob stomachi angustiam exercere huiusce modi misericordiam per aliena ministeria et clementes esse pecunia, non manu.

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Fabiola, due to her ‘great faith’ was, unlike so many others, ready and able to tend to ‘that poor wretch whom we despise, whom we cannot bear to look at, and the very sight of whom turns our stomachs’ (Ep. 77.6).77 Otherwise it seems likely that in late antiquity, as today, the rich left face-to-face works of charity to institutions such as the church. In late antiquity the ‘haves’ were told by their preachers, probably for the first time, that they had a duty to the ‘have-nots’, to people, in Jerome’s words, ‘just like us, formed out of the same clay, made up of the same elements’ (Ep. 77.6).78 The rich sitting in church were alternately courted and admonished. A cynical reductionist would of course note that this is how a religious system works: the failure of the congregation to obey every stricture of their priest is what keeps them coming back. This failure is what entails the need for penance and, its crucial counterpart, almsgiving. Riches, both real and metaphorical, remained both as crucial and as omnipresent as poverty in the late antique world. 77 78

Ille, quem despicimus, quem videre non possumus, ad cuius intuitum vomitus nobis erumpit. Nostri similis est, de eodem nobiscum formatus luto, isdem conpactus elementis.

chap t e r 10

Salvian, the ideal Christian community and the fate of the poor in fifth-century Gaul Cam Grey

Around the middle of the fifth century ad, Salvian, presbyter of the church at Marseilles, delivered a blistering broadside at the conduct of his fellow Christians. A considerable portion of this diatribe, under the title De Gubernatione Dei (Concerning the Governance of God, abbreviated here as DGD) has survived, and the themes and tenor of the work are clear.1 The text reveals a senior member of the Gallic clergy attempting to come to terms with what he perceived to be the eclipse of Roman culture and society in Gaul and elsewhere in the western provinces of the Roman empire. Salvian ascribed this decline not to the destructive influence of barbarians, but to a decline in the morals of Romans themselves (DGD 5.4.16–18, 5.6.25; cf. Ep. 9). Indeed, he suggested that it was only among barbarians and marginalised groups such as the Bagaudae that civilised Roman behaviour could now be found (DGD 5.5.21–2). Salvian focused considerable attention upon the depredations of the imperial tax machinery, the abuses visited upon small landowners by the members of the curial class, and the desperate ends to which these drove the poor. As a consequence, his testimony was long a staple for scholars seeking confirmation that the late Roman empire was in inexorable decline, as a result of barbarian invasions, high levels of taxation and a fragmenting social fabric.2 In particular, Salvian’s observations concerning the nature of relations between landlords and tenants in fifth-century Gaul (DGD Book 5) were long placed alongside the legislation De Patrociniis Vicorum in the Theodosian Code and Libanius’s Oration 47 Against Protection Systems, and used as a fundamental building block in arguments for the emergence of 1

2

Lambert (2000) 115 dates the text to the first half of the 440s. It is possible that it is to be identified with the text called by Gennadius (De Viris Illustris 68) De Praesenti Iudicio: Pellegrino (1940) 60–64; Badewien (1980) 19 with n. 5. Citations will be made from the edition of G. Lagarrigue, Salvien, Oeuvres, 2 vols. SC 176; 220 (1971–75). Translations are my own. Summaries of the scholarship may be found in Clausing (1925); Krause (1987). Badewien (1980) 109–10 gives a brief account of Salvian’s place in the debate.

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a new, harmful type of patronage relationship labelled patrocinium in the late Roman period. Patrocinium was interpreted as part of a general trend towards venality and corruption in the period, and a significant contributing factor in the downfall of the Roman state. Additionally, it signalled the end of the independent peasant proprietor and the beginnings of the medieval serfdom, as small agriculturalists were inexorably consumed by larger, more powerful landowners, and transformed into dependent tenant farmers.3 The historiographical concept of Patrocinium is not as firmly entrenched in the scholarship as it once was.4 Scholars now recognise that rural patronage differed from province to province, and question the validity of combining disparate sources from disparate regions in pursuit of one overarching phenomenon.5 Indeed, it seems clear that the legislation, Libanius and Salvian all focus upon different aspects of rural patronage relationships in the period. Where the concern of the legislation is for the transferal of revenues to the imperial coffers6 and Libanius’ complaints should be situated within the context of a socio-economic competition between curiales and military men,7 Salvian’s testimony must be interpreted with an eye to the overarching purpose of his work – namely, to denounce ‘the undoubted guilt of the vast majority of self-professed Christians for their numberless and atrocious sins’.8 Perhaps for lack of other evidence, Salvian’s text continues to occupy a central place in scholarship concerning the nature of rural tenancy and patronage relations in late antiquity. But, to date, there has been little written on the ways in which Salvian’s literary, religious and moral purpose might affect the picture he paints of the fate of the poor in late Roman Gaul. In this context, recent accounts of the ideas and preconceptions underpinning Salvian’s work offer some valuable insights. These treatments have focused upon Salvian’s representations of the various barbarian groups with whom he and his fellow Gallo-Romans came into increasingly intimate contact over the course of the fifth century, and sought to place them within the broader context of his work as a whole.9 It is the purpose of this chapter 3 4 5

6 7 9

Recent restatements, with further references, may be found in Krause (1987) 81–2; Giliberti (1992) 197; Mircoviˇc (1997) 29–30; Marcone (1998) 362–3. See in particular, Carri´e (1976); Lepelley (1983); Garnsey and Woolf (1989). Brown (1971) 85 argues that the evidence for the harmful effects of rural patronage is effectively limited to Gaul and Egypt. Carri´e (1976) is strict in his application of Libanius’ evidence only to late fourth-century Syria. Krause (1987) 73–4, 84. Also Petit (1955) 189 at n. 4. 8 O’Donnell (1983) 26. Petit (1955) 376–7; Carri´e (1976) 174, 166–7; Krause (1987) 86. See, in particular, Maas (1992); Lambert (2000); also O’Donnell (1983).

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to arrive at a similar strategy for reading Salvian’s account of the options available to the rural poor in fifth-century Gaul. The discussion will be structured in the following way. First, I sketch briefly what is known of Salvian, as a preliminary to situating him within his historical, religious and literary contexts. Next, I offer some observations about his purpose in writing the De Gubernatione Dei, acknowledging the critical role his religious beliefs played in that portrayal. With this in mind, I explore Salvian’s construction of the ideal Christian community, before focusing attention upon the various ways in which he employs the motifs of ‘poverty’ and ‘the poor’ in his text. In particular, I note Salvian’s manipulation of the contradiction in contemporary attitudes towards the poor, between a developing argument that they are worthy of charity and a lingering conviction that they are to be despised. Finally, I explore the various components in Salvian’s picture of the fate of poor peasant farmers in fifth-century Gaul, teasing out the information he provides indirectly for the strategies available to them in response to the circumstances in which they found themselves. salvian – the man and his work There is little material from which to construct a picture of Salvian’s life.10 Beyond the meagre testimony of Salvian’s own surviving works, the fullest independent source is Gennadius, who, like Salvian, was presbyter of the church at Marseilles. Gennadius includes Salvian in his De Viris Illustribus, a continuation of the series of short biographies of Christians originally devised by Jerome. He observes that, at the time he was writing in around 480 ad, Salvian lived on in senectute bona. From this and Salvian’s apparent familiarity with the devastation of Tr`eves and Cologne in the early fifth century (De Gubernatione Dei 6.13.72; Ep.1.5), it has been conjectured that he was born somewhere in northern Gaul shortly before 400 ad. His use of legal language and concepts makes it likely that he had some kind of legal training as a young man, possibly at Arles.11 Later, he married a certain Palladia, whose parents were initially pagans, but who later converted to Christianity. Salvian and Palladia had a daughter, Auspiciola, and the family appears to have gone into some kind of ascetic seclusion, probably in the first instance at the monastery of Honoratus at L´erins.12 This 10 11 12

Cf. Pellegrino (1940) 7–26; Badewien (1980) 14–18. Pellegrino (1940) 17–8; Badewien (1980) 15. Although they did not necessarily share the lifestyle of the monks at L´erins in all particulars: Pellegrino (1940) 22.

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caused them to become estranged from Palladia’s parents for some time (Ep. 4). Salvian later left L´erins – presumably with his family – and took up a position as presbyter at Marseilles, where he wrote the De Gubernatione Dei.13 Salvian occupied a position of respect within the Gallic ecclesiastical hierarchy, although he appears never to have held a bishopric. Gennadius accords him the title of magister episcoporum, perhaps an allusion to the fact that Salvian instructed several future bishops while staying at the monastery at L´erins, and wrote numerous homilies for bishops as well (Gennadius, De Viris Illustribus 68). Although Gennadius attributes a lengthy list of works to Salvian, there survive only the De Gubernatione Dei, a series of four instructional letters to the church written under the pseudonym of Timothy (Ad Ecclesiam) and a small collection of letters. aim s an d purpose of the d e g u b e r n at i o n e d e i The scope of the De Gubernatione Dei, and the circumstances in which Salvian wrote it, encourage a comparison with the monumental De Civitate Dei of his slightly earlier African contemporary, Augustine of Hippo. For a long time, such comparison took the form of a contrast between the two. Much was made of the dissimilarities between Salvian’s attempts to come to terms with the vicissitudes of his age and those of Augustine. Contrasts of tone, audience and message seemed to render any attempt to draw parallels between the two problematic.14 In addition, perceived differences in their attitudes to the Pelagian heresy were long interpreted in modern scholarship as a decisive factor in placing the two on opposite sides of an insurmountable doctrinal gulf.15 Certainly, the two wrote with very different aims in mind, and their attitudes to the causes of Roman society’s troubles diverge wildly. In Salvian’s conception of divine providence, it was fitting for God to punish Romans who professed Christianity, but did not practise it.16 His work was envisaged as medicine for the sick – and harsh medicine at that (DGD pr.3). Such a project is in stark contrast to the measured tones of Augustine.17 However, 13 14 15

16 17

Badewien (1980) 18. See Lambert’s comments, with further references: Lambert (2000) 116–18, 129–30; cf. Pellegrino (1940) 211–28, who also includes Orosius. For a succinct discussion of the issues surrounding the identification of Salvian as ‘Pelagian’ or ‘semipelagian’, see Badewien (1980) 176–99; also O’Donnell (1983) 27–30, and the important cautions of Lambert (1999) 122–3 with n. 22. Cf. Badewien (1980) 31–50; Lambert (1999) 117–18. See O’Donnell (1983) 34; also O’Donnell (1979) passim.

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the most recent scholarship on Salvian has moved beyond a simple contrast of the two, and focused instead upon similarities in the preoccupations that motivated them, and the preconceptions that underlie their works. In this context, the two may be taken as complementary rather than conflicting examples of a broader struggle among contemporary Roman Christian thinkers to come to terms with the disquieting circumstances in which they found themselves.18 Salvian poses his central problem at the beginning of the third book (DGD 3.1.2):19 And so, one might ask, if everything in this world is controlled by the care, governance and judgement of God, why should the circumstances of the barbarians be so much better than our own? And, even among us, why is the lot of the good man so much harder than that of the bad? Why should honourable men sicken while wicked men grow stronger? Why does everything succumb to authorities that are largely unjust?

Salvian’s answer focuses attention upon the conduct of the very people who asked the question – namely, the wealthy, aristocratic Romans who form his audience. In Salvian’s opinion, the current travails they suffer are a direct consequence of God’s judgement and punishment of their sins. He argues that it is their failure to pay attention to God that is at the root of the problem (DGD 3.9.41). He concludes the book with a damning denunciation of the collective hypocrisy of contemporary Christian communities, observing (DGD 3.11.59–60):20 Thus it is the case that even we who are said to be Christians lose the force of so great a name through the vice of depravity. 60. For it is of absolutely no benefit to carry a sacred name without morals, since a life that is at variance with our claim denies the honour of an elevated title through the meanness of unworthy acts. 18

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O’Donnell (1983) 26 notes that ‘even when ancient Christians were divided by doctrinal differences far sharper than those that separated the Gaulish monks from the African Augustine, they were yet much closer to each other in preconceptions and preoccupations than are any of them to the few moderns who still read their words.’ Lambert (1999) 129 with n. 39 is more cautious about similarities in their attitudes. Quaeritur itaque . . . si totum quod in hoc mundo est cura et gubernaculo et iudicio Dei agitur, cur melior multo sit barbarorum condicio quam nostra; cur inter nos quoque ipsos, sors bonorum durior quam malorum; cur probi iaceant, improbi convalescant; cur iniquis vel maxime potestatibus universa succumbant? Quo fit ut etiam nos, qui Christiani esse dicimur, perdamus vim tanti nominis vitio pravitatis. 60. Nihil enim omnino prodest nomen sanctum habere sine moribus, quia vita a professione discordans abrogat inlustris tituli honorem per indignorum actuum vilitatem. Unde cum paene nullam Christianorum omnium partem, paene nullum ecclesiarum omnium angulum non plenum omni offensione et omni letalium peccatorum labe videamus, quid est in quo nobis de Christiano nomine blandiamur, cum utique hoc ipso magis per nomen sacratissimum rei simus, quia a sancto nomine discrepamus. Nam ideo plus sub religionis titulo Deum laedimus, quia positi in religione peccamus.

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Since we see almost no Christians anywhere, almost no corner in all our churches not filled with every offence and the stain of every mortal sin, why is it that we flatter ourselves with the name of Christian? Surely we are made more culpable in this matter by that most holy name, since we are at odds with it. Therefore, we injure God more greatly under the title of religion, because we sin after we have been placed in religion.

These two themes, of hypocrisy among professed Christians and the collective guilt of the group, are fundamental to Salvian’s rhetorical purpose.21 They underpin his account of the various atrocities visited upon Roman society by its own members in the books that follow, and infuse his account of the relations between rich and poor in contemporary Roman society. Salvian’s principal aim, then, is to condemn the sins of his contemporaries and highlight the breakdown of the Christian community of his time.22 The centrality of this aim offers a caution against approaches to Salvian’s text that accept his testimony as a true and factual account of the world in which he lived. It seems more profitable to acknowledge that Salvian’s religious and moral presuppositions condition and shape his interpretation of the processes and phenomena he observes.23 Consequently, any reading of Salvian’s account of the fate of the poor in the fifth century should begin with his attitude to the proper structure of the Christian community, and the mutual responsibilities of rich and poor towards each other. These attitudes, in their turn, must be read through the lens imposed by Salvian’s oft-expressed opinion that the Romans themselves are responsible for their current sufferings. salvian’s id eal christian communit y In reconstructing Salvian’s ideal Christian community, we are required to cast our net widely over his text. Its various components are nowhere explicitly linked to each other. Rather, they emerge piecemeal in the course of his work. In addition, the characteristics that he chooses to identify and focus upon are determined by his overriding interest in demonstrating the vices of contemporary society, and proving that it was these vices that had caused the predicament in which Roman society found itself. Salvian’s position is uncompromising and confrontational. In his construction, the Romans of his time were impious, unchaste, greedy and bereft of masculine 21 23

22 Cf. Lambert (1999) 126. Cf. Lambert (1999) 121. Lambert (2000) 103, 104; also O’Donnell (1983) 33; Maas (1992) 277, 280.

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virtues. They had stopped observing a proper relationship of reciprocity with God, and with each other. Throughout his work, five themes in proper communal relations recur. In each case, Salvian draws a contrast between the ideal circumstances in which this practice might once have occurred and its current perversion in his own time. The first theme is just behaviour by agents of the state, leading to an equitable balance between public and private spheres. Salvian sees the most perfect embodiment of this in the early Republic (DGD 1.2.10).24 He singles out the Fabii, the Fabricii and the Cincinnati for particular praise, observing that ‘they directed all their attention, all their efforts, to the common good, and contributed to the growing wealth of the state by their individual poverty’.25 As magistrates, these individuals pursued the glory of the state rather than their own wealth (DGD 1.2.11; cf. 3.9.46 for contemporary magistrates). In such circumstances, the private desires of individuals were subordinated to the common good of the community. This link between individuals and the community can be developed more fully. In his exposition of actions that displeased God in the past, Salvian devotes much attention to specific examples, where individuals in positions of power behaved in particular ways, with dire consequences for the community as a whole. He justifies this tactic with the argument that the actions of individuals impact upon the well-being of the group (DGD 6.1.2; cf. 7.17.75, 7.19.81). The implication is that in the ideal community, individuals in positions of power and influence should feel a responsibility to their community, motivated by the knowledge that their actions have the potential to impact upon the group as a whole. This sense of responsibility is at the heart of the second theme, too – namely, the importance of reciprocity in vertical relations, and the mutual obligations that such relations entail. Much of his attention focuses upon the proper relationship between God and his people – or, more properly, the absence of such a relationship in his own time. In the process, though, he sketches the essentials of enduring, reciprocal relationships of exchange between individuals of unequal status – that is, patronage relationships. In a discussion of the actions undertaken by the residents of cities under

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Although he rejected traditional Roman religious practices – including the continuing ritual of consuls consulting the sacred chickens (DGD 6.2.12) – Salvian still found virtue in the Roman past (DGD 1.2.10–11). Cf. Lambert (1999) 125–8. Omnia scilicet studia omnes conatus suos ad communia emolumenta conferrent et crescentes reipublicae vires privata paupertate ditarent.

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attack by barbarians, he observes that reciprocity is at the heart of human relations (DGD 6.17.94; cf. 7.2.8–9):26 It is the custom in human life that thanks should be given to lenders of favours and that those bestowing gifts should receive a return for their gifts.

In Salvian’s construction, the recipients of benefits have a responsibility to acknowledge and repay those benefits in a manner that is in accordance with their means, and the deserts of their benefactor. He also makes it clear that those in a position to be benefactors should acknowledge a moral responsibility to those less powerful or fortunate than themselves. Again, acknowledging this responsibility is part of the proper observance of God’s teaching. He notes, for example, the affection and charity of the Goths and Vandals – characteristics, he reminds his audience, ‘that the Lord teaches us are the chief of virtues’ (DGD 5.4.15).27 These characteristics are part of a broader set of attitudes that benefactors should possess, which can be grouped under the rubric humanitas. Again, this theme is most clearly expressed as an absence in contemporary relations. In his critique of the type of protection currently offered by the powerful to the weak, Salvian observes (DGD 5.8.39):28 I would not consider this serious or unworthy, indeed, I would rather thank this public spirit of the powerful to whom the poor give themselves, if they did not sell those patrocinia, if, when they claimed to be defending the poor, it could be attributed to their humanitas and not to their greed (cupiditas).

So, Salvian’s ideal community is characterised by a sense of mutual responsibility between powerful and powerless, rich and poor. This vertical harmony is complemented by horizontal harmony. The third theme that emerges from his text is the importance of unity of purpose within the community. Expanding further upon his characterisation of the Goths and Vandals as proper followers of God’s teaching, he argues (DGD 5.4.15; cf. 8.4.20) that ‘Almost all barbarians, at least those who are in the same tribe with the same king, love each other; almost all Romans persecute each other.’29 The unity of purpose that Salvian observes among 26 27 28

29

Id etiam usus vitae humanae habet ut referatur gratia faeneratoribus gratiarum, et recipiant vicem munerum munerantes. Quam praecipuam dominus docet esse virtutem. Nec tamen grave hoc aut indignum arbitrarer, immo potius gratularer hanc potentium magnitudinem quibus se pauperes dedunt, si patrocinia ista non venderent, si quod se dicunt humiles defensare, humanitati tribuerent, non cupiditati. Omnes se fere barbari, qui modo sunt unius gentis et regis, mutuo amant, omnes paene Romani mutuo persequuntur.

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the barbarians can also be connected with his vision of the role that magistrates and the powerful should play in the community – that is, the personal interests of the individual are of secondary importance to the greater good of the group. Another factor uniting a community is its proper observance of Christian law as contained in the Bible. This fourth theme is a critical component of Salvian’s argument that pagan barbarians are not as sinful as Romans. Salvian accepts that Roman Christians possess knowledge of the true law, and argues that pagan barbarians do not. As a consequence, the sins of the former, committed in full knowledge of the law are greater than those of the latter, committed in ignorance (DGD 4.14.68; cf. 4.16.79, 3.6.25, citing Luke 12.47). On the basis of this argument, Salvian concludes that the barbarians should be considered morally superior to their Roman contemporaries (DGD 7.6.25; cf. 4.13.60–64).30 The fifth theme that Salvian stresses is the centrality of the paterfamilias in the community, and the influence he has over both his immediate family and his dependents. Drawing primarily upon evidence for the detrimental effects of this influence, he suggests that it is the behaviour of the paterfamilias that determines the reputation and standing of the household.31 In addition, it is the wealthiest and most powerful households that determine the character of the whole community. To illustrate his point, Salvian gives an account of the sins of the Africans, as a preparation for his argument that the Vandals were a cleansing force when they took Carthage. He portrays the residents of Carthage, in particular, as sexually promiscuous, profligate, cruel and blasphemous. He concludes with the observation (DGD 8.3.14):32 But, you say, not everybody does these things, but only the most powerful and those in the most exalted positions. Let us agree that this is the case. But, since the wealthiest and most powerful households represent the crowd in the city, you can see that the entire city was polluted by the sacrilegious superstition of its few powerful members.

Weaving through Salvian’s diatribe against the vices of current Roman society is an essentially conservative vision of a community, resting upon 30 31 32

On the originality of this idea, see Paschoud (1967) 301; Maas (1992) 276. This is even true, he argues, in southern Gaul, where the women appear to wield somewhat more influence and power than elsewhere (DGD 7.4.17). At, inquis, non omnes ista faciebant, sed potentissimi quique ac sublimissimi. Adquiescamus hoc ita esse. Sed cum ditissimae quaeque ac potentissimae domus turbam faciant civitatis, vides per paucorum potentium sacrilegam superstitionem urbem cunctam fuisse pollutam.

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long-established Roman social conventions, and blending them with elements taken from the Judaeo-Christian societies of the Old and New Testaments. Salvian envisages a society with strong and mutually binding vertical alliances, and horizontal connections that facilitate harmony within the group. This community is united by its common observance of a prescriptive code of behaviour, drawn primarily from the words of the prophets and apostles. Those who influence the way that this community functions are the secular magistrates, in the public sphere, and the heads of the wealthiest households, in the private. It is within the context of this matrix of ideas that Salvian’s account of the fate of the poor in fifth-century Gaul must be read. salvian’s portrait of the poor But who, precisely, are the poor to whom Salvian refers? Salvian’s characterisation of poverty differs according to context. He speaks of a variety of ‘poverties’ and ‘poors’ in a number of different discourses.33 According to the particular point he is attempting to make, for example, poverty is idealised as a remedy for profligate living (DGD 6.9.52; cf. 7.5.22), or held up as a pathos-laden example of a fall from a previous state of dignity and honour (DGD 5.8.44). Likewise, the poor themselves receive no consistent characterisation. Rather, they seem to function as a sliding point of comparison for the rich, who are the real target for Salvian’s barbs. Thus, Salvian can be observed both identifying with and distinguishing himself from the poor. In the first case, he distinguishes the wealthy few from the majority of the population, including himself. His aim here is to emphasise the wrongdoing of the wealthy in levying new and oppressive burdens upon the poorer members of their communities, as a means of satisfying their own social obligations. Salvian observes bitterly (DGD 5.7.31):34 But we the poor accede to your will, O rich men. What the few order, we all pay. What is so just, so civilized? Your decrees burden us with new debts: at least make those debts common to all of us. For what is more unjust and unworthy than that you alone, who make us all debtors, should be immune to debt? 33 34

See Finn, Chapter 8 in this volume, for poverty as a deliberately vague and elastic term. Sed adquiescimus pauperes vestrae, divites, voluntati. Quod pauci iubetis solvamus omnes. Quid tam iustum, quid tam humanum? Gravant nos novis debitis decreta vestra: facite saltim debitum ipsum vobis nobiscum esse commune. Quid enim iniquius esse aut quid indignius potest quam ut soli sitis immunes a debito, qui cunctos facitis debitores?

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Clearly, Salvian’s point is that the rich are not fulfilling their obligations towards their communities. Rather, they are evading their fiscal responsibilities, leaving the poor not only to fend for themselves, but also to pay the taxes that are more properly to be extracted from the wealthy. However, it seems clear that the poor in question are not completely destitute and excluded from the community. For one thing, they are subject to taxation, and therefore probably small landowners at the very least. Elsewhere, Salvian distances himself from the poor. In some circumstances, he speaks as one of the wealthier members of the community who are exploiting and despoiling the poor (DGD 5.8.36). Even the church and its officers are involved in these actions. Describing the extent of the social cancer afflicting contemporary Roman society, for example, he remarks upon the almost complete absence of aid granted to the poor, even by members of the church (DGD 5.5.19). In another context, he offers a vignette in which he is asked by a man whom he describes as pauper, miser and egestuosus to act as a patron or intercessor (DGD 4.15.74–5). The man is suffering at the hands of an individual who is clearly much more powerful, since he is described as a praepotentior. The story is part of a demonstration that contemporary Romans keep neither God’s commandments nor even His more minor precepts or requirements. Salvian argues that individuals use Christ’s name as an oath, and even swear ‘by Christ’ to carry out sinful and illegal acts. In this case, it seems that the poor man is at risk of losing his property to this powerful figure. He asks Salvian to intercede, and implore the rapacious potentate ‘not to take the possessions and livelihood of a miserable and poverty-stricken man away from him’.35 However, when confronted, the aggressor replies that his actions are taken in fulfilment of an oath. Faced with this flagrant flouting of God’s commands, Salvian melodramatically removes himself from the affair – ‘what more could I do, to whom the affair was shown to be so just and holy?’36 Here, as in the case of the wealthy increasing the burden of taxation, the pauper in question appears to be a small landowner, rather than a completely destitute beggar. Salvian does speak of the destitute, placing them alongside widows and orphans as victims of the wealthy. However, even here, it is not clear that the poor he has in mind are the completely poverty-stricken, or merely those who have fallen from a previous condition of wealth and status. After noting that even the small number of good men in the community 35 36

Ne homini misero et egestuoso rem ac substantiam suam tolleret. Cf. the language of DGD 5.8.39. Quid enim amplius facerem, cui res tam iusta obtendebatur et sancta?

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are unable or unwilling to act on behalf of the poor, Salvian observes (5.5.21):37 Meanwhile, the poor are ravaged, widows lament, orphans are trampled upon, so much so that many of them, who are not of obscure birth and have been properly educated, flee to the enemy lest they die from the pain of public persecution.

It seems, then, that the ‘poor’ of whom Salvian speaks, and with whom he appears to have had some experience, are not so much beggars or the rural poor as the lesser members of local aristocracies and, perhaps, small landowners. That is, there is a disjunction in Salvian’s presentation of the poor between the idealised beggars of Christian discourse, and the poor of Salvian’s own experience.38 However, this does not render his picture useless as a mere collection of purely rhetorical tropes. Rather, it highlights the fruitfulness of ‘poverty’ and ‘the poor’ as tools in Salvian’s project, and signals the value of reading through the uses to which he puts the processes he observes to the reality of those processes. For Salvian as for other Christian moralists of the time, ‘the poor’ could function as a weapon to wave at ‘the rich’. As a consequence, his description of them is subject to the same contradictions and pressures that underpin the works of other Christian writers who commented upon the place of the poor in their new, evolving Christian society.39 Like their pagan predecessors, Christians viewed the poor in ways that were complex and sometimes contradictory. The non-Christian texts reveal fear and loathing, amusement and indifference as well as pity and fellow-feeling as legitimate reasons for giving alms to a beggar.40 This complex collection of emotions and responses continued to infuse Christian discourses over poverty. There emerged the idea that as recipients of alms the deserving poor, at least, assumed a role as moral guardians of the souls of their benefactors.41 But the deep mistrust of the poor by the rich did not disappear, as Ambrose’s concern that con-men might prey upon the unsuspecting alms giver reveals (Off. 2.76–7; cf. Cic. Off. 2.62).42 37

38 39 40 41 42

Inter haec vastantur pauperes, viduae gemunt, orfani proculcantur, in tantum ut multi eorum, et non obscuris natalibus editi et liberaliter instituti, ad hostes fugiant, ne persecutionis publicae adflictione moriantur. Cf. Van Dam (1985) 43; Drinkwater (1992) 210–11. See Finn, Chapter 8 in this volume. Also Brown (1992); Grey and Parkin (2003). Parkin, Chapter 4 in this volume; Whittaker (1993) 273–4; Grey and Parkin (2003) 289; cf. Toner (1995) 69–71, with further references. See Grig, Chapter 9 in this volume. Also Brown (1992); Grey and Parkin (2003) 291; Garnsey and Humfress (2001) 124. Cf. Lunn-Rockliffe, Chapter 7, and Finn, Chapter 8, both this volume. This argument is further developed in Grey and Parkin (2003) 289–93.

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In the De Gubernatione Dei, Salvian draws upon both these strands in contemporary attitudes towards the poor. Within the explicitly Christian discourse surrounding the role of the poor in regulating the moral health of the community, Salvian suggests that the wealthy are neglecting their obligation to care for the poor. He cites with approval the epistle of the apostle James (James 2.5–7, in DGD 3.10.52) who emphasises the special place occupied by the poor in the kingdom of Heaven, and rebukes his audience for ignoring and dishonouring these individuals. Clearly, Salvian is well aware of the potent symbol that charity towards the poor represents for his contemporaries. Alongside that discourse, Salvian manipulates the visceral distaste for the poor felt by his contemporaries and their attendant feelings of moral superiority. He notes that many of his listeners might assume the vices and crimes of which he speaks to be characteristic of slaves and the lowest of men (abiectissimi homines, DGD 3.10.50–51; cf. 4.3.13). Salvian builds upon this assumption, developing a theory of relative guilt based upon the social status of the individual. This theory manipulates the ideological paradigm that the poor are to be despised, arguing that the sins of those who are superior to the lowest classes are worse precisely because their behaviour should be better (DGD 4.12.57–8; cf. 4.6.29):43 If a person who sins is more honourable, so, also is the odium of his sin greater. 58 Theft is an evil crime in all men, but, without doubt, it is more to be condemned when a senator steals something . . . Where the privilege is higher, the fault is greater.

Employing this stratagem, Salvian is able to concentrate upon the sins of the wealthy in his description of the moral wrongdoing of Roman Christians, for in his construction, it is the actions of the wealthy that determine the character of the community as a whole. Salvian’s criticism of the behaviour of the wealthy, aristocratic Roman Christians who constituted his audience is relentless. The moral and theological preoccupations which underpin that critique provide a framework for his presentation of vertical relationships between large and small landowners, whom he labels rich and poor. That framework, in turn, conditions the picture that emerges, but it does not wholly distort it. To reject his text utterly on the basis of its rhetorical excesses is to discard much that is potentially valuable for scholars seeking the realities of relations between 43

Si honoratior est persona peccantis, peccati quoque maior invidia. 58. Furtum in omni quidem est homine malum facinus, sed damnabilius absque dubio si senator furatur aliquando . . . Ubi sublimior est praerogativa, maior est culpa.

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rich and poor in rural contexts in late antique Gaul. Current approaches to those relations throughout the late Roman empire emphasise heterogeneity rather than homogeneity. The final section of this chapter builds on this scholarship, discussing the various elements of Salvian’s portrait, offering some comments about his combination of those elements into an apparently cohesive whole and emphasising by way of conclusion the two levels at which his text can be read – as both a carefully constructed diatribe against the moral turpitude of his contemporaries and an inadvertent indication of the wealth of opportunities open to peasant proprietors in late antiquity. rel ations bet ween rich and poor Salvian paints a bleak picture of relations between rich and poor in fifthcentury Gaul, both collectively and at the level of the individual. He emphasises the abrogation by the rich of their responsibilities to their communities, and the effects that this had upon the poorer members of those communities. Coupled with an ever-increasing tax burden, this behaviour of the wealthy reveals in the starkest possible terms the ills of contemporary society, and the distance between it and the ideal community that Salvian envisages. In place of a functioning commonwealth, underpinned by unity of purpose and a sense of mutual responsibility, Salvian presents anarchy and a society in disarray (DGD 4.6.30; cf. 5.8.42):44 For, who can speak eloquently enough about this banditry and crime? The Roman state is either dead or certainly drawing its last breath in that one corner where it still seems to retain some life. It is dead, strangled by the chains of taxation as if by the hands of robbers, but many rich men whose taxes are borne by the poor can still be found. That is, a great number of rich can be found whose taxes are killing the poor.

Here, Salvian is joining a chorus of many voices in bemoaning the oppressive nature of the tax burden, and the behaviour of curial elites. Similarly, in presenting the poor as either fleeing or wanting to flee their lands in the face of the depredations of the tax-collector (DGD 5.7.28), he offers another reprise of a familiar theme in the literature of the period. It is not my intention here to challenge the validity of Salvian’s complaints, 44

Nam, illud latrocinium ac scelus quis digne eloqui possit, quod, cum Romana respublica vel iam mortua, vel certe extremum spiritum agens in ea parte qua adhuc vivere videtur, tributorum vinculis quasi praedonum manibus strangulata moriatur, inveniuntur tamen plurimi divitum quorum tributa pauperes ferunt, hoc est, inveniuntur plurimi divitum quorum tributa pauperes necant.

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although in recent scholarship his overwhelmingly pessimistic picture has been somewhat modified. It is, however, worth moving beyond these general complaints, to focus upon the particular phenomena that Salvian identifies and the connections that he draws between them. Salvian suggests that, as a consequence of this crushing tax burden, small landowners are unable to hold on to their land, and so they seek out the rich and become their dependents (DGD 5.8.38):45 Therefore, because they cannot do what they really want, they do the only thing that they can do. They give themselves to the care and protection of the upper classes. They make themselves the captives [dediticii] of the rich and pass over practically into their jurisdiction and control.

He characterises this arrangement as a new type of relationship, based not upon humanitas or mutual obligations, but upon a perversion of the commercial logic of the marketplace (DGD 5.8.40–41):46 Behold what the aids and patrocinia of the great men are! They grant nothing to their dependents [suscepti], but only to themselves. For by this agreement, something is given to the parents temporarily, so that in the future everything can be taken away from the children. Therefore, some of the great men sell everything that they offer – and, of course, for the highest price. Because I have said they sell, I wish that they would sell according to the common and accepted custom! Perhaps then something would remain to the buyer. For this is a new type of buying and selling: 41. the seller gives away nothing and receives everything; the buyer gets nothing and gives away absolutely everything.

Salvian suggests that these poorer landowners enter into some kind of mortgage arrangement with their wealthy neighbours, which ends inevitably in their dispossession. However, they remain responsible for the tax burden of the land that they no longer possess (DGD 5.8.42). As a consequence, he suggests (DGD 5.8.43):47 Some of those of whom I speak, who are either wiser than the rest or necessity has made them wise, having either lost their homes and farms by such encroachments, 45 46

47

Ergo quia hoc non valent quod forte mallent, faciunt quod unum valent: tradunt se ad tuendum protegendumque maioribus, dediticios se divitum faciunt et quasi in ius eorum dicionemque transcendunt. Ecce quae sunt auxilia ac patrocinia maiorum: nihil susceptis tribuunt, sed sibi. Hoc enim pacto aliquid parentibus temporarie attribuitur, ut in futuro totum filiis auferatur. Vendunt itaque, et quidem gravissimo pretio vendunt maiores quidam cuncta quae praestant. Et quod dixi vendunt, utinam venderent usitato more atque communi! aliquid forsitan remaneret emptoribus. Novum quippe hoc genus venditionis et emptionis est: 41. venditor nihil tradit, et totum accipit; emptor nihil accipit, et totum penitus amittit. Nonnulli eorum de quibus loquimur, qui aut consultiores sunt aut quos consultos necessitas fecit, cum domicilia atque agellos suos aut pervasionibus perdunt aut fugati ab exactoribus deserunt, quia tenere non possunt, fundos maiorum expetunt, et coloni divitum fiunt.

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or fled before the tax gatherers, and being consequently unable to hold on to them, seek out the farms of the rich and great, to become their tenants [coloni].

Salvian’s account links the dispossession of independent peasant proprietors, the evasion of fiscal responsibilities by large landowners and the emergence of a new, commercially motivated, type of patronage relationship between the two – one which served to disadvantage these small landowners-turned-tenants even further, by placing the burden for taxation squarely upon their shoulders. By portraying the poor as making themselves the captives of the rich (DGD 5.8.38), Salvian evokes the fates of captured prisoners of war (dediticii) and paints a picture of the poor losing their rights of citizenship in contemporary Roman society. He observes that the poor ‘are received as strangers [advenae]; they become natives [indigenae] by the legal precedent of residence [habitatio]’ (DGD 5.9.45).48 As Salvian describes it, the poor have been excluded from the community except in cases where they can be taxed (cf. DGD 5.8.35). The new type of relationship between rich and poor that he describes is a perversion of the relations that should exist between the two in the ideal community. It is based not upon humanitas, but upon cupiditas. It is not quasi-familial in nature, but resembles more closely relations between strangers, or interactions in the marketplace. By adopting this construction, Salvian is combining a series of separate phenomena into a discrete, conceptual whole in support of his arguments for the extreme sinfulness of the aristocracies of Roman Gaul. Simply put, Salvian is constructing a picture of relations between large and small landowners – and, by extension, rich and poor – which suits his rhetorical purpose. Consequently, the package that he offers is contrived. But its component parts offer much to scholars attempting to reconstruct rural labour relations in the period, and contemporary perceptions of those relations. Indirectly, he provides evidence for the ability of small landowners to respond to the circumstances that faced them, by exploiting existing relationships or entering into new ones. The separate phenomena that constitute Salvian’s composite picture can be explored independently. By adopting such a strategy, it may be possible to postulate the decision-making processes of small landowners in each case, and assess the light it sheds upon the fate of the poor in the period. 48

Nam suscipiuntur ut advenae, fiunt praeiudicio habitationis indigenae. It is possible that Salvian has in mind the legal concept of the origo here, which appears to have grown in importance over the course of the fourth and fifth centuries as a means for identifying a clear hierarchy of responsibility for the tax burden of a particular estate or field through registration of tenants in the tax rolls.

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Two such phenomena are of particular significance. First, Salvian speaks of a transfer of property from poor to rich as one of the concomitants of the new type of patronage relationship he describes (DGD 5.8.39):49 For, all those who appear to be defended give to their defenders almost their entire livelihood [omnem fere substantiam suam addicunt] before they are defended; thus, in order that the fathers may have defence, the sons lose their inheritance. The protection of the fathers is secured by the beggary of their offspring.

Again, Salvian’s focus is on the rapacity of large landowners, and the inappropriate relationships that result from their greed. But, if small landowners are indeed giving away putative or actual ownership of their property, it is worth examining the process in a little more detail. By portraying this as some kind of mortgage arrangement, Salvian signals that this is not a sale in the conventional sense of the word. There is precious little evidence with which to flesh out Salvian’s impressionistic picture, but two motivations seem plausible. Perhaps this is further evidence of a phenomenon that can be traced in other sources of the period – the fraudulent transfer of property, in order to evade fiscal burdens.50 In such circumstances, the donor ostensibly gives up responsibility for the land in question, in return for protection from the tax-collector. Equally, this might be an insurance mechanism against the predations of a wealthy neighbour, as Salvian himself signals when he confronts his audience with the observation (DGD 4.4.20):51 Where can you find any one living beside a rich man who has not been made poor, or included among the poor? Indeed, by the encroachments of the powerful the weak lose their belongings, or even themselves along with their belongings.

Such a strategy may be observed in a recently discovered sermon of Augustine, who observes (Dolbeau 6.2):52 49

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Omnes enim hi qui defendi videntur, defensoribus suis omnem fere substantiam suam priusquam defendantur addicunt; ac sic, ut patres habeant defensionem, perdunt filii haereditatem: tuitio parentum mendicitate pignorum comparatur. Witness, for example, a mid-fourth-century law directed against curiales attempting to ensure that their registered property falls below the 25 iugera necessary for membership of the curia (CTh 12.1.33 (342, East)). Quotus quisque enim iuxta divitem non pauper aut actus aut statutus est? Siquidem pervasionibus praepotentum aut sua homines imbecilli aut etiam se ipsos cum suis pariter amittunt. Sunt enim multi – quod novimus, nam exemplis plena sunt omnia – qui timentes perdere res suas aliquorum potentium titulos figunt, ut per hoc factum, alius possideat, alius terreat. The text can ´ be found in Augustine, Vingt-six sermons au peuple d’Afrique, ed. F. Dolbeau, Coll. Des Etudes Augustiniennes. S´erie Antiquit´e 147, Paris (1996) 513.

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For there are many people – with which we are well acquainted, for there are all sorts of examples – who, afraid of losing their own holdings, erect the markers of some powerful men, so that through that deed the one shall possess the land, and the other shall be the source of terror.

Here, a small landowner attempts to safeguard his property by pretending that his field is owned by a more powerful man. Such an act could have been carried out without the knowledge of that man, but would seem to be more effective if he were aware of the poor man’s actions. This, in turn, signals the potential for a close relationship between the two, one that is founded on mutual trust and the expectation of reciprocal benefits. Of course, such a tactic carried with it clear dangers – indeed, in Salvian’s construction, the wealthy landowners promptly abuse this trust and appropriate the land for themselves. Significantly, though, it is neither the only possible outcome, nor the only outcome that Salvian envisages. A second possible decision, connected by Salvian with the above, is the process whereby small landowners choose to become the tenants (coloni) of the wealthy (DGD 5.8.43). Again, Salvian emphasises that this is a conscious decision, before suggesting that it is a wise choice in the circumstances. Early commentators, working within the paradigm of the ‘colonate of the late Roman empire’ as an institution barely one step removed from serfdom and/or slavery, chose to interpret this as another example of Salvian’s sarcasm – surely if becoming a colonus was the best option, things were indeed grim for the peasantry of late Roman Gaul. But recent scholarship aimed at detaching tenancy in the late Roman period from the historiographical concept of ‘the colonate’ has taken a more sympathetic view of the socio-economic condition of coloni.53 Within this context, arrangements between large landowners and their less wealthy neighbours emerge from the sources as much more variegated and complex than the paradigm of an inevitable degradation in the status of free peasant proprietors to the status of bound coloni allows. One constant in these relationships is the close connection between tenancy and patronage. A man owning land of his own might in addition work as a casual labourer for a more powerful landowner, thus facilitating a patronage relationship. He might also rent land from another, opening up the possibility for a similar relationship with that landlord. Indeed, it is likely that a tendency for long-term tenancy contracts encouraged the development of a patronage relationship between tenant and landlord, and 53

Carri´e (1982) and (1983) remain fundamental. See also Vera (1997). A convenient summary of the historiography may be found in Scheidel (2000).

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their families (e. g. Columella, Rust. 1.7.3; Lib. Or. 47.13). In spite of the impression that Salvian gives of the decision to take up a tenancy relationship being made only after a small landowner has lost his property, tenancy and ownership of land need not be mutually exclusive, and function most characteristically as complementary elements in a small farmer’s risk-aversion strategy. Consequently, Salvian’s presentation of the decisionmaking process may have more to do with aristocratic attitudes towards banausic labour and dependence on others than with the realities of life for small peasant proprietors. Indeed, in alluding to the greater wisdom of peasants who choose to become coloni, Salvian appears to regard an arrangement of tenancy as sufficient grounds for the tenant to expect his landlord to act in the manner of a patron, and provide him with a greater degree of security and protection.54 By focusing upon this aspect of the relationship, Salvian reveals a keen personal and societal interest in safety and security. This, in turn, can be connected to the undoubted transformation and upheaval of the period. The contemporary sources suggest that one strategy adopted by the poorer members of rural communities was to diversify, to extend their networks of vertical alliance as broadly as possible, and to place greater expectations upon existing relationships. Salvian attests to this strategy when he speaks of fraudulent transfers of property and the decision to enter into a tenancy arrangement with a wealthy individual. This latter tactic might carry with it certain tangible benefits, particularly if it was accompanied by registration of the tenancy arrangement in the tax rolls.55 conclusions Salvian’s De Gubernatione Dei provides only fleeting glimpses of the destitute in late Roman society. The poor of whom he speaks are more characteristically small landowners, or less wealthy members of local aristocracies. However, his text remains valuable as both an example of an author enlisting the motif of poverty in pursuit of a grander moralistic purpose, and a series of windows through which to glimpse the fate of small landowners in fifth-century Gaul. Salvian masterfully manipulates the phenomena 54

55

Cf. the Italian senator Symmachus, for example (Ep. 7.56), who justifies his intercession on behalf of a tenant of his fields not with reference to the obligations placed upon a patron, but simply to his role as the man’s landlord. He describes his arrangement with his tenant as if it were a patronage relationship. Restrictions on landlords removing or expelling registered tenants: CTh 13.10.3 (357, to Dulcitius consularis Aemiliae); CJ 11.48.7 (371, Gaul); CJ 11.63.3 (383, East). Remedies in the event of a landlord raising rents: CJ 11.50.1 (325, East); CJ 11.50.2 (396S, East).

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he observes, and combines them into a coherent whole. He portrays a peasantry forced by a punitive tax burden and the avarice of their wealthy neighbours to seek out the protection of powerful landowners. In so doing, they are forced first to mortgage their possessions – thus dooming their offspring to penury – and finally to become the dependents of the individuals to whom they had originally gone for help. The images he presents, and the connections he makes between them, fit with his aim of contrasting current configurations with his ideal of social relations. In contrast to the harmony and unity of purpose evident in Salvian’s idealised Christian community, contemporary Romans have abandoned mutually reciprocal relations between rich and poor, and plunged instead into a condition of discord and selfishness. Salvian emphasises this point further by employing the motifs of purchase and sale in every conceivable context. The ethos of the marketplace taints not only relations between rich and poor, wealthy and powerful, but also those within families. In a situation where accepted practices of patronage are replaced with exchanges predicated upon dispossession and monetary value, patres familias are forced to surrender their children’s inheritance, thus abrogating their responsibilities to their families. Salvian’s project here is to confront his audience with the immorality of their behaviour, and to sound a warning to them that their behaviour was not unnoticed, and would not go unpunished. Indirectly, however, Salvian provides evidence that allows a slightly less pessimistic interpretation of the fate of poorer members of rural communities in late Roman Gaul. This is not to deny the force of his complaints about the behaviour of curial elites, or the weight of the tax burden in the period. It is simply to challenge the assumption that the phenomena which Salvian observes and chooses to emphasise were universal. Salvian’s anecdote about his encounter with the man who swore an oath to destroy his poorer neighbour indicates that the poor of whom he speaks were not necessarily as devoid of aid and options as he suggests. Rather, the opportunity existed for them to exploit or initiate relations with other powerful figures, in order to obtain the security or protection that they needed. His account of peasants transferring property to the hands of the wealthy and powerful resonates with other evidence from the period, which hints at a more complex set of motivations than simply the desperation to which Salvian ascribes this tactic. And his presentation of the decision to become a tenant of the wealthy as a wise choice points to the continuing existence among peasants of a collection of strategies for managing risk and avoiding subsistence crisis.

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It seems that some of the ‘poor’, at least, were still able to choose the types of relationships in which they became involved in this period. Salvian’s De Gubernatione Dei remains a fundamental source for the fate of these individuals in rural contexts in late antiquity. But one must be wary of generalising from the picture he provides, and regard with caution the extreme contrasts that he draws between the conditions they faced in his own day and the security they might enjoy in his idealised Christian community.

chap t e r 11

Poverty and Roman law Caroline Humfress

introd uction In 454 ad a perplexed praetorian prefect wrote to the emperor Marcian, requesting imperial clarification of a legal ambiguity which was causing great confusion in the law-courts. The prefect sought a definitive imperial ruling which would remove the difficulties that judges and litigants were experiencing in interpreting a law of Constantine excluding ‘low and degraded’ women from being partners in marriage with men of high status. The particular issue was whether ‘the poor’ belonged to this group. Behind this issue, however, lay the deeper problem: how to identify and classify ‘the poor’ as a subset within Roman civil society. Marcian’s Novel 4, issued in response to the praetorian prefect’s enquiry, purports to provide an answer to the first problem, but circumvents the second, which is the more fundamental. Peter Garnsey has alerted modern historians to the difficulties and complexities surrounding any attempts to formulate an exact taxonomy of the Roman poor or indeed of poverty itself.1 The emperor Marcian’s legislative response to his praetorian prefect offers us some comfort in our modern interpretative difficulties: late Roman legislators, judges and litigants experienced definitional problems at least equal to our own in attempting to classify and categorise their poor. In fact classical Roman lawyers had been notoriously uninterested in defining a class or category of ‘the poor’, whether according to either juridical or economic criteria. In David Daube’s memorable phrase: ‘The have-nots, the vast majority of citizens, were right out of it.’2 Classical jurisprudence thus tends to discuss the poor man incidentally; the jurists were not interested in, for example, the truly destitute but in those who were relatively poor, including, and perhaps especially, formerly affluent or comparatively secure (idoneus) citizens who had become poorer. In imperial 1

Garnsey (1991a); Garnsey and Woolf (1989).

2

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Daube (1969) 72.

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legislation from the early fourth to mid-sixth centuries references to poverty and ‘the poor’ per se occur with relative frequency. Does this point towards a new awareness of ‘the poor’ as a separate economic and/or juridical class within the law of the late empire?3 And does the identity of ‘the poor’ come more sharply into focus in later Roman law than in classical law? a new category of ‘the poor’ in l ate roman l aw? Marcian’s Novel 4 would seem, on a first reading at least, to support the idea that juridical attitudes concerning poverty and ‘the poor’ underwent a radical shift in the late empire. Moreover, Marcian points towards the reign of the emperor Constantine as the catalyst. Mid-fifth-century litigants, appearing before the praetorian prefect Palladius, were apparently arguing contrary interpretations of an ambiguous Constantinian constitution – issued 118 years previously. Palladius himself was at a loss as to how to proceed and thus turned to the emperor Marcian for a definitive ruling (Marcian, Novel 4.1).4 The Constantinian text in question, originally read out in Carthage in 336, had been included in the 438 Theodosian Code at 4.6.3 under the title ‘Natural Children and their Mothers’; it effectively prohibited legal unions between high-status men and low-status (or indeed no-status) women.5 Senators, perfectissimi and high-ranking local magistrates were to become foreigners in the eyes of Roman law, to lose the protection that their Roman citizenship guaranteed to their elite civil status, their considerable property and their high-class households, if they attempted to transfer any gifts or inheritances to children not born of a union befitting their rank and dignity. Maintaining the integrity and status of the top-ranking social groups, their (often fictional) cohesiveness, what they did with their property, who they donated their wealth to, who they married and how they transmitted their patrimonies, had long been a driving concern within Roman civil law. In keeping with this traditional concern, Constantine’s 336 constitution had listed the relevant female types whom high-status men married at their peril. This list included slave women, freedwomen, actresses and their daughters, as well as common trades-women and the daughters of pimps and gladiators. Amongst 3 4

5

As suggested by Patlagean (1977) 11–17. Excerpts from Marcian’s Novel 4 were included under two separate title headings in the sixth-century Codex Justinianus: CJ 1.14.9 (excerpts the preamble to Marcian’s Novel 4 with additions) and CJ 5.5.7 (excerpts from sections 2 and 3 of Marcian’s text). For discussion of CTh 4.6.3 in the context of Marcian Novel 4 see Arjava (1996) 213; Evans Grubbs (1999) 283–94; Evans Grubbs (2002) 166–8; and Humfress (2005).

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this standard roll-call of socially stigmatised women, however, the drafters of the Constantinian text also included a rather more ambiguous category of ‘low and degraded’ (humilis vel abiecta) persons. The interpretative confusion which the emperor Marcian had to clarify arose specifically in connection with this particular Constantinian phrase. Marcian’s Novel 4 sought to elucidate exactly what type of ‘low and degraded’ persons Constantine’s category should cover in practice. Could the phrase ‘low and degraded persons’ be treated as a synonym for ‘the poor’? Some fifth-century litigants certainly thought so: ‘Hence Your Excellency has asserted that great doubt arises in the courts in regard to marriage, as to whether this phrase should be applied also to freeborn women who are poor and whether, therefore, the command of the law excludes such women from marriage with senators’ (Marcian, Novel 4.1). In order to resolve the ambiguity, Marcian sought out the original intention behind Constantine’s law. He looked back to the spirit of Constantine’s imperial rule and decided that an emperor who judged so conscientiously concerning morality could never have intended a meaning so manifestly unfair: Far be such an evil from these times, that poverty should be believed to have been sent as a disgrace upon any person, when in very many cases moderate resources often achieved much glory and when straitened fortunes were a testimony of selfrestraint. For who could suppose that Constantine of sainted memory, when he prohibited the nuptial couches of Senators to be contaminated with the vileness of polluted women, preferred the gifts of fortune to natural virtues; that he considered the status of free birth as inferior to riches because riches can be taken away by a variety of circumstances, but the status of free birth cannot be taken away, once a woman has been born to it? (Marcian, Novel 4.1)6

The early fourth century was evoked by Marcian as an enlightened time when poverty was no longer seen as a disgrace. In that golden Constantinian age wealth and riches were rightly understood as fleeting gifts of fortune, rather than necessary indicators of natural virtue. Having thus identified a new spirit behind Constantine’s legislation, Marcian laid down a new definitive legal interpretation for the phrase humilis abjectaque persona: Therefore We remove all doubt that had been injected into the minds of certain persons, and all those regulations shall remain and endure perpetually with the 6

Absit, ut hoc nefas ullis temporibus, ut credatur cuiquam dedecori data esse paupertas, quum saepe plurimis multum paraverint gloriae opes modicae, et continentiae fuerit testimonium census angustior. Quis arbitretur, inclitae recordationis constantinum, quum geniales senatorios thoros contaminari pollutarum mulierum faece prohiberet, fortunae munera bonis naturalibus praetulisse? Et divitiis, quas varietas casuum tam potest adimere quam tribuere, postposuisse ingenuitatem, quae auferri non potest, si semel nata sit?

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strongest validity which were sanctioned in regard to the marriages of Senators by the constitution of Constantine of Sainted memory. We do not judge that a woman shall be understood to be “low and degraded” if although she is a poor person (pauper), she was nevertheless born of freeborn parents. But We establish that senators and any persons endowed with the high rank of perfectissimi shall be permitted to unite themselves in marriage with the daughters of freeborn persons, even though they are poor, and there shall be no difference between such freeborn women and those of riches and a more opulent fortune. (Marcian, Novel 4.2)7

Henceforth the phrase ‘humble and abject persons’ should be interpreted simply as the generic category under which all the other types of ‘infamous’ women mentioned in Constantine’s 336 law could now be grouped. Section 3 of Marcian’s Novel concludes ‘We believe without any doubt that this is what Constantine of sainted memory meant in the sanction which he promulgated.’ Our pious mid-fifth-century emperor looks back to the first Christian emperor and perhaps excuses his imperial predecessor too readily. The phrase ‘low and degraded persons’ could easily have been intended to cover ‘the poor’ in early fourth-century legislation. On the other hand, a category of the ‘low and degraded’ certainly had enough elasticity for litigants and their legal advisors to argue that a poor free person should be included within it. Legislative attempts such as Marcian’s Novel 4 to control the marriages and inheritance strategies of high-ranking members of Roman society were by no means unique to the late empire. In the specific context of spousal wealth (or lack thereof ) legal experts well before Constantine’s era had argued that unions should not be contracted between individuals with vastly different economic resources. Moreover, in cases where one spouse was poorer than another the Roman civil law prohibited any (significant) transference of wealth between them.8 The emperor Caracalla apparently believed that spousal gifts were prohibited because marital feeling should be based in the heart not in the bank balance; rather more pragmatically, Caracalla continues, marriage agreements shouldn’t look as if they were made for money (D. 24.1.3.pr.; Ulpian, Sabinus Book 32). According to the Severan jurist Paul the legal prohibition on gifts between husband and wife ‘should not be interpreted as if they do not love each other and are hostile, 7

8

Ideoque omnem dubitationem, quae quorundam mentibus iniecta fuerat, auferentes, manentibus et solidissima in perpetuum firmitate durantibus cunctis his, quae super matrimoniis senatorum sanxit constitutio divae memoriae constantini, humilem vel abiectam feminam minime eam iudicamus intelligi, quae, licet pauper, ab ingenuis tamen parentibus nata sit. Sed licere statuimus senatoribus et quibuscumque amplissimis dignitatibus praeditis, ex ingenuis natas, quamvis pauperes, in matrimonium sibi adscire, nullamque inter ingenuas ex divitiis et opulentiore fortuna esse distantiam. See Crook (1967) 106.

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but as between people united by the greatest affection and merely afraid of poverty (inopia)’ (D. 24.1.28.2: Paul, Sabinus Book 7). For Paul the ties that bind were love and fear of financial ruin. Finally, the jurist Ulpian advised that if a woman married a man who subsequently looked as if he might become insolvent, she should start legal proceedings for the return of her dowry as soon as it became apparent that her husband’s resources were dwindling (D. 24.3.24.pr.: Ulpian, Edict Book 33). A woman’s duty to get rid of her husband on the grounds of imminent insolvency was also upheld by the emperor Justinian in 528 ad (CJ 5.12.29. pr.). Bankruptcy, and the social stigma attached to it, was viewed as a constant threat to elite marriages. The emperor Marcian’s insistence, however, that natural virtues could exist alongside poverty – and his 454 ruling that there should be no difference between poor and rich freeborn women – certainly appear to be radical social statements. The idea of a ‘blame free’ indigent poverty is far removed, for example, from Ulpian’s remark that ‘Poverty is no excuse for a woman leading a shameful life’ (D. 23.2.43.5: Ulpian, Lex Iulia et Papia Book 1). We may thus be tempted to use Marcian’s 454 law as evidence for a broader social phenomenon in late antiquity, as part of a slow but inevitable seepage of Christian preaching into Roman law; a Christian preaching which urged a levelling of traditional moral distinctions based on wealth and the lack thereof.9 But was Marcian really a most Christian emperor who had taken the Gospel injunction to be a ‘lover of the poor’ to heart? We need to look more closely at who exactly Marcian was identifying as ‘the poor’ (the pauper) in his constitution. The word pauper should in fact be understood in Marcian’s Novel 4 as a term of comparison: according to Marcian there was to be no distinction between poor freeborn women ‘and those of riches and a more opulent fortune (opulentiore fortuna)’ (4.2, quoted above). The poor woman in question had some wealth, just not as much as some others. As Marcian conceded when he looked back to the age of Constantine, ‘in very many cases moderate resources (opes modicae) often achieved much glory’ (4.1, quoted above). Moderate resources might offer an avenue for social advancement, not no resources at all. In section 1 of his Novel 1, issued in 450 and addressed to all the peoples of the empire, Marcian had already reiterated a (by that time) well-worn piece of imperial rhetoric for the benefit of his legal officials. In the process, Marcian again made allusion to poverty as a relative concept: provincial 9

Evans Grubbs (2002) 168 notes that ‘ideas about the blamelessness of poverty’ are present in Marcian’s Novel 4, and adds in parenthesis that they were ‘no doubt influenced by Christian teachings’.

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governors must ‘oppose a spirit of integrity to riches’ and not look up to those who possess a higher fortune nor look down on those who possess less.10 Whatever doubts we might have about fair and universal access to the late Roman legal system, the litigants who attempted to take advantage of it were expected to have at least a modicum of economic resources. Litigation was not cheap, even in the court of the most morally upright provincial governor. Moreover, in a forensic context, assessments as to whether an individual was to be classified as ‘rich’ or ‘poor’ could depend wholly on the circumstances of the particular case at hand. Three centuries before Marcian the jurist Gaius defined the word ‘rich’ thus: ‘Rich (locuples) means one who is sufficiently well off in relation to the size of the thing for which the plaintiff seeks restitution’ (D. 50.16.234.1: Gaius, XII Tables Book 2).11 By analogy with Gaius’ principle, we should be wary of identifying a fixed concept behind the word ‘pauper’ in Roman legal sources – its intended meaning was context specific, relative to the concrete legal situation being envisaged or discussed. In Marcian’s Novel 4 the pauper worthy of marrying a senator was most probably a woman of (what we might term) middling means, perhaps even a woman of high rank who had lost her family patrimony and had thereby become poor or rather poorer. She was certainly not one of the destitute ‘permanent poor’, for example a free-born vagrant or beggar, or the freeborn daughter of a subsistence farmer. The emperor Marcian was not by any means suggesting that all poverty is innocent and blame-free nor that all poor women should be thought worthy of elite marriages. The social standing of a slave woman, a freedwoman, or indeed of any ‘infamous’ female (as detailed in Constantine’s original law) was in no way redeemed or advanced by her poverty and suffering. As with the bulk of both classical and post-classical Roman private law, Marcian’s 454 ruling is blind to the truly destitute and those who lived precariously at the edge of subsistence. In the Digest, for example, there are only two explicit discussions of a ‘destitute man’ in the context of Roman private law. One comes from the jurist Tryphonius and envisages a situation in which a man who thinks he is very poor makes a will, and then dies before finding out that the business dealings of his slaves have in fact made him rich (D. 49.17.19.2). Note that this man was evidently not without resources. The second comes from Celsus and discusses a hypothetical case in which a very poor man is forced to give up his household gods and ancestral graves 10

11

Compare, for example, CTh 1.16.7 (Constantine to the provincials, 331): ‘the ears of the judge shall be open to the poorest on equal terms with the rich’. An imperial order which implies that, in practice, they were not. ‘Locuples’ est, qui satis idonee habet pro magnitudine rei, quam actor restituendam esse petit.

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(D. 6.1.38). Note that Celsus’ ‘poor man’ still has a family domicile to lose. The jurists’ opinions, for the most part, moved in elite circles; just as the intended audience for Marcian’s 454 law were the same high-ranking elite men that its marriage provisions targeted. Marcian’s refusal to subsume the poor under a category of ‘low and degraded persons’ thus amounts to a specific injunction that high-ranking men and the social circles they move in should not treat poverty as a moral blot on an otherwise honourable free-born woman, who nonetheless possessed a modicum of wealth. A further important point to note about Marcian’s 454 ruling is that free-born status in fact trumps poverty as a socio-legal indicator of status. Regardless of her wealth (or lack of it) a woman must be born to freeborn parents if her marriage to a high-status man was to have any legal standing. Reasoning hypothetically, this implies that a daughter born to fabulously wealthy freed parents could not qualify. According to Marcian’s text, Constantine should be regarded as a lover of the honourable and a conscientious judge of morals, not because he loved the poor per se but rather because he believed that the status of free birth was a more valuable possession than riches: ‘For who could suppose that Constantine of sainted memory . . . considered the status of free birth as inferior to riches’ (Marcian, Novel 4.1, quoted in full above). Riches may come and go, but a woman’s juridical status as free-born is permanent. It is not simply gradations as to wealth or poverty that Marcian was interested in upholding as legislator: it was also the ideological value of free-born status and Roman citizenship. povert y, sl avery and roman legal pract ice Marcian’s stress on the pre-eminent value of free-born status picks up on an idea which was fundamental to the Roman civil law of persons and which certainly survived Caracalla’s so-called grant of universal citizenship in 212 ad. As the jurist Paul neatly put it, ‘Liberty is a thing beyond price’ (D. 50.17.106: Paul, Edict Book 2). Even the most destitute free-born individual has (metaphorical) riches beyond estimation. A text included in an early fourth-century epitome of Paul expands on the practical implications of this ideology: Those who in the face of dire necessity or in order to guarantee them sustenance sell their children, do not prejudice their free status: for there is no price label attached to a free man. (Paul, Sent. 5.1.1 = FIRA ii: 386)12 12

Qui contemplatione extremae necessitatis aut alimentorum gratia filios suos vendiderint, statui ingenuitatis eorum non praeiudicant: homo enim liber nullo pretio aestimatur.

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A child born ‘free’ to a desperately poor family might be factually sold as if he or she was a slave, but in the eyes of the Roman jurists this sale could not prejudice that child’s ‘true’ civil status. The ‘dire necessity’ of destitute poverty might engender shameless acts, but the civil law provided a remedy. A rescript of the emperor Caracalla castigates a mother for exactly such a sale and instructs her to approach a competent judge: You admit that you have done an illegal and shameful thing in putting forward for sale your children born free. But because what you have done should not be disadvantageous to your children, you should approach a competent judge to have the matter proceeded with in accordance with due law. (CJ 7.16.1)13

Establishing whether someone was in fact a slave or not, and thus whether their sale was legal or illegal, could be complicated. ‘It can be difficult to tell a free man from a slave’ (D. 18.1.5: Paul, Sabinus Book 5) and economic indicators of poverty or wealth were supposed to be of no help. Classical Roman law had established exact procedural regulations for a legal case concerning freedom (a causa liberalis).14 When a ‘free’ person appeared as a defendant in such a case (or indeed a ‘slave’ appeared as a plaintiff ) he could not act for himself; a Roman citizen had to be found who would assert free status on his behalf. Crucially, this assertor or sponsor also had to assume the considerable costs of the litigation and Constantine specified that a poverty-stricken sponsor who found himself unable to pay up should be thrust into the mines (CTh 4.8.8, 322). Hence, in theory at least, when the civil status of even the most poor and destitute citizens was challenged, they were to be given their day in court. Perhaps ironically, neither of the two late Roman legal arenas which modern historians have identified as ‘the poor man’s courts’ (i.e. the episcopalis audientia and the tribunals of defensores civitates) were ever granted the necessary juridical competence to hear cases concerning freedom.15 Neither should we assume that the higher courts of the empire resounded in practice with pleas on behalf of beleaguered poor persons of indeterminate legal status. 13

14 15

Rem quidem illicitam et inhonestam admisisse confiteris, quia proponis filios ingenuos a te venumdatos. sed quia factum tuum filiis obesse non debet, adi competentem iudicem, si vis, ut causa agatur secundum ordinem iuris. See D. 40.12, CJ 7.16 and CTh 4.8. Hermann-Otto (1999) discusses causae liberales under the late Republic and early empire. On the episcopalis audientia in the context of the ‘poor of Christ’ see Harries (1999) 203–4. For the defensor civitatis/defensor plebis see Frakes (2001).

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Two laws of Constantine, issued in 319 and 322, treat the relationship between indigent poverty and bureaucratic intervention more directly – by ordering the public or ‘state’ provision of alimentary relief to the most desperate poor (CTh 11.27.1 and 11.27.2). These two Constantinian constitutions have been cited as evidence for the thesis that Christian ideals about charity and blame-free poverty had already begun to seep into Roman legislation by the early fourth century.16 However, the legal evidence from the Severan age already discussed encourages a reading of both of these Constantinian constitutions as particular responses to age-old Roman legislative concerns. CTh 11.27.1, addressed to Ablabius, enacts that the imperial fisc would provide alimentary relief for poverty-stricken parents, who would otherwise be driven to the crime of parricide: A law to stay the hands of parents from parricide [parricidium], and to bring happier fulfillment to their prayers, shall be written out on tablets of bronze or wax or on linen cloth and posted in every city in Italy. It shall be incumbent on your office to ensure that if any parent shall produce a child whom on account of poverty he cannot raise, then food and clothing shall be furnished forthwith; for no delay can be tolerated in the matter of the rearing of a child. We command our fisc and imperial estates [res privata] without discrimination, to make provision for this. (CTh 11.27.1)17

A previous Constantinian constitution, issued less than six months before, had already targeted the crime of parricidium as particularly heinious: CTh 9.15.1 (given 16 November 318) defines parricide as the killing of a parent, child ‘or any person at all of such degree of kinship that killing him is included under the title of parricide’ and orders a return to a particularly nasty form of archaic punishment (known as the poena cullei) for the offence. The text of CTh 9.15.1 thus looks back to the late Republican lex pompeia de parricidio (55 or 52 bc) for its definition of parricide, but reaches even further back into archaic Roman law for a punishment which fitted the crime: being sewn into a sack with a serpent and drowned.18 By reiterating the archaic poena cullei the drafter of this Constantinian constitution 16 17

18

See Roug´e (1990) and Brown (2002). Aereis tabulis vel cerussatis aut linteis mappis scripta per omnes civitates Italiae proponatur lex, quae parentum manus a parricidio arceat votumque vertat in melius. Officiumque tuum haec cura perstringat, ut, si quis parens adferat subolem, quam pro paupertate educare non possit, nec in alimentis nec in veste impertienda tardetur, cum educatio nascentis infantiae moras ferre non possit. Ad quam rem et fiscum nostrum et rem privatam indiscreta iussimus praebere obsequia. Corcoran (1996): 279 and 310 argues convincingly for emending the date of CTh 11.27.1 to 13 May 319 (contra MSS 315 and Seeck 329). See Berger (1953) 618 (art. Parricidium). The late Republican lex pompeia de parricidio seems to have substituted the penalty of aquae et ignis interdictio for the archaic form of execution by culleus (see D. 48.9); Constantine’s text excerpted at CTh 9.15.1 self-consciously abolishes the former and resuscitates the latter. For further discussion of CTh 9.15.1 see Martino (1976).

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acknowledged parricide as a public crime par excellence. Constantine’s 319 ‘poor relief’ measure, issued less than six months after CTh 9.15.1, should thus be understood as part of an age-old Roman legislative concern with public order and maintaining the family unit. As striking as it may seem to us today as an ancient precursor to the welfare state, Constantine’s 319 ‘poor relief’ was originally dreamt up as a preventative measure against a quintessentially anti-Roman public crime. Three years later CTh 11.27.2, on the other hand, ordered that imperial officials in Africa were to provide clothing and food to the desperate and destitute who otherwise might be driven to sell or pledge their children: We are aware that provincials, afflicted by shortage of food and lack of resources, are putting up their children for sale or giving them as a pledge. If any one should be found in this situation, with no family revenues to support him and keeping his children alive only with grave difficulty, he shall be aided by the fisc before he falls victim to calamity. The proconsuls and governors and treasurers throughout Africa shall have the power to grant the sustenance that is required to all those whom they find to be locked into pitiful poverty, and forthwith to provide the appropriate provisions from the storehouses. It is repugnant to my nature to permit anyone to be so consumed by hunger as to be driven to shameful crime. (CTh 11.27.2)19

Those who qualified for state assistance under the terms of CTh 11.27.2 were parents of either free-born (or possibly free-d) children, whose destitute poverty might otherwise have driven them to commit a ‘shameful deed’: selling or pledging their own children into slavery. Note here the echo from Caracalla’s early third-century rescript (quoted above) admonishing a mother for the ‘illegal and shameful’ deed of selling her free-born offspring. By acknowledging this highly specific context of Constantine’s 322 ‘poor relief ’ legislation, we once again place him within a legal tradition stretching back to the early empire and indeed beyond.20 Traditionally the cities of the empire had carried a certain responsibility for their urban poor; by analogy masters were supposed to be responsible for adequately clothing and feeding their slaves, and freedmen were 19

20

Provinciales egestate victus atque alimoniae inopia laborantes liberos suos vendere vel obpignorare cognovimus. Quisquis igitur huiusmodi repperietur, qui nulla rei familiaris substantia fultus est quique liberos suos aegre ac difficile sustentet, per fiscum nostrum, antequam fiat calamitati obnoxius, adiuvetur, ita ut proconsules praesidesque et rationales per universam africam habeant potestatem et universis, quos adverterint in egestate miserabili constitutos, stipem necessariam largiantur atque ex horreis substantiam protinus tribuant competentem. Abhorret enim nostris moribus, ut quemquam fame confici vel ad indignum facinus prorumpere concedamus. See also CJ 4.43.1 (Diocletian and Maximian, 294).

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supposed to support a patron and his family struck by extreme poverty.21 Not all freedmen undertook this obligation with good grace. The midthird-century jurist Modestinus cites an imperial constitution which laid down that a freedman who abandoned or violently assaulted a patron, whilst the said patron was suffering from the effects of illness or poverty, should be forcibly enslaved again (D. 25.3.6.1: Modestinus, Manumissions). Book 34.1 of the Digest collects together Republican and classical juristic discussions on a variety of both voluntary and legally obligated welfare arrangements, including private alimentary legacies. Slaves, patrons and some of the urban poor thus already had a limited number of basic ‘welfare’ schemes to fall back on. Constantine’s two laws (CTh 11.27.1–2) were ‘innovative’ in the sense that it was now the imperial fisc which assumed a responsibility for a limited number of poor citizens, who were in danger of committing acts already defined by Roman law as illegal and morally reprehensible. We may well ask, moreover, what chance Constantine’s two ‘poor relief’ laws had of being implemented. Constantine apparently did not set up any specific institutional structure, as the second-century emperor Trajan had done with his (operational and effective) alimentary scheme for numerous Italian towns. In any event, it was a traditional imperial concern for the moral health of the empire, rather than any creeping Christian morality, which lay behind Constantine’s ad hoc legislation for (bureaucratic) poor relief. The emperors Theodosius I and Valentinian II made similar provisions for desperate parents forced to sell their free-born children on account of poverty. Each also envisaged different scenarios for the buying back of free-born children who already had a price on their head. According to Theodosius I’s constitution, free-born children sold into slavery by povertystricken parents could be restored to their original status as long as they had spent a decent amount of time as slaves – thereby compensating the purchaser (CTh 3.3.1, 391). Valentinian II ruled that a free-born child sold because of the pressures of famine could be recovered by paying back the purchaser the original sale price, plus a fifth (Nov. Val. 33, 451). With both these later laws, it is the value of free-born status (alongside what should be ‘equitably’ due to the purchaser) that provoked the emperors into action. As the drafter of Valentinian III’s Novel 33 explains, a hungry person considers nothing shameful and nothing forbidden as his only care is to live however 21

On the obligations of freed persons vis-`a-vis patrons see CJ 6.3.1 (204); D. 38.1.41 (Papinian, Replies Book 5) and D. 25.3.9 (Paul, Rights of Patrons sole book).

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he can; but, the text continues ‘I [i.e. the emperor Valentinian] judge that it is wrong that freedom should perish . . .’ povert y and the christian church: views from t he legisl ators’ desks Constantine and the emperors who followed him were more than willing to leave any regular and general welfare provision for the poor to officials within the Christian church. Late Roman emperors (the apostate Julian included) recognised that ecclesiastical efforts to alleviate the sufferings of the chronically poor were a good thing for the empire as a whole. In this sense we might conclude that a new awareness of ‘the poor’ entered into late Roman legislation, via measures designed to make the church’s provision of poor relief easier.22 This is surely a much more significant development than Constantine’s 319 and 322 invitations to the poor to seek help from imperial fiscal representatives. Yet even with respect to the church, the emperors strove to strike a balance between the maintenance of the civic fabric of the empire and the ‘enabling’ of Christian charity. In 326 Constantine ordered that great numbers of people should not be added rashly to the ranks of the clergy (CTh 16.2.6, addressed to the praetorian prefect Ablabius). When a Christian cleric died someone should be chosen to replace him ‘who had no municipal kinship or wealth of resources’. If a city’s councillors and clergy were fighting over someone, and he was either a decurion or a wealthy man, he had to be delivered to the city. If, on the other hand, the disputed person was poor or at least lacking moderate resources he was free to take ecclesiastical orders (presumably because such a ‘poor’ person would be of little use in alleviating his fellow municipal councillors’ financial burdens anyway). Thus, concluded Constantine, ‘the wealthy must assume secular obligations, and the poor [i.e. the poor would-be cleric] must be supported by the wealth of the churches’. Likewise, later Roman emperors attempted to set limits to the number and type of individuals employed by the church for charitable purposes. A law of 416 limits the number of ‘attendants to the sick’ to 500 in the city of Alexandria and orders that ‘the wealthy and those who would purchase this office shall not be appointed, but rather the poor from the guilds, in proportion to the population of Alexandria’ (CTh 16.2.42). The church was to support the poor, at least partly, by employing them. 22

See for example CJ 1.2.12.2 (451).

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The emperor Valentinian I opened up a further source of support for the poor, by ruling that Christian clerics who frustrated the proper business of the courts should be fined 50 pounds of silver, with the money going to aid the poor rather than the imperial fisc (CJ 1.4.2, 369). According to a 384 constitution (CJ 1.54.5) it was a well-known fact that judges could also divert money paid in judicial fines to the upkeep of specific public buildings, the maintenance of public race-courses ‘or to other necessary objects’! Judicial fines against litigious clerics were to support the poor, but individual magistrates could choose to allocate the proceeds from other fines to fund the entire populace’s public entertainment and welfare. In 428 Theodosius II instructed his imperial magistrates to be wary of heretical clerics who claimed they could not pay their fines; if the said clerics ‘should pretend poverty, such fines shall be exacted from the common body of clerics . . . or even from their offertories’ (CTh 16.5.65). Having raided the collection plate, Theodosius II specified that these fines were to be paid to the imperial treasury. In 321 Constantine famously confirmed the validity of private gifts left as inheritances or legacies to the Catholic church (CTh 16.2.4). This law does not mark out the poor as recipients, but the practice of leaving testamentary bequests to any given church or cleric for the specific benefit of ‘the poor’ was quickly established. In principle the legality of these charitable bequests was upheld by later Christian emperors; however the practice posed yet more classificatory headaches in terms of establishing who exactly ‘the poor’ were. One specific problem was that a bequest left simply to ‘the poor’ was strictly speaking a gift made to uncertain persons – and under Roman law such bequests could be classified as invalid.23 Once again, the emperor Marcian stepped up to the task and in 455 ad ruled definitively that ‘A bequest left by a will or a codicil to the poor, shall not be considered void, as having been bequeathed to uncertain persons; but in every respect shall stand as valid and unimpaired’ (CJ 1.3.24). The bequest was thus confirmed as legally valid, but who exactly was to receive it? Who was to benefit as ‘the poor’? In 531 the emperor Justinian attempted to tackle this issue (CJ. 1.3.48, addressed to the praetorian prefect John of Cappadocia). Section 3 of Justinian’s constitution states that if a testator has indiscriminately appointed ‘the poor’ as his heirs, the first in line to obtain the inheritance is to be the church-run asylum or hospital for the poor within the city closest to where the testator had lived. ‘For who is any more indigent . . .’ 23

For an early fourth-century restatement of this principle see Ulpiani Epitome (tituli ex corpore Ulpiani): 22.4–6 = FIRA II: 284–5. For the early sixth century see Inst. Iust. 2.20.25.

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asks Justinian, ‘than persons who are oppressed with want, laid up in a hospital, afflicted with bodily sores, and unable to obtain food essential for their survival?’ Section 5, however, identifies a further challenge: What if there were more than one hospital for the poor in any given city? In that case, the inheritance was to be given to the most needy establishment, as decided by the local bishop. But what if there were no hospital in the city? Then the inheritance, according to Justinian was to be received by the metropolitan bishop himself or one of his administrative officials (section 6). Justinian’s insistence that such bequests should not be treated as invalid and indefinite can be read as evidence for the fact that, in practice, they often were. One avenue open to churches in combating this classificatory difficulty was to have their own legal experts (defensores ecclesiae) dictate the last wills and legacies of dying persons to them. Having a skilled defensor of the church dictating the will must have significantly reduced the chance of the testament being challenged on the grounds of any indeterminate wording or intention; according to the imperial chancellery, however, it also opened the way for fraudulent acts on behalf of the church. In fact the emperor Justin had already legislated vociferously against this – as he termed it – most shameful (turpissimum) ecclesiastical practice (CJ 1.3.40, 524). The custom of leaving charitable bequests to particular churches or clerics could also pose classificatory challenges to ecclesiastical administrators. Canon 24 of an early fourth-century synod held at Antioch refers to the difficulty of systematically keeping what should belong to the church and the poor separate from that which belongs to clerics as private individuals (Synod of Antioch (341) Canon 24).24 In 419 an assembly of bishops at Carthage attempted to remove any ambiguity by deciding that a cleric who entered orders as a poor man had to place all his subsequent property acquisitions under the control of the church. Provisions were also made, however, for said clerics still to take personal inheritances: ‘If something has come to them in a private capacity through the generosity of an individual or in family succession, then they should do with it what suits their purpose (Canones in Causa Apiani 32 = CCL 149.144). Attention also had to be paid to who exactly was leaving a bequest to the church for the benefit of the poor. Gifts from heretics, for example, should be rejected. Rather aptly, the fourth Council of Carthage ruled that bishops also had to reject 24

See also Canon 12 of the 343/4 Council of Serdica on bishops who possess very little private property in the city, ‘but have great possessions in other places, with which they are, moreover, able to help the poor’.

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any gifts from individuals who were known to have oppressed the poor (pauperes) during their lifetime (fourth Council of Carthage (held in 436, or possibly 398), Canon 94 = CCL 149.352). The 451 ecumenical Council of Chalcedon tackled the problem of Christians who might be tempted to view the poor themselves as suspect characters: Canon 11 states that any poor person who has to travel between churches should be sent on his way with letters pacifical (entitling the bearer to eleemosynary assistance), rather than letters commendatory (entitling the bearer to be automatically admitted to communion). Apparently commendatory letters ‘ought to be given only to persons who are above suspicion’. The category of ‘the poor’ needed elucidation in canon and Roman law alike. the v isibilit y of ‘the poor’ in cl assical and post-cl assical roman civil l aw We should not look to the lawyers and their works for a precise definition or rounded picture of what constituted poverty or qualified as ‘the poor’. Perhaps poverty was visible to them on a day to day basis in a way that did not require much definition or conceptual theory, as they picked their way along city streets from home to client to court?25 Poverty came to the notice of classical jurists qua jurists when a particular individual’s (or group’s) lack of financial means had some concrete legal effect or implication. Gaius’ opinion that ‘a private legal action brought against an adversary who lacked any financial means was useless’ is representative (D. 4.3.6: Gaius, Provincial Edict Book 4).26 No one who lacked the capacity both to pursue and defend suits was of much interest to either a teacher of the civil law or a professional jurist. By contrast, the late third-century jurist Hermogenianus seems to offer a more promising general economic criteria for classifying ‘the poor’. Under the title ‘De accusationibus et inscriptionibus’ (‘On Accusations and Indictments’) the compilers of the Digest included Hermogenianus’ statement that some persons were excluded from lodging a public criminal accusation ‘on account of poverty, such as those who possess less than fifty aurei’ (D. 48.2.10: Hermogenianus, Epitome of Law Book 6).27 This statement was read by Patlagean as ‘a postclassical definition of poverty’.28 Three texts included in Book 2 of the Digest, however, specify that the sum of 25 26 27 28

An idea suggested in an entirely different context by Ringen (2005) 3. Nam is nullam videtur actionem habere, cui propter inopiam adversarii inanis actio est. Nonnulli propter paupertatem, ut sunt qui minus quam quinquaginta aureos habent (this reproduces the entire text at D. 48.2.10). Patlagean (1977) 15.

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50 aurei was the amount to be forfeited if an individual summoned another to court and then was unable to prosecute the case to its conclusion.29 Far from providing a ‘postclassical definition of poverty’, Hermogenianus was simply reasoning out that anyone who could not afford to forfeit a 50 aurei penalty could not initiate a public criminal suit. Hence the sum of 50 aurei should not be taken as a general benchmark for who counted as ‘poor’ in late third-century jurisprudence. There is no definition of the concept of poverty per se in either classical or post-classical legal texts; but Roman legal experts were interested in ‘case-specific’ instances of poverty insofar as they impinged on certain specific juridical contexts and especially legal obligations. This casuistic approach to ‘the poor’ could result in nuanced discussions of poverty and its social implications. Take for example the effect of poverty on contractual obligations – Modestinus states that poverty is undoubtedly a legal ground for the dissolution of partnerships (D. 17.2.4.1: Rules, Book 3); Ulpian, on the other hand, advises that partnerships between rich and poor could be legally valid and indeed profitable: Partnerships are formed in all goods, or in some business, or for the collection of a tax, or even in one thing. Moreover, a partnership may be formed with validity even between people of unequal wealth, since the poorer man makes up in services what he lacks in material resources by comparison with the other. (D. 17.2.5.1: Edict Book 31)30

According to Ulpian, the poorer man could provide (bodily) services to make up for his lack of wealth. Business contracts between rich and poor individuals were deemed legally valid, but it was left to the relevant parties themselves to arrive at a mutually beneficial agreement. A similar casuistic approach to poverty occurs in the context of legal guardianship. Under the early empire poverty ‘unequal to the task and burdens of guardianship’ was usually accepted as a valid excuse (or vacatio) for not assuming this compulsory public burden.31 Poverty could exempt an individual from having to act as a guardian, but a poor man who chose to undertake the obligation should not be assumed automatically ‘untrustworthy’ on account of his poverty. In Ulpian’s opinion: 29 30 31

D. 2.4.12: Ulpian, Edict Book 57; D. 2.4.24: Ulpian, Edict Book 5; and D. 2.4.25: Modestinus, Penalties Book 1. Societas autem coiri potest et valet etiam inter eos, qui non sunt aequis facultatibus, cum plerumque pauperior opera suppleat, quantum ei per comparationem patrimonii deest. See D. 27.1.40.1 (Paul, Views Book 2): ‘Usually poverty which is unequal to the task and burdens of tutelage is accepted as an excuse’; Frag. Vat. 143 = FIRA II: 495; and CJ 5.42.2.pr. (260).

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We think someone an untrustworthy tutor if he is of such a character as to make him untrustworthy; but a tutor who, although he is poor, is nevertheless loyal and careful should not be removed as untrustworthy. (D. 26.10.8: Ulpian, Edict Book 61)32

In other words, a man’s moral character might withstand the challenges of poverty – especially, we may be tempted to add, if that poor man had formerly been rich. Under the early empire an individual could be excused from numerous patrimonial obligations, as well as the burden of guardianship, by pleading poverty. This principle was apparently established by the emperors Marcus and Verus (161–169 ad): ‘Poverty [paupertas] rightly gives exemption if someone can prove himself unable to meet the burden and this is in a rescript of the deified brothers’ (D. 27.1.7: Ulpian, Excuses).33 Ulpian was also careful to note, however, that financial circumstances could be subject to change: (1) A temporary, not a permanent, exemption is conferred on those who lack the resources for the munera or offices which are imposed; for if a patrimonium is increased by honourable means according to desire, an estimate will be made at the appropriate time whether someone is suitable for the function to which he has been appointed. (2) The indigent do not undertake patrimonial burdens because of the actual constraint of destitution, but they perform the services which are prescribed for their bodies. (D. 50.4.4.1–2: Ulpian, Opinions Book 3)34

The excusatio of poverty was to be granted non perpetua sed temporalis. If a go-getting individual improved his financial situation to the point where he could fulfil a given public burden, he lost his excuse.35 Those who were poverty-stricken and remained so, however, could nonetheless serve the public good through physical labour (for example in bridge-building, road-repairing etc.). The practice of pleading lack of appropriate finance as a legally valid excuse for not fulfilling certain public munera continued into the late empire. Under Constantine we find decurions, as well as shipbuilders, 32 33

34

35

Suspectum tutorem eum putamus, qui moribus talis est, ut suspectus sit: enimvero tutor quamvis pauper est, fidelis tamen et diligens, removendus non est quasi suspectus. The same text is included in the fourth century Frag. Vat. 240 = FIRA II: 511. See also the CJ texts excerpted under title 10.52: de his qui numero liberorum vel paupertate excusationem meruerunt and Inst. Iust. 1.25.6. (1) Deficientium facultatibus ad munera vel honores qui indicuntur excusatio non perpetua, sed temporalis est: nam si ex voto honestis rationibus patrimonium incrementum acceperit, suo tempore, an idoneus sit aliquis ad ea, quae creatus fuerit, aestimabitur. (2) Inopes onera patrimonii ipsa non habendi necessitate non sustinent, corpori autem indicta obsequia solvunt. See also D. 50.5.10.3 (Paul, Views Book 1) = Paul, Sent. 1.1.a 21.

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army veterans and farmers seeking exemption from specific burdens on the grounds of poverty. We should note that late Roman legislators apparently expected their audience to know a person of poor and humble status when they saw one: a constitution from 394 prohibits the public placing of any pictures representing a pantomime actor dressed in the costume of a poor lowborn person (humilis) next to an imperial image (CTh 15.7.12). However, appearances and social assumptions could be deceptive. A series of fourthand fifth-century laws testify to a number of experimental dodges and rackets employed by private individuals in order to manipulate the poverty exemption. For example, certain persons were convicted of fraudulently pleading exceptions from munera on the basis of poverty, having previously transferred all of their property to a third party who was in on the racket (CTh 13.6.1, 326). A constitution of 381 testifies to a particularly ingenious taxation dodge involving poverty: If any person should cut down a vine with sacrilegious pruning hook or should lessen the fruit of productive branches, so that he might thereby evade the due payment of his taxes, and if by a clever lie he should allege a state of poverty, immediately upon detection he shall undergo capital punishment, and his property shall pass to the ownership of the fisc. (CTh 13.11.1 = CJ 11.58.2.pr.)36

Defrauding the tax man was apparently a Roman, as much as a modern, pastime. Judges could also be bribed to grant exemptions from public munera (and note here the irony of bribing a judge in order to achieve an exemption nominally grounded on a plea of poverty!). Or else judges could simply make mistakes in their assessment of an individual’s ‘poor’ status. A constitution of the emperor Theodosius II notes that it is a common fault for property held jointly to be neglected, ‘as it is considered that he has nothing who has not all’ (CJ 10.35.2, 443). Thus a litigant might seem poor because he owns no property wholly, but in fact be relatively well off through a shared ownership scheme. From this particular judicial perspective, a suitably wealthy individual might lurk behind the garb of every poor person who stood before the court. In practice, the genuinely poverty-stricken individual would have lacked both the monetary resources and the necessary patronage to work the legal system to their advantage. 36

Si quis sacrilega vitem falce succiderit aut feracium ramorum fetus hebetaverit, quo declinet fidem censuum et mentiatur callide paupertatis ingenium, mox detectus capitale subibit exitium et bona eius in fisci iura migrabunt. illo videlicet vitante calumniam, qui forte detegitur laborasse pro copia ac reparandis agrorum fetibus, non sterilitatem aut inopiam procurasse.

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povert y and punishment under t he empire Late Roman criminal law meted out differential punishments for rich and ‘poor’. This was hardly an innovation. As Peter Garnsey identified in his 1970 monograph, Social Status and Legal Privilege, early imperial criminal law developed a broad distinction between the humiliores and the honestiores: a distinction based on socio-legal status but also underpinned by differentials in economic resources. The classical Roman jurists who worked with this distinction recognised that inflicting a pecuniary fine or confiscating someone’s property would not function as a punishment for those who possessed nothing to begin with. From a criminal law perspective, the only thing that destitute poor individuals really possessed was their bodies: hence the destitute, like slaves, were liable to torture and corporal punishment (D. 2.1.7.3: Ulpian, Edict Book 3). According to Ulpian it was a general rule of Roman public law that prefects and governors could physically punish an individual for a public or private crime, if that individual would otherwise ‘escape a monetary penalty because of poverty’ (D. 48.19.1.3: Ulpian, Disputations Book 8). A constitution of 392 clearly demonstrates that this classical principle was still in operation, albeit in a new context: if a chief tenant on an estate knowingly harboured Christian heretics, and if he ‘should despise the penalty of monetary loss because of his poverty and low degree, he should be beaten with clubs and condemned to deportation’ (CTh 16.5.21). Two laws of Constantine specify that pauperes who could not pay up must be thrust into the mines, thereby suffering a loss of civil status (if they had any to begin with) as well as hard labour (CTh 1.5.3 and 4.8.8). The emperor Julian was especially eloquent on this subject: if any rich men concealed the property of a proscribed person their own property was to be proscribed. If however, Julian continues, these offenders have ‘through poverty been cast into plebeian vileness and impurity we command that they shall pay for the damages by corporal punishment (CTh 9.42.5, posted at Rome on 9 March 362).37 This connection between low (plebeian) status, poverty and corporal punishment continues in legislative rhetoric up to at least the Justinianic period, evidencing a remarkable continuity with earlier imperial law.38 37 38

Hos praecipimus, si locupletes sint, proscriptione puniri, si per egestatem abiecti sunt in faecem vilitatemque plebeiam, damnatione capitali debita luere detrimenta. This continuity still stands even if we admit that later legislative texts replaced the precise phraseology of honestiores and humiliores with a less ‘technical’ vocabulary (see Patlagean (1977)). For a more general discussion of attitudes towards poverty under the early empire see Focardi (1988).

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A late fourth-century innovation, however, is the explicit reference to poverty itself as a punishment for particular crimes. CTh. 9.42.8.3 (380) lays down that a (high-status) person convicted of such an atrocious crime as treason ‘must be punished not only by deportation but also by poverty’. CTh 9.14.3.1, issued nineteen years later, details how the punishment of perpetual poverty must be meted out to the children of individuals convicted of conspiring against the lives of men of illustrious rank. The conspirators’ sons cannot inherit from either agnatic or cognatic kin, nor can they receive anything from the wills of extraneous persons (non-relatives), thus ‘they shall be needy and poor perpetually’ and ‘death will be a solace to them and life a punishment’. The conspirators’ daughters, on the other hand, are permitted to eke out a subsistence survival by accepting the Falcidian portion owed to them from their mother: ‘For the sentence ought to be lighter in the case of those persons who we trust will be less daring because of the frailty of their sex’ (CTh 9.14.3.2). In 405 the ‘penalty of poverty’ was also established for particular groups of Christian heretics. Donatists and Montanists who practised rebaptism were to be brought before the provincial governor so that ‘the offenders shall be punished by the confiscation of all their property, and they shall suffer the penalty of poverty, with which they shall be afflicted forever’ (CTh 16.6.4.pr.). It was left up to the relevant judge and his legal assessors to arrive at a judicial sentence which fitted both the crime and the convicted criminal. Hence, once again there is no general or constant definition of poverty, rather the tacit recognition that the poor would include those lacking all property. conclusion As Marcian’s Novel 4 demonstrates there was dispute among litigants, advocates and perhaps judges in the mid-fifth century as to whether ‘the poor’ belonged within a class of ‘low and degraded persons’, who by a law of Constantine were forbidden marriage with men of high status. Marcian legislated against such an interpretation of Constantine’s law, insisting that an equation between ‘the poor’ and ‘low and degraded persons’ could not have been Constantine’s intention. Some modern commentators have shared Marcian’s confidence in reading the mind of Constantine as revealed in the legislation of his reign. They have been over hasty in detecting the influence of his religious beliefs in the laws, and too ready to seek in them – and find – innovation. Circumspection is also appropriate in approaching Marcian: he evidently held that poverty was no disgrace, but ‘the poor’ whom he had in mind were not the truly destitute, but the relatively poor,

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those of modest resources. Moreover, Marcian was at least as much interested in upholding the dignity of Roman free-born status as of poverty. Constantine’s laws against the sale of children into slavery by indigent parents show that he too held great store by free-born status. He was not, by any means, the first Roman emperor to take a stand on this. Where Christian emperors did innovate was in encouraging, directly and indirectly, the charitable efforts of the church – insofar as those charitable efforts did not detract from the welfare of the Roman res publica. Finally, despite the rise of the Christian church and an ecclesiastical / monastic ‘culture of the visible poor’, late Roman legislators like their classical juristic predecessors were uninterested in any conceptual understanding of poverty per se. The jurist Iavolenus famously cautioned that ‘all definitions in civil law are dangerous, as rare indeed is the definition which cannot be overthrown’ (D. 50.17.202: Iavolenus, Letters Book 11). When tackling the topic of ‘the poor’ in late Roman law, we would do well to remember this jurisprudential maxim. Each reference to ‘poverty’ and ‘the poor’ in late Roman law must be read in its particular case-specific context; the pauper is only visible case-by-case, in classical and post-classical Roman law alike.

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Index

Abramenko, Andrik 42 Abu Dulaf 75 Aeneas 88 aesthetics 145 Africa 192, 193 Alexandria 101, 106, 107, 109, 114, 143 Alf¨oldy, G. 41, 42 almsgiving 2–3, 21, 38 Christian 18, 118–19, 122, 130–44, 155–56, 172 non-religious 16–17, 60–82, 173 other religious 61, 66–67, 80 see also benefaction; poor relief Ambrose 19, 71, 75, 76, 125, 173 Ambrosiaster 18, 115–29 Ammianus Marcellinus 126, 158 anachoresis 108 Anaximenes 64 Antinoopolis 52, 109 Antioch 71, 130, 141 Synod of 196 Aphrodito 52 Apollonius of Tyana 70 Appian 50 Apuleius 67 Arabia 75 arai Bouzygeiai 66 archaeology 30 Arellius Fuscus 88, 89 aristocracy 9, 150, 184–86, 189, 202 sins of 166, 177 see also honestiores; senators Aristophanes 11, 13, 35 Aristotle 7, 11–13, 14, 64, 71 army 8, 23, 37 Arsinoe 112, 113 Artemidorus 69–70, 75, 78, 88, 89, 91 asceticism 116–17, 121–22, 128 see also renunciation askeri 41–42 assiduus 49

Astrampsychus, oracle of 69 astrology 91 Athens 6, 11, 15, 16, 46–47, 57, 87 augustales 42, 45 Augustine 5, 18, 131–40, 159, 165–66 Augustus 8, 37, 39, 50, 102 avarice 88, 89, 91, 127, 135, 137, 146, 177, 178 Bagnall, Roger 50, 52–53, 54, 102 banking 47 banquets 83–84, 99, 126 see also parties barbarians 162, 163, 166, 169–70 Basil of Caesarea 138, 140 beggars 17, 31, 90, 96, 114, 141 able-bodied 76–77 and non-Christian almsgiving 60–82, 158 use of word 18, 105, 106, 137–38 see also almsgiving; destitute; law; poor; poverty benefaction 3, 6, 9–10, 60, 66 Christian 169 bishops 18, 115, 145, 156, 165, 196 see also poor relief, ecclesiastical Bolkestein, H. 2, 3, 60, 61, 66, 67 Boukoloi, revolt of 106 Boulding, Maria 134 Bowman, Alan 52 bribery 21, 22, 200 Brown, Peter 2, 3, 9, 101, 105, 117, 135, 157–58 Brunt, Peter 44 Buddhism 80 Burke, Edmund 23, 25, 27 Byzantium 101, 133 Calcutta 74, 75, 76, 77 Callinicus 131, 140, 142 capabilities 57 Caracalla 10, 186, 189, 190 Carthage 170, 196 fourth Council of 196

220

Index Catiline 8, 14, 23, 25, 26, 27 Cato 13 Catullus 95, 97 celibacy 117 see also marriage; asceticism Celsus 188 census 16, 48, 89, 91–92, 97, 99, 102 Chalcedon, Council of 197 charity 5–6, 60, 100, 101, 164 see also almsgiving; poor relief; xenodocheia chastity 119 children as beggars 71–73, 77 exposure of 71, 73, 80 sale of 19, 71, 73, 189–90, 192, 193–94 see also infant mortality; orphans China 78–79, 80 Han 41, 44 Qin 41, 53 Qing 48 Christ 121, 138 and rich young man 116, 121, 122 as example 18, 141 identified with poor 139, 155 praises poor 118, 152 Christ, Karl 43 Christianisation 2, 9, 68, 100, 158–60, 187, 191, 193 Christianity 11, 17, 101, 105, 201 churches architecture and decoration of 147–48, 149, 150–51, 154–55, 157 see also bishops; presbyters; poor relief Cicero 25, 50, 61–63, 65, 67, 68 Cincinnatus 13, 35, 168 citizenship 7–8, 12, 34, 39, 189 loss of 177, 184 see also status, political Clark, E. A. 121 Clement of Alexandria 105, 122–23 clientage see patronage Clodius 8, 27, 50 clothing 35 coloni see tenants comedy 99 common good 168 community 19, 34–35, 38, 166–71 unity of 169–70 Constantine 149, 184–86, 188–90, 195, 199, 201 Constitutio Antoniana 10 consumption 57 contracts 198 Conybeare, Catherine 147 corruption 163

221

countryside 35, 53, 94, 113, 142–43, 162 see also economy; agricultural; peasants covetousness 116 Crassus 88 crime 31, 33, 35, 106, 119 see also punishment; theft; violence Croesus 88 Curran, John 116 curses 80 Cybele 67 Cynics 67, 74, 91, 96 Cyrenaics 91 Daube, David 183 deacons 157 debt 12, 22, 24, 132, 136, 142 see also taxes decurions 42, 45, 194 De Ligt, Luuk 45 defensor ecclesiae 196 democracy 11–12 Demosthenes 11 destitute 12, 16–17, 18, 35, 188 absence of 106, 192–93 categorisation of 20, 29, 32, 172 see also beggars; poor; poverty De Vinne, Michael 130 dicta Catonis 69 diet 3, 4, 30, 32, 47, 55, 56, 58 Dio Chrysostom 67 Diocletian 113 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 50 Dioscorus 143 disability 5, 70–72, 105–06, 109, 140–42 divorce 102, 105 dogs 95, 96 Domitian 97 dowry 35, 187 dreams 69–70, 75, 78, 89–90, 91 Duncan Jones, Richard 52–53 Ecclesiastes 121 economists, political 21–27, 39 economy, agricultural 4, 5, 36, 37, 45 see also countryside education 55 Egypt 16, 17, 45, 50–52, 57, 100–14, 142 population 105–14 Ptolemaic 52, 100, 109, 112 elderly 68, 72 elite see aristocracy; wealthy emperor 9, 15, 34 empire, Roman 2, 8, 9–11, 25, 29, 37, 39, 45–52 see also poor relief, imperial; treasury, imperial England 48

222 Ephesus 70 Epictetus 67, 90 Epicureans 91 Epicurus 93 episcopalis audientia 190 epitaphs 31, 35, 38, 67 equites 44, 50 Eulogius 141 Europe, western 47 Eustochium 116 exclusion 33–35, 177 Fabianus 91 Fabiola 160–61 Fabricius 88, 168 family 30, 34, 38, 72, 73, 77, 79, 103–04 see also children; marriage; paterfamilias; parricide; widows famine 23, 33, 110, 140, 193 fate 64 Fayum 45, 112 see also Ibion Eikosipentarouron; Karanis; Philadelphia Felix, St 151–52 Fiedrowicz, Michael 131 Finley, Moses 6, 11, 14 Finn, Richard 18 floods 107, 110 food 4, 5, 7 distribution of 45, 109–10 shortage of 5, 15, 21, 110 supply of 1, 33, 38, 39 see also diet; famine; grain; poor relief fortune 91, 185 Foxhall, Lin 46 free-born 30, 31, 185–86, 189–90, 192, 193–96 freedmen 30, 31, 38, 44, 192–93, 195 responsibility for patrons 193, 195 French Revolution 23, 24 Friedlander, Ludwig 86 friendship 83 Frier, Bruce 56, 102, 111 funerals 78, 80, 146 Gades 50, 52 Gaius 188, 197 Garnsey, Peter 3, 43, 58, 83, 92, 183, 201–02 Gaul 19, 162–82 Gaza see Mark the Deacon GDP 54–55, 56 gender 40, 102 see also women; widows Gennadius 164–65 Gini coefficient 46, 52–53, 56

Index God 126, 127–28, 132, 150, 154 disobedience to 172: see also sins judgement of 124, 166–67 human beings before 135, 137, 140, 168–69 see also providence goldsmiths 45 Goldstone, Jack 47 Good Samaritan 140–42 Goths see barbarians Gracchus, Tiberius 37 grain dole 6–7, 9, 14, 24, 26, 27, 33, 39 prices 110–11 storage 111, 142 supply of 38 Gratian 76 Greece 1, 6, 9, 13, 45–48, 57, 60 Grey, Cam 19 Grig, Lucy 19 Grodzynski, Denise 126 guardianship 198–99 Hadrian 10, 108 hagiography 18, 131, 144 Hands, A. R. 3 Hanson, A. E. 102, 104 Hanson, Victor 48 Harris, William 44 health 40 see also disability; illnessi Heliodorus 66 heresies 165, 201, 202 Hermogenianus 197–98 Hermopolis 52, 53, 109 Herodes Atticus 65 Hesiod 13 Himmelfarb, G. 28 Histria 45 Holland 48 Holman, Susan 130 homeless 80 honestiores 10, 40–42, 43, 124, 201 Hopkins, Keith 7 Horace 70, 97 Horden, P. 10 housing 7, 47 Human Development Report 56 humanitas 62, 63, 169, 176–77 Hume, David 16, 21 Humfress, Caroline 19–20 humiliores see honestiores humilis 183, 200 humility 119

Index Hunter, David 116 Hypatius see Callinicus Iavolenus 203 Ibion Eikosipentarouron 107 illness 33, 35, 69, 70, 112, 143 see also disability; plague immigrants 34, 38, 39, 73 see also migration impoverishment 90 India 55–56 Industrial Revolution 36 inequality, economic 36, 47, 55, 56 injustice 171–73, 175, 197 see also taxes, oppressive insolvency 187 Isaiah 139 Islam 41, 48 Italy 16, 31, 36, 37, 48–51, 57 James, St 121, 174 Janes, Dominic 150 Jerome 138, 160, 161 and asceticism 116, 117, 126, 154–56 Jerusalem 71, 116 Jews 67 John Chrysostom 71, 72, 77, 78, 130, 140 John the Almoner 114 Jongman, Wim 44 Josephus 3 judges 200, 202 Julian 67, 201 Julian Saba 141 justice 119, 168 Justin, the emperor 196 Justinianic Code 187, 195–96 Justinianic Digest 123–24, 188, 197 Juvenal 27, 31, 74, 78 Satire 3 35, 85, 86, 93–94 Satire 10 25, 26 Kalighat see Calcutta Karanis 45, 52 Kerkeosiris 52 king 120 Krause 101–02 Kwassa wa’umma 41 La Bonnardi`ere, Anne-Marie 131–32 labour 7–8, 35, 37 Lampadius 93 land 4–5, 6, 33, 37, 47, 113, 175–79, 180 ownership of 46, 53–54, 180–81 public and private 112–13 landless 5, 8, 53–54

landlords see tenants Laurence, St 19, 145–46, 148 law 17, 34, 43 on begging 12, 17, 68, 76 canon 196–97: see also under individual councils and synods Christian 170 Roman: 123–25, 183–03 see also Constitutio Antoniana; Justinianic Code; Justinianic Digest; Theodosian Code see also law-courts; litigation; status law-courts 123, 190 Lazarus 136–37 Lebanon 142 legacies 19, 37, 184, 186, 193, 195–96, 202 L´erins 164–65 letters, pacifical and commendatory 197 Libanius 80, 141, 162–63 Liber Pontificialis 149 Lieu, Judith 130 life expectancy 4, 34, 47, 55 see also mortality, infant Ligures Baebiani 51, 53 literacy 28, 40, 55, 56 litigation 188, 190, 197–98, 200 liturgies 103, 105, 106, 109 Lucian 99 Lucilius 97 Lucretius 87 Luke, St 118, 120–21, 124–25, 137 Lunn-Rockliffe, Sophie 18 lust 119 luxury 9, 17, 24, 26, 87, 90 criticism of 13, 88, 89 goods 7, 45 MacMullen, Ramsay 159 Manichees 138 Malthus, Thomas 23–24, 25, 36 Manilius 91 Marcian 19, 183, 184–89, 193, 195 Marcus Aurelius 199 Mark, St 121, 122 Mark the Deacon 131, 140, 142–43 marriage 80, 102, 105, 116, 183, 184–87 Marseilles 162, 164–65 Martial 17, 70, 94–99 Martin of Tours 141 martyrdom 146 Marx, Karl 36 Matthew, St 121, 139 McGinn, T. A. J. 102 medicine 55 Menander 11 metallisation 48

223

224 middle class 16, 30, 32, 42–54, 94, 188 see also poverty, relative migration 31, 38, 72 Modestinus 193, 195–96, 198 money 38, 113, 114 Morley, Neville 5, 7 Morris, Ian 46, 47, 57 Morstein-Marx, R. 39 mortality, infant 28, 55 mortgage 176, 178 munera 148, 151, 152, 194, 199–200 see also liturgies Neri, Valerio 141 Nero 108 New Comedy 90 Nola 150–51 oligarchy 11–12, 46 orphans 143, 172–73 Orpheus 100, 101 Osborne, Robin 46 Ottomans 41 Oxyrhynchus 100, 110, 112, 113 Paine, Thomas 23, 36 pagans 134, 142, 143–44, 170 Palladius 184 Pammachius 146–48, 155–56, 160 Panegyric to Piso 99 Paphnutius 142 Papirius Fabianus 88 Parkin, Anneliese 3 Parkin, T. 103 parricide 191–92 parties 19, 145–61 Patavium 50–52 paterfamilias 170–71 Patlagean, Evelyne 2, 3, 101, 113, 133, 197 patronage 16, 19, 38, 47, 62, 83, 84, 178–80 as security 132 by poor 154 literary 97, 98 paying tax 109, 142 patrocinium 163 poor excluded from 34, 36, 38, 85 reciprocity within 168–69 see also benefaction; freedmen Paul, St 127–28 Paul the jurist 72, 186–87, 189 Paulinus of Nola 19, 142, 146–55, 160 peace 39 peasants 33, 37, 152, 180–81 see also countryside; economy

Index Peloponnesian War 46 Peter, St 141 Petronius 93 Philadelphia in Fayum 52, 107, 110 Philo of Alexandria 3, 105 philosophers 67 see also under names of individuals and schools Philostratus 70, 74 pity 71, 118–19 see also poor, pity for plague 87, 107, 111, 112 Plato 12–13 Plautus 65, 66, 68 plebs 43, 44, 45 Pleket, Willy 44 Pliny 68, 98, 111 Plutarch 50 poetry 151–53 poets, represented as poor 97–99 Polybius 14 poor relief 3, 23 civic 6, 45: see also grain, dole; xenodocheia ecclesiastical 101, 114, 194–96 imperial 108, 191–93 see also charity poor, the adoption of 141 as blessed 125–28, 146, 148, 174 as vicious 14, 25, 27, 39 contempt for 5, 15, 134, 136–37, 158, 164, 174 fear and disgust of 70, 74–75, 79, 81, 138–39, 160–61, 173 friendship with 155 pity for 61, 62–5, 67, 70–73, 79, 171, 173: see also humanitas shame of 35, 38, 125–28 virtuous non-Christian 12–15, 62, 74, 94 virtuous Christian 118–21, 171, 173, 187 visibility of 17, 18, 130–40, 141, 144, 160, 197–200 see also beggars; destitute; patronage; poverty; subsistence population 23–24, 31, 36, 37, 47 see also Rome, population; Egypt, population Porcius Latro 89, 91 Porphyry, bishop of Gaza see Mark the Deacon Possidius 133 potentiores 42 poverty, abolition of 25 artistic representation of 68, 200 conjunctural 5, 73, 77, 108, 132, 142–44; meaning of 1, 28–29: see also subsistence

Index definition of 1, 16, 27–36, 40, 57–59, 171–73; in law 183, 186–87, 197–98 explanations of 25, 100–01 Greek view of 11–15 literary representation of 17, 25–27, 29, 39, 83–99, 130–44, 145–61, 163 relative 11, 15, 19, 59, 171, 183, 187–88 social analysis of 32–36 structural 1, 6, 28–29, 36 terminology of 11, 103, 105, 133–34, 135–36, 137–38 voluntary see asceticism; renunciation see also beggars; destitute; poor; subsistence power, political 7–9, 14–15, 34, 168 preaching 115, 130–40, 159, 165 Prell, Marcus 2, 3 presbyters 115–16, 157, 192, 194–96 pride 119 Proba 121 property private 23 redistribution of 22, 23, 24, 36 rights to 47 see also land; wealth prostitution 31 providence 165, 166 provinces 9–10, 23, 33 see also Africa; Egypt; Gaul Prudentius 145, 148 Pseudo-Chrysostom 140 Pseudo-Quintilian 69, 79 punishment 123–25, 201–02 corporal or capital 120, 124–25, 132, 191, 193, 201 divine 126, 165, 166 fines as 192–93, 195 poverty as 202 Purcell, N. 10, 29, 31, 34, 37 quality of life 40, 55 Quintilian 97 ransom 157 Rapp, Claudia 140 Rathbone, Dominic 17, 32 re’ayya 41 reciprocity 168–69 redistribution 12, 40–54 renunciation 117, 122, 151, 153, 159 see also asceticism Republic, Roman 48, 168 see also Rome, city of rhetoric 88–89, 90 see also poverty, literary representation of

225

rights civic 6 of Man 23 legal 40 Rome city of 6–9, 14–15, 16, 17, 21–39, 83–99, 115–17 in literature 83–99 population 1, 7–8, 9, 38 see also Laurence, St; St Peter’s, Rome Romulus 88 Rosenstein, N. 37 Runciman, W. G. 42 St Peter’s, Rome 19, 138–39, 146–50, 156, 158, 160 Sallust 14, 25 salvation 120, 122–23, 124, 128 Salvian 3, 19, 162–82 sanitation 55 satire 61, 85–86 Say, Jean-Baptiste 24–25 Scheidel, Walter 16, 20, 32, 111–12 Scripture 131, 139, 141, 143, 144, 153, 171 see also under individual books security 180 Sen, Amartya 57, 58 senators 44, 148, 151, 184–86 Seneca the Elder 14, 66, 71–73, 80, 88–89, 90, 91, 94 Seneca the Younger 3, 61–64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 78, 92–94 Serapis 106 serfdom 163 seviri 42, 45 sexuality 87 Shaw, George Bernard 21 shopkeepers 75–76, 132 sins 163, 166, 170 see also poor; vices; wealthy Siphnos 6 slaves 3, 24, 47, 69, 72 master’s responsibility for 192–93 owning of 35, 45, 84 status of 30, 58, 190 see also children, sale of Smith, Adam 22, 23, 24, 25, 36, 57 Solon 5 Sparta 47 splendour 145–61 sportulae see bribery status economic 10, 40–54, 91–92: see also census; middle class legal and political 3, 6, 10, 18, 30, 40, 124–25, 183, 184–88: see also honestiores; humilis; free-born; slaves

226 status (cont.) social 3, 7, 10, 91–92, 134, 174 Stoics 11, 16, 61, 64–65, 70, 90–91, 122 see also Seneca the Younger Strabo 50 study 119 subsistence 28, 29, 32, 33, 37, 44, 54 see also poverty, conjunctural Suetonius 9 Sulpicius Severus 153 Synesius 143 Syria 45 systacts 43 Tacitus 26, 80 Taipei 71, 72, 75, 78, 80 Taoism 80 taxes 12, 36, 113 evasion of 178, 200 in Egypt 103, 107–09, 111 oppressive 142, 162, 171–72, 175–77 see also patronage; treasury Tchalenko, G. 45 Tebtunis 110 Temin, Peter 49 temples 105, 110 tenants 162–63, 176–77, 179–80 tenuiores 42, 54–55 theft 38, 125, 174 Themistocles 6 Theodoret 142 Theodosian Code 19, 80, 124, 162, 184 Theodosius I 76, 146, 192, 193 Theodosius II 192–93, 195, 200 Theophilus 143 Thucydides 14 Tiber 38 Tibullus 97 Toner, Jerry 44 torture 201 towns 5, 9–10, 33, 35, 41, 53, 72, 143 see also urbanisation trade 35, 47, 50, 52 Trajan 191–92, 193 transport 10, 38 treasury, imperial 163, 193, 195 see also poor relief, imperial Trout, Dennis 153 Tryphonius 188 Tubero 88 tyranny 25 Ulpian 187, 198–99, 201 unemployment 21, 31, 77 urbanisation 5, 37, 55

Index Valentinian I 192–93, 195 Valentinian II 76, 192–93 Valentinian III 192, 193–94 Valerius Maximus 35 Vandals see barbarians Van Dam, Raymond 140 Veleia 51 Verus 199 Vespasian 106 Veyne, Paul 2, 16, 68, 69, 70 vices 167–68 see also poor; sins; wealthy violence 8, 106, 142 against poor 132, 138–39, 142, 156 of poor 21, 39 virtues 2–3, 18, 62, 63, 88, 89, 122–23, 154 and free birth 185 see also poverty; wealthy Vittinghof F. 43 vulnerability 33, 35–36, 132, 136 war 25, 33, 47, 48 wealth 10, 17, 36, 90–93, 98–99, 189 definition of 188 obligations of 174 use of 69, 88–89, 153–54, 157–58, 159: see also almsgiving; benefaction see also impoverishment; luxury; property; splendour; wealthy wealthy, the 22, 117–18, 152, 159, 161 perspective of 26, 61, 84–85 relations with poor 62, 68–69, 74, 175–80 sins and vices of 118–20, 123, 126–27, 135–37, 174: see also avarice; injustice; taxes, oppressive virtues of 26, 118–21 see also Christ; Clement of Alexandria; wealth Whitaker, C. R. 2 widows 73, 135, 143, 172–73 in Egypt 17, 100, 101–05 in Luke 21 118, 120–21, 151, 152 winter 140, 142 women 72, 184–86 see also widows Woolf, Greg 14, 17 work 5, 13–14, 15, 44, 73, 143–44 xenodocheia 155, 195–96 Young, Sir George 160 Zacchaeus 137