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Atkins M. - Osborne R., Poverty in The Roman World PDF
Atkins M. - Osborne R., Poverty in The Roman World PDF
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 representa-
tion of poverty, and examine the impact which Christianity had upon
attitudes towards and treatment of the poor.
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 has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls
for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
for Peter Garnsey
Contents
vii
viii Contents
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 204
Index 220
Contributors
ix
x List of contributors
N ev ille Morley is Reader in Ancient Economic History and Histor-
ical 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 pub-
lished 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 pub-
lished work includes: Economic Rationalism and Rural Society in Third-
Century 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
xi
xii Preface
regret that Pasquale Rosafio was unable to contribute to the volume the
paper he delivered at the conference.
Other ancient authors and works are abbreviated as in the Oxford Classical
Dictionary (3rd edn).
xiii
chap t e r 1
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 ques-
tion 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 some-
times 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 pro-
duce 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 politi-
cal 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 twenty-
first 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
2 robin osborne
empire meant that Roman government could both call upon an extraor-
dinarily 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.
6 Philo ap. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 358d; Josephus, Ap. 2.29.1; for some questioning of the
truth of this see Hands (1968) 84.
7 Brown (2002) 111.
8 Brown (2002) 75–6 for arguments against Patlagean. With Brown’s own position compare also the
conclusion of Prell (1997) 296.
4 robin osborne
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.
9 Garnsey (1970), (1988), (1996), (1999). 10 Garnsey and Saller (1987) 43.
11 See Scheidel (2001b) and chapter 3 below; cf. Brown (2002) 52, citing Simon Keay’s work on Tarraco.
12 Garnsey (1999). 13 Garnsey (1998) 201–13, esp. 213.
14 See most recently the papers in Van der Veen (2005), and especially Jones (2005).
15 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 signifi-
cant 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 activ-
ities, 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 Garnsey (1998) 212. 17 Garnsey (1988), (1999) 2.
18 For a survey of early urbanisation in the Mediterranean see Osborne and Cunliffe (2005).
19 See, for twentieth-century Greece, Clark (1976), (1997), Forbes (1997).
20 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.
21 Brown (2002) 63 on Augustine.
6 robin osborne
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 polit-
ical 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 city-
states, 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 par-
ticipation might be curtailed, both theoretically and practically, by poverty.
However, citizenship and the legal privileges which went with it were for-
feited 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 per-
ception, 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 privi-
leging 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 prin-
ciple 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 Finley (1973) 49.
23 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.
24 Garnsey and Saller (1987) 101. 25 All this definitively documented in Garnsey (1988).
Roman poverty in context 7
distinctiveness. Finley observed that at Rome the decision in 58 bc to dis-
tribute 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 them-
selves 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 Finley (1973) 170–71 with second edition (1985) 201; and cf. 40.
27 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.
28 Morley (1996). Hopkins was inspired by Wrigley (1967) on London.
29 Mouritsen (2001), engaging with Millar (1998).
8 robin osborne
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.
39 See more generally Hands (1968) 62–76, 77–88. 40 Finley (1973) 41.
12 robin osborne
defines eligibility for full citizenship in such a régime, 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 con-
firm 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 var-
ious 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
Roman poverty in context 13
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 See further Osborne (2004) 11–12. 42 cf. De Ste Croix (1981) 425–6, 431–2.
43 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.
44 Hall (1989) 81–3, 126–9, 209–10.
14 robin osborne
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 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.
46 Balot (2001) 46–8.
47 And are more prominent in the Catiline than in the corresponding passage (ch. 41) of the Jugurtha.
48 Compare Cat. 31 and Cat. 48. 49 Finley (1973) 40, cf. 171.
Roman poverty in context 15
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
50 Garnsey (1998) 237–9; (1988) 211–14, 236–43. 51 Garnsey (1988) 244 for both points.
52 Davidson (1993); Miller (1997) chs. 8–10. 53 Edwards (1993).
16 robin osborne
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
Roman poverty in context 17
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 dis-
cussion. Is the invisibility of the poor and problems of poverty in Egypt
during the early principate and their visibility in late antique Egypt a prod-
uct 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.
18 robin osborne
With Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe’s discussion in Chapter 7 of Ambrosiaster’s
treatment of almsgiving we turn firmly to the Christian sources. Lunn-
Rockliffe’s analysis further illuminates the concern of the late antique
church to offer space – and salvation – to the rich. She shows how Ambrosi-
aster notably avoids tussling with those scriptural passages which con-
demn 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 assump-
tion that there were monolithic ideologies of poverty and wealth. She
suggests that the poor could be both disdained, because of their phys-
ical 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 impoverish-
ment and destitution, now in relation to Christian texts. Finn argues that
the visibility of the poor in late antique Christian texts should not be exag-
gerated, 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 inci-
dence 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 descrip-
tions 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.
Roman poverty in context 19
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 pic-
ture 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 reci-
procity 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
20 robin osborne
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 ques-
tions which dominate development studies have hardly impinged on studies
of the ancient world. Throughout this volume the contributors have ges-
tured 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 pro-
ductive 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
21
22 neville morley
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 Smith (1976) 5.3.62. 4 Himmelfarb (1984) 42–63; Stedman Jones (2004) 3–5, 36–41, 97–8.
5 Quoted in Winch (1996) 90. 6 Stedman Jones (2004) 36–8.
The poor in the city of Rome 23
This new perspective was soon overtaken by events, as the French Rev-
olution 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 com-
parison of whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous’; the army was to
be seduced from its discipline and fidelity through ‘donatives’, Burke sug-
gested, 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 Stedman Jones (2004) 16–63. 8 Paine (1906) 501–2. 9 Burke (2001) 212, 228, 410–11.
10 Burke (2001) 280–81. 11 Stedman Jones (2004) 88–9.
12 Himmelfarb (1984) 100–32; Stedman Jones (2004) 88–109.
24 neville morley
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 terri-
tory, 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 cir-
cumstances, 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 Jean-
Baptiste 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 non-
proprietors’, 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.
The poor in the city of Rome 25
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 mate-
rial to support their political arguments about poverty, but their sources
for this are already politicised, presented in the context of a set of ideo-
logical assumptions. When Cicero describes Roman society in terms of a
16 Say (1971) 341; Stedman Jones (2004) 135–8.
26 neville morley
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)
17 Pars populi integra et magnis dominus adnexa . . . plebs sordida et circo ac theatris sueta. Generally,
Whittaker (1993) 6.
18 Debunking Juvenal’s panem et circenses: Brunt (1980); Whittaker (1993).
19 Himmelfarb (1984) 321; more generally, Williams (1973). 20 Whittaker (1993) 2.
The poor in the city of Rome 27
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.
63 Generally, Garnsey (1988). 64 Mouritsen (2001) 136–7. 65 Cf. Whittaker (1993) 17.
The poor in the city of Rome 39
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 effec-
tive 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 cen-
turies, 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
6 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.
7 Alföldy (1986) 52–3, 55. 8 Abramenko (1993). 9 Abramenko (1993) 58–82.
10 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.
11 E.g. Vittinghoff (1980) 42 (‘political classes’); Harris (1988) 601. Alföldy (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
Stratification, deprivation and quality of life 43
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 the-
oretical construct largely confined to the restricted sphere of reference con-
cerned 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 cate-
gory that lumped together the (free-born) agents of the imperial centre.15
As noted earlier, these categories of legal and functional inequality can-
not 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 regard-
less 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
history. Occasional informal usage of the term ordo (with reference to non-elite groups: e.g. Harris
(1988) 601; Kühnert (1990) 144) does not imply an extension of formal structuring into the commoner
population.
12 Runciman (1989) 20–24. 13 Alföldy (1986) 81.
14 Garnsey (1970) 280. Cf. Rilinger (1988) for further downgrading of the actual importance of these
binary categories.
15 Vittinghoff (1980) 48–9. 16 E.g. Vittinghoff (1980) 33; Alföldy (1986) 76.
17 Christ (1980) 216–17, 220. 18 Vittinghoff (1980) 49.
19 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.).
20 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
44 walter scheidel
imperial society are also available, as for instance in Wim Jongman’s con-
tention 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 mid-
dle 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 popu-
lation 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;
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.
21 Jongman (2000) 271. Compare Hopkins (2002) 198 for a more nuanced position. Jongman (forth-
coming) offers a much more upbeat assessment of Roman living standards.
22 Brunt (1987) 383. 23 Toner (2002) 50–51.
24 Drexhage, Konen and Ruffing (2002) 163–76, at 172.
25 Kloft (1992) 203. 26 Pleket (1971) 237.
Stratification, deprivation and quality of life 45
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 asso-
ciations 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 busi-
nessmen 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 allo-
cation of resources among the rural population that matters more than
anything else. Luuk de Ligt, in a rare attempt to explore peasant stratifi-
cation 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 contin-
uum from ‘the comfortable residence, through villas of steadily increasing
simplicity and small farms, to humble shanties’,31 rather than a stark polar-
ity 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 Egyp-
tian 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 Harris (1988) 604–5. At 603–4, Harris corrects the misapprehension of Alföldy (1986) 53 who assumes
that any class system must be binary in order to qualify as a class system.
28 Duncan-Jones (1982) 263–73, for Roman Italy; see also Mrozek (1990).
29 Pleket (1971) 238. 30 De Ligt (1990) 49–55.
31 De Ligt (1990) 51 (a translation of Tchalenko (1953) 358). 32 De Ligt (1990) 50.
33 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.
46 walter scheidel
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 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).
35 Osborne (1992) 23–4; Foxhall (1992) 157–8.
36 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’.
37 E.g. Cohen (1992); Jew (1999).
38 Gallant (1991) ch. 4. Readers should be warned that several of his calculations are mathematically
incorrect or otherwise flawed.
39 Hansen (1988) 24–5. 40 Osborne (1992) 24.
Stratification, deprivation and quality of life 47
settlements overseas, and (possibly though not certainly) in (early?) Sparta.41
On the other hand, oligarchic régimes 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 signifi-
cant 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 insti-
tutions that gave Greek citizens greater freedoms, specified property rights
more clearly, and encouraged investment in human capital. Relevant fac-
tors include the poleis’ increasing freedom from predatory state rulers, the
development of chattel slavery, citizen egalitarianism, the ‘invisible econ-
omy’ 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 charac-
terised 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 dis-
cusses western Europe in the High Middle Ages, the ‘Golden Age’ in
47 Goldstone (2002). See also E. Jones (2000) for similar periods of ‘growth recurring’ (such as Song
China).
48 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).
49 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.
50 See Hanson (1999) and in more extreme form in Hanson and Heath (1998) ch. 2.
51 War: Hopkins (1978) 25–37. Politics: Mouritsen (2001) (for what I consider an appropriately oli-
garchic model of Roman politics).
52 Rathbone (1993a) 125.
Stratification, deprivation and quality of life 49
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 sig-
nificantly 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 con-
stituted 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
55 Plut. Cic. 31.1, accepted at face value by Alföldy (1984) 80. Did not a single knight miss the occasion?
Could the forum hold this many people (cf. Mouritsen (2001) 21)?
56 For the total number of citizens, see Brunt (1987) chs. 5–9.
Stratification, deprivation and quality of life 51
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 con-
tinuum 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, account-
ing 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 Rosenstein (2002) convincingly refutes Brunt’s claim that proletarians accounted for more than half
of all iuniores in 214 bc.
58 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.
59 Duncan-Jones (1982) 304. 60 CIL 11.1455; Duncan-Jones (1976) 26 = (1990) 131.
61 CIL 11.1147; Duncan-Jones (1976) 27 = (1990) 132.
52 walter scheidel
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 group-
specific 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 Rathbone (1993a) 144. 63Bowman (1985) 150. 64 Bowman (1985) 151; Bagnall (1992) 131.
65 Bowman (1985) 151. 66 Bagnall (1992) 134–6.
Stratification, deprivation and quality of life 53
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 landown-
ers, 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 obliga-
tions’.71 It is hard to imagine that these people accounted for less than 20 to
72 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).
73 I doubt it: see Scheidel (2001a) 49–72. 74 On Roman economic growth, see Saller (2002).
Stratification, deprivation and quality of life 55
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 pro-
ductivity. Observing that urbanisation and GDP tend to be correlated in
modern developing countries, Temin argues that likely levels of urbanisa-
tion 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 under-
nourished, 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 popula-
tion falls below the national poverty line. In terms of material inequal-
ity, India performs markedly worse than in other areas, such as female
development.78
75 Temin (forthcoming).
76 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).
77 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.
78 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.
56 walter scheid el
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 mea-
sure 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 domes-
tic 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, under-
weight 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
Stratification, deprivation and quality of life 57
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 devel-
opment in the Graeco-Roman world. Even so, it is clear that different soci-
eties 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 pub-
lic 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 Repub-
lican 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 . . .
86 I.e. the standard approach of ancient historians so far: e.g. Prell (1997); A. Parkin (2001).
chap t e r 4
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
∗ 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.
1 Whittaker (1993) 295. 2 Pomeroy (1991) 66, cf. 63 n. 36.
60
An exploration of pagan almsgiving 61
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.
3 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’.
4 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 per-
son, 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 wor-
thy should be virtuous and respectful, should have a special relationship
with the giver, and should give a return. This is the semiotics of patron-
age. 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 compli-
cated 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, some-
times less so.6 On the other hand, in rhetorical writings designed to stir
11 Hands (1968) 78–99. 12 Sorabji (2000) 23; cf. Arist. Rh. 2.5.
13 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.
14 Hands (1968) 81–2. 15 Hands (1968) 82; cf. Cic. Tusc. 4.26.56; Bolkestein (1939) 143.
An exploration of pagan almsgiving 65
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 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.
17 Hands (1968) 84: i.e. the proximity of the beggars in the text to shipwrecked sailors.
66 anneliese park in
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 evi-
dently 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 tem-
ples, as there is no other evident religious connection to be made between
mainstream Graeco-Roman religion and almsgiving.
21 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.
22 Cf. Artem. 3.42, on tolerance of and almsgiving to people with mental illnesses.
23 Bolkestein (1939) 435.
24 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 atten-
tions of beggars in public by their servants, clients or lictors, and many,
entrenched in the doctrine of euergetism or beneficentia, may genuinely have
25 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.
26 Veyne (1997) 135. 27 Bolkestein (1939) 340.
An exploration of pagan almsgiving 69
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, help-
less 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 dis-
course, 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).
38 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.
39 Schak (1988) 49.
An exploration of pagan almsgiving 73
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 beg-
ging. 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 chil-
dren 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 contri-
bution to the finances of remaining family, or enabling them to be absorbed
into other households. Although parents, and in particular widows, cer-
tainly 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. Cer-
tain 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 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.
41 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 peo-
ple 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.
48 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). Rougé (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.
49 Chaudhuri (1987) 32.
50 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, magi-
cians, 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 moti-
vated 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 rela-
tionship 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 Cf. for example Apul. Met. 1.4 for a sword-swallower invitamento exiguae stipis to more dangerous
feats.
52 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.
53 Cf. Vogelstein and Rieger (1895) 64: dream interpreters and soothsayers were regarded as only a
higher form of aggressive begging.
An exploration of pagan almsgiving 79
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 centuries-
old 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 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.
58 Schak (1988) 190–94. 59 Schak (1988) 59. 60 See Gager (1992). 61 Schak (1988) 59, 62.
62 Schak (1988) 17. 63 Schak (1988) 54.
64 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.
An exploration of pagan almsgiving 81
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 benefi-
centia. 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
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
∗ 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.
1 Saller (1982).
2 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.
83
84 greg woolf
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 con-
cerned with disinterested social reportage; that where the poor are promi-
nent 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
7 Garnsey and Woolf (1989) make this point in relation to the rural poor.
8 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.
86 greg woolf
Let’s defamiliarise this for a moment. For the word ‘illustration’ is a con-
venient 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 occa-
sional 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 com-
mentaries 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 Braund (1989) on the question. Henderson (1999) exposes the problems inherent in all attempts to
extract social history from satire.
10 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.
11 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).
Writing poverty in Rome 87
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 for-
mulations, loci communes, and inspired cunning elaborations on the same.
Luxury and sex had many uses in the performative, deliberative and argu-
mentative terrains in which Latin rhetoric was deployed. They offered fuel
for political invective, they might make villains more magnificent or terri-
fying, 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)
15 Sen. Controv. 2.1.4–8. 16 Quam te, paupertas, amo, si beneficio tuo innocens sum!
17 Sen. Controv. 2.1.10–13.
Writing poverty in Rome 89
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 char-
acteristic 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 Dream-
book 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 sig-
nified 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
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.
Writing poverty in Rome 91
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 com-
monly 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 Por-
cius 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, eques-
trian procurators took titles from their salaries, and provincial taxes incor-
porated 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 Martha Nussbaum’s (1994) apt characterisation of much of the philosophy of this period.
21 Nicolet (1976) is fundamental on the Republic. The means by which wealth marked social status
changed but did not diminish under the Principate.
92 greg woolf
primarily because it was convertible to social or political capital. The institu-
tion 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 iden-
tity. 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 conse-
quent 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 main-
tain 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.
Writing poverty in Rome 93
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 char-
acter of philosophical writing, the comic technique of juxtaposing opp-
osites – as in the Satyricon where Neronian aesthetes hang out with the
low life – all these combine to construe poverty not as a clearly conceptu-
alised 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 imag-
inary 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 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.
24 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.
94 greg woolf
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 construc-
tion 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 citizen-
soldiery, 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 strug-
gles 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
28 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.
29 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.
30 The image of dogs eating the bodies of the poor recurs more widely in Latin literature: see Scobie
(1986).
31 Wiedemann (1986) on barbarians, Bradley (2000) on slaves.
96 greg woolf
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.
Writing poverty in Rome 97
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 self-
presentation as a poor poet. The theme recurs often and in different con-
texts. 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 law-
courts. 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 100-
columned 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).
98 greg woolf
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.
Writing poverty in Rome 99
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 oppo-
site 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 inequal-
ity. 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 them-
selves, abject and repulsive, were made innocuous because less than human
and ridiculous. Poetic poverty also offered graphic reassurances of the abso-
lute 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 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.
36 Quis tua cultorum, iuvenis facunde, tuorum / limina pauper adit, quem non animosa beatum / excipit
et subito iuvat indulgentia censu?
37 Brown (2002).
chap t e r 6
introd uction
In the broad history of ancient poverty Roman Egypt is no exception.
Christianisation in the fourth century made poverty prominent. In Chris-
tian 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 better-
off authors of our literary and documentary evidence, and perhaps also
∗ 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.
1 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.
2 Although I have a sneaking suspicion that investigation would unearth more Ptolemaic poverty.
100
Poverty and population in Roman Egypt 101
because we have little evidence from the megalopolis of Alexandria to
which the poor may have drifted. I suspect that many ancient histori-
ans, 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 phe-
nomenon, 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 cen-
tury, 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 impor-
tant 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,
4 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.
5 A. Hanson (2000); cf. Rowlandson (1998) 269: ‘Most widows did not re-marry’. Bagnall and Frier
(1994) 118–20, 123–7.
Poverty and population in Roman Egypt 103
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 mistreat-
ment 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 mar-
riage. 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 exemp-
tion from liturgies if they were engaged in ‘feeding the old’ (geroboskia,
gerotrophia), which I suspect was an exemption specific to land ceded to
6 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.
7 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).
8 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.
104 d ominic rathbone
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 part-
ner. Direct evidence is predictably scarce, but cases must lurk among male
lodgers of similar age, unrelated kurioi and affectionate male correspon-
dents. Other women, perhaps most of them, managed without regular
male assistance. Many unrelated kurioi, especially those of lower stand-
ing, 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 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.
10 A. Hanson (2000) 151–2, 160–2, using the declarations listed and numbered by Bagnall and Frier
(1994).
11 Declaration 145-Ar-20, but the lodger may be a second cousin; 215-He-1, an eighty-year-old with
her freedwoman.
12 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).
13 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).
Poverty and population in Roman Egypt 105
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.
14 Status: Rowlandson (1998) 195–6, 212–13, with further references. Widows: Brown (2002) 58–9.
15 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).
16 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.
106 d ominic rathbone
were common afflictions, but ones which the gods could cure, as, for exam-
ple, 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 peti-
tions by professional scribes in excited and exaggerated commonplaces,
provide no evidence of a destitute and criminal underclass, or of any con-
temporary 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 legisla-
tion 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 Ex votos: common in museums, but mostly unpublished. Vespasian: Tac. Hist. 4.81–2; Suet. Vesp.
7; Dio 66.8.1–2.
18 P Rein. 2.113 (late 3rd).
19 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).
20 SB 6.9105 (2nd ad).
21 Galen 11.142 (Kühn). 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).
22 Drexhage (1988) 314–16, but not accepting his vision of chronic banditry; Bagnall (1989) 211–14.
Poverty and population in Roman Egypt 107
(‘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 discount-
ing 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 Alston (1999).
24 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.
25 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.
108 d ominic rathbone
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. How-
ever, 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 SB 18.13862. Ibion Eikosipentarouron was probably a significantly smaller village than Philadelphia
which had around 900 adult male taxpayers.
27 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.
28 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’.
29 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).
Poverty and population in Roman Egypt 109
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 sys-
tem 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 Anti-
noopolis 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 Parkin (2003) 171 over-charitably calls this ‘“tax relief” for the elderly’.
31 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.
32 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 tax-
farmers and other public contractors (cf. ll. 10–15); the interpretation of Chalon (1964) 110–22 does
not fit well with the situation described.
110 d ominic rathbone
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 unpo-
liced 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 ‘farm-
gate’ 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 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.
34 Festivals: Perpillou-Thomas (1993). Shortages: Garnsey (1988) 251–9, 265–6.
35 For this and the following points, see Rathbone (1997) 190–4 and (forthcoming) with references.
Poverty and population in Roman Egypt 111
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 econ-
omy of Roman Egypt should look for data which support his hypothesis
that it was, in demographic terms, a ‘high pressure’ régime, 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,
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
∗ 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.
1 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).
2 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.
3 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.
4 See Burn (1899); Morin (1899), (1903) and (1914). 5 See De Blauuw (1994).
115
116 sophie lunn-rockliffe
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 child-
bearing, 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 com-
munity 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 mar-
riage (and the heirs it would hopefully produce) threatened the security
11 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.’
12 Hunter (1989) 294 shows that Ambrosiaster links celibacy with a sacramental ministry, and thereby
‘undercuts the value of lay asceticism’.
13 See Amst. q. 124.6. 14 Brown (2002).
118 sophie lunn-rockliffe
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] dif-
fers according to persons, whether it is to be praised or condemned’.15 How-
ever, 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
19 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.
20 Et, quod peius est, solent pauperes expoliare.
21 In egestate enim servare iustitiam magnifica res est.
22 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 . . .
23 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.
24 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.
25 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’.
26 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 . . .
27 Divitem autem deliciarum copiae lacessunt ad voluptatem libidinis, praeterea quia securi sunt de inpuni-
tate scientes venalia esse iudicia et nec redargui se ab aliquo.
120 sophie lunn-rockliffe
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 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 . . .
29 Quod si rex pudicus sit, multum est gloriosum, ut omnia in potestate habens non contingat, quod scit
impune a se posse fieri.
30 See Luke 18.2: ‘there was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man’.
31 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.’
Poverty and riches in Ambrosiaster 121
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. Ambrosi-
aster not only ‘saves’ the rich man in this quaestio; it is striking that his
substantial oeuvre34 does not refer to the scriptural passages which con-
demn 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 eas-
ier 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 moder-
ate 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 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.
33 See Countryman (1980). 34 Ambrosiaster’s writings fill four fat volumes in the CSEL series.
35 Proba, Cento 475–481.
36 E. A. Clark (1986) 140. For a translation of Proba’s Cento, see Plant (2004).
122 sophie lunn-rockliffe
general imposition of another related ascetic practice, celibacy, on ordinary
Christians.
Clement argues along Stoic lines that riches are morally indifferent (adi-
aphora) 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 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.
38 See Countryman (1980).
Poverty and riches in Ambrosiaster 123
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)
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 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.
40 See Garnsey (1970).
124 sophie lunn-rock liffe
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)
41 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’.
42 Bauman (1986) 151, citing D. 48.19.28. pr.
126 sophie lunn-rockliffe
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.
Poverty and riches in Ambrosiaster 127
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 estab-
lish.45 Ambrosiaster thus falls in line with some of his contemporaries in
his denunciation of the actual excesses of the rich. He also explicitly con-
nects 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 See Ammianus, Res Gestae 28.4, on the vices of Roman society, and Jerome, Ep. 22 on the vices of
Roman Christian society.
45 See Harries (1999) 143.
128 sophie lunn-rockliffe
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 pres-
byter, 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
1 De Vinne (1995) iv. 2 Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew’s Gospel, 66.3; PG 58. 630.
3 Lieu (1996) 2.
130
Poverty in Christian texts from the late Roman empire 131
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
Bonnardière 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,
15 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.
16 On Psalms 67, 71, 77, 78, 82, 87 and 89. 17 E.g. En. in Ps. 66.7.
18 E.g. En. in Ps. 90, s.2.13; 95.15. 19 En. in Ps. 93.7. 20 E.g. En. in Ps 53.3; 72.26; 76.4.
21 E.g. En. in Ps. 36, s.1.2; 37.24; 64.8.
134 richard f inn, op
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 Patlagean (1977) 25ff.
23 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.
24 Boulding (2000b) 164.
Poverty in Christian texts from the late Roman empire 135
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
25 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
Bénédictine 58, p. 51.
26 E.g. En. in Ps. 36, s.3.6; 44.29; 49.8 and 20; 66.9; 27 E.g. En. in Ps. 36, s.2.21; 38.12; 49.12;
136 richard f inn, op
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 non-
technical 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 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.
29 En. in Ps. 93.7.
30 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.
Poverty in Christian texts from the late Roman empire 137
It is possible that the passers-by are attempting to ward off evil on com-
ing 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 intrigu-
ing 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, pau-
peres, 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 communi-
cating the essential humility of the Christian life and the great gap between
creatures and Creator. A word which would in other circumstances mea-
sure 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 I am grateful to Gillian Clark for alerting me to this interpretation. 32 En. in Ps. 72.12.
33 En. in Ps. 48, s.1.3; 34 En. in Ps. 75.9.
35 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.
138 richard f inn, op
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 beg-
gar 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
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 com-
paring and contrasting of two texts which give accounts of what I have
admittedly loosely described as ‘parties for the poor’. These two texts pro-
vide 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 best-
known 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.
145
146 lucy grig
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 régime,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 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.
2 Prudentius himself discusses his imperial preferment: Praef. 19–21. 3 Ep. 13, written 396.
4 Itaque patronos animarum nostrarum pauperes, qui tota Roma stipem meritant, multitudinem in aula
apostoli congregasti.
5 A recent example is its discussion in the Cambridge Ancient History: Marcone (1998) 342–3.
Poverty and splendour in the late antique church 147
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 audi-
ence 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 spec-
tacle, 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
18 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.
19 See here Gage (1993) 39–40.
20 Some examples of ecclesiastical silver plate from this period do survive; for an interesting discussion
of the corpus see Leader-Newby (2004) ch. 2.
21 A beautifully evocative description of this effect is given by Prudentius in his hymn ‘On the Lighting
of the Lamps’, Cath. 5.141.8.
150 lucy grig
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 pow-
erful 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 build-
ings are decorated variously with figural and decorative paintings, panelling
and marble. In his descriptions, moreover, Paulinus makes a point of con-
trasting 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
27 Quoniam igitur nunc ista modo mihi fabrica formam / praebebit, qua me colere aedificare novare /
sensibus et Christo metandum ponere possim?
28 For the comments of Paulinus’ contemporaries see Trout (1999) 2–10; note too the striking accusations
of Frend (1969).
29 Paulinus himself discusses his renunciation in his Carm. 21.413f.
30 On Paulinus’ adaptation of this classical theme see Witke (1971) 83–9 and Junod-Ammerbauer (1975)
esp. 18–21.
31 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 Cedo equidem et vacuo multis potioribus auro, / quis gravis aere sinus relevatur egente repleto, / qui
locuplete manu promptaria ditia laxant.
33 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.
Poverty and splendour in the late antique church 153
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 spiri-
tual 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
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 Non aere gravi nec munere surdo, / munere sed vivo linguae mentisque profusus.
35 I see more distance between Paulinus and his rustic than does Witke (1971) 88–9.
36 Quamobrem temporalium quae in hoc saeculo habentur honorum relictio sive distractio non decursus
stadii sed ingressus nec ut meta sed ianua est.
37 Trout (1999) 133.
38 Et quid proderit caruisse divitiis, si remanemus divites vitiis?
39 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).
154 lucy grig
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 See for instance August. Ep. 157. 23–31, written in response to Pelagian teachings.
41 Non divitias sed homines pro earum usibus esse culpabiles vel acceptos deo; cf. August. Ep. 157.23f.; Serm.
39.4.
42 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.
43 Cf. Augustine, Superflua tua necessaria sunt alii, Serm. 39.6.
44 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.
Poverty and splendour in the late antique church 155
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 devel-
oped beyond the superficial, that with Pammachius seems to have been
more profound. Jerome, like Paulinus, wrote Pammachius a letter of con-
solation 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, charac-
teristically, 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 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.
46 Cf. Ep. 52.10; for a more conciliatory comment on the same theme see Ep. 130.14.
47 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.
48 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 In his famously vituperative letter to Eustochium Jerome satirises ‘ascetic’ women who wear thread-
bare 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!
50 Cf. Ep. 58.2; Vita Hilarionis Eremite 10.
51 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.
52 On the ‘aristocratisation’ of Christianity at this time see Salzman (2002) ch. 7.
53 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.
54 ‘Assum est’, inquit: ‘versa et manduca’.
Poverty and splendour in the late antique church 157
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 Unlike Ambrose, Prudentius makes this explicit in his account: caelestis arcanum domus / fidis
gubernans clavibus / votasque dispensans opes, Per. 2. 42–4.
56 Et maxime sacerdoti hoc convenit, ornare Dei templum decore congruo, ut etiam hoc cultu aula Domini
resplendeat.
57 Aurum ecclesia habet non ut servet, sed ut eroget, et subveniat in neccessitatibus. 58 Cf. Ep. 18.16.
59 Ambrose, Off. 2.136–42; cf. 2.70; Socrates, Hist. Eccl. 4.25.
60 Brown (1992) 96. 61 I owe this point to Richard Finn.
158 lucy grig
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 deter-
mined 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 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.
63 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).
64 Now see also Brown (2002) passim. 65 To quote the title of Janes (1998).
66 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.
Poverty and splendour in the late antique church 159
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 imag-
ined 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 congre-
gation 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 trans-
formed 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 com-
plex 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 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.
68 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.
69 MacMullen (1989). 70 MacMullen (1989) 511.
71 E.g. En. in Ps. 51.4, 83: the problem lay in the desire for, rather than the possession of, wealth in
itself.
72 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.
160 lucy grig
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 under-
stood 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 It is ironic that while he describes a spectaculum the spectated actually seem to have disappeared
from view.
74 That is, sympathetic towards the sensibilities of the rich.
75 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.
76 Scio multos divites et religiosos ob stomachi angustiam exercere huiusce modi misericordiam per aliena
ministeria et clementes esse pecunia, non manu.
Poverty and splendour in the late antique church 161
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 Ille, quem despicimus, quem videre non possumus, ad cuius intuitum vomitus nobis erumpit.
78 Nostri similis est, de eodem nobiscum formatus luto, isdem conpactus elementis.
chap t e r 10
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 Guber-
natione 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 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.
2 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.
162
Salvian and the poor in fifth-century Gaul 163
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 contribut-
ing 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 patron-
age differed from province to province, and question the validity of combin-
ing disparate sources from disparate regions in pursuit of one overarching
phenomenon.5 Indeed, it seems clear that the legislation, Libanius and Sal-
vian all focus upon different aspects of rural patronage relationships in the
period. Where the concern of the legislation is for the transferal of rev-
enues 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 Recent restatements, with further references, may be found in Krause (1987) 81–2; Giliberti (1992)
197; Mircovič (1997) 29–30; Marcone (1998) 362–3.
4 See in particular, Carrié (1976); Lepelley (1983); Garnsey and Woolf (1989).
5 Brown (1971) 85 argues that the evidence for the harmful effects of rural patronage is effectively
limited to Gaul and Egypt. Carrié (1976) is strict in his application of Libanius’ evidence only to late
fourth-century Syria.
6 Krause (1987) 73–4, 84. Also Petit (1955) 189 at n. 4.
7 Petit (1955) 376–7; Carrié (1976) 174, 166–7; Krause (1987) 86. 8 O’Donnell (1983) 26.
9 See, in particular, Maas (1992); Lambert (2000); also O’Donnell (1983).
164 cam grey
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.
18 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.
19 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?
20 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.
Salvian and the poor in fifth-century Gaul 167
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 col-
lective 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.
24 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.
25 Omnia scilicet studia omnes conatus suos ad communia emolumenta conferrent et crescentes reipublicae
vires privata paupertate ditarent.
Salvian and the poor in fifth-century Gaul 169
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 respon-
sibility 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 pur-
pose 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 Id etiam usus vitae humanae habet ut referatur gratia faeneratoribus gratiarum, et recipiant vicem
munerum munerantes.
27 Quam praecipuam dominus docet esse virtutem.
28 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, human-
itati tribuerent, non cupiditati.
29 Omnes se fere barbari, qui modo sunt unius gentis et regis, mutuo amant, omnes paene Romani mutuo
persequuntur.
170 cam grey
the barbarians can also be connected with his vision of the role that magis-
trates 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 pater-
familias that determines the reputation and standing of the household.31
In addition, it is the wealthiest and most powerful households that deter-
mine 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 argu-
ment that the Vandals were a cleansing force when they took Carthage.
He portrays the residents of Carthage, in particular, as sexually promiscu-
ous, 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 On the originality of this idea, see Paschoud (1967) 301; Maas (1992) 276.
31 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).
32 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.
Salvian and the poor in fifth-century Gaul 171
long-established Roman social conventions, and blending them with ele-
ments taken from the Judaeo-Christian societies of the Old and New Testa-
ments. Salvian envisages a society with strong and mutually binding verti-
cal alliances, and horizontal connections that facilitate harmony within the
group. This community is united by its common observance of a prescrip-
tive 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.
33 See Finn, Chapter 8 in this volume, for poverty as a deliberately vague and elastic term.
34 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?
172 cam grey
Clearly, Salvian’s point is that the rich are not fulfilling their obligations
towards their communities. Rather, they are evading their fiscal responsi-
bilities, 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 circum-
stances, 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 mem-
bers 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 los-
ing 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 ques-
tion 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 Ne homini misero et egestuoso rem ac substantiam suam tolleret. Cf. the language of DGD 5.8.39.
36 Quid enim amplius facerem, cui res tam iusta obtendebatur et sancta?
Salvian and the poor in fifth-century Gaul 173
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 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.
38 Cf. Van Dam (1985) 43; Drinkwater (1992) 210–11.
39 See Finn, Chapter 8 in this volume. Also Brown (1992); Grey and Parkin (2003).
40 Parkin, Chapter 4 in this volume; Whittaker (1993) 273–4; Grey and Parkin (2003) 289; cf. Toner
(1995) 69–71, with further references.
41 See Grig, Chapter 9 in this volume. Also Brown (1992); Grey and Parkin (2003) 291; Garnsey and
Humfress (2001) 124.
42 Cf. Lunn-Rockliffe, Chapter 7, and Finn, Chapter 8, both this volume. This argument is further
developed in Grey and Parkin (2003) 289–93.
174 cam grey
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 the-
ological preoccupations which underpin that critique provide a frame-
work for his presentation of vertical relationships between large and small
landowners, whom he labels rich and poor. That framework, in turn, con-
ditions 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.
Salvian and the poor in fifth-century Gaul 175
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 appar-
ently 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.
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.
176 cam grey
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 mort-
gage 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 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.
46 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 gravis-
simo 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 vendi-
tionis et emptionis est: 41. venditor nihil tradit, et totum accipit; emptor nihil accipit, et totum penitus
amittit.
47 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.
Salvian and the poor in fifth-century Gaul 177
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].
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.
178 cam grey
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 inap-
propriate 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 motiva-
tions 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 him-
self 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.
49 Omnes enim hi qui defendi videntur, defensoribus suis omnem fere substantiam suam priusquam defen-
dantur addicunt; ac sic, ut patres habeant defensionem, perdunt filii haereditatem: tuitio parentum
mendicitate pignorum comparatur.
50 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)).
51 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.
52 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 Études
Augustiniennes. Série Antiquité 147, Paris (1996) 513.
Salvian and the poor in fifth-century Gaul 179
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 serf-
dom 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 histori-
ographical concept of ‘the colonate’ has taken a more sympathetic view
of the socio-economic condition of coloni.53 Within this context, arrange-
ments 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 ten-
ancy 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 Carrié (1982) and (1983) remain fundamental. See also Vera (1997). A convenient summary of the
historiography may be found in Scheidel (2000).
180 cam grey
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 rela-
tionship being made only after a small landowner has lost his property,
tenancy and ownership of land need not be mutually exclusive, and func-
tion most characteristically as complementary elements in a small farmer’s
risk-aversion strategy. Consequently, Salvian’s presentation of the decision-
making 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 suf-
ficient 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 protec-
tion.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 desti-
tute in late Roman society. The poor of whom he speaks are more charac-
teristically small landowners, or less wealthy members of local aristocracies.
However, his text remains valuable as both an example of an author enlist-
ing the motif of poverty in pursuit of a grander moralistic purpose, and
a series of windows through which to glimpse the fate of small landown-
ers in fifth-century Gaul. Salvian masterfully manipulates the phenomena
54 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.
55 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).
Salvian and the poor in fifth-century Gaul 181
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 off-
spring 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 cur-
rent configurations with his ideal of social relations. In contrast to the har-
mony and unity of purpose evident in Salvian’s idealised Christian commu-
nity, 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 pur-
chase 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 patron-
age are replaced with exchanges predicated upon dispossession and mone-
tary 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 commu-
nities 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 oppor-
tunity 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.
182 cam grey
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 gen-
eralising 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
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 impe-
rial 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 sta-
tus. 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 dif-
ficulties 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 com-
fort 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
183
184 caroline humf ress
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?
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?
186 caroline humf ress
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 estab-
lish that senators and any persons endowed with the high rank of perfectissimi
shall be permitted to unite themselves in marriage with the daughters of free-
born 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 Ideoque omnem dubitationem, quae quorundam mentibus iniecta fuerat, auferentes, manentibus et solidis-
sima 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.
8 See Crook (1967) 106.
Poverty and Roman law 187
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 differ-
ence 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 seep-
age 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 for-
tune (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 moder-
ate 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’.
188 caroline humf ress
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 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.
11 ‘Locuples’ est, qui satis idonee habet pro magnitudine rei, quam actor restituendam esse petit.
Poverty and Roman law 189
(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 free-
born 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.
12 Qui contemplatione extremae necessitatis aut alimentorum gratia filios suos vendiderint, statui ingenuitatis
eorum non praeiudicant: homo enim liber nullo pretio aestimatur.
190 caroline humf ress
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 neces-
sity’ 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 eco-
nomic 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 Constan-
tine 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 histo-
rians 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 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.
14 See D. 40.12, CJ 7.16 and CTh 4.8. Hermann-Otto (1999) discusses causae liberales under the late
Republic and early empire.
15 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).
Poverty and Roman law 191
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 consti-
tutions have been cited as evidence for the thesis that Christian ideals about
charity and blame-free poverty had already begun to seep into Roman leg-
islation by the early fourth century.16 However, the legal evidence from the
Severan age already discussed encourages a reading of both of these Con-
stantinian 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 par-
ent, 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 particu-
larly 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 reiter-
ating the archaic poena cullei the drafter of this Constantinian constitution
16 See Rougé (1990) and Brown (2002).
17 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).
18 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).
192 caroline humf ress
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 through-
out 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 responsi-
ble for adequately clothing and feeding their slaves, and freedmen were
19 Provinciales egestate victus atque alimoniae inopia laborantes liberos suos vendere vel obpignorare cog-
novimus. 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 substan-
tiam protinus tribuant competentem. Abhorret enim nostris moribus, ut quemquam fame confici vel ad
indignum facinus prorumpere concedamus.
20 See also CJ 4.43.1 (Diocletian and Maximian, 294).
Poverty and Roman law 193
supposed to support a patron and his family struck by extreme poverty.21
Not all freedmen undertook this obligation with good grace. The mid-
third-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 poverty-
stricken 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-à-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).
194 caroline humf ress
he can; but, the text continues ‘I [i.e. the emperor Valentinian] judge that
it is wrong that freedom should perish . . .’
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.
196 caroline humf ress
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 cler-
ics 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 individu-
als (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 indi-
vidual 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’.
Poverty and Roman law 197
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.
29 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.
30 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.
31 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).
Poverty and Roman law 199
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 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.
33 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.
34 (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.
35 See also D. 50.5.10.3 (Paul, Views Book 1) = Paul, Sent. 1.1.a 21.
200 caroline humf ress
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 fourth-
and 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, immedi-
ately 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
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.
Poverty and Roman law 201
37 Hos praecipimus, si locupletes sint, proscriptione puniri, si per egestatem abiecti sunt in faecem vilitatemque
plebeiam, damnatione capitali debita luere detrimenta.
38 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).
202 caroline humfress
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 per-
petual poverty must be meted out to the children of individuals convicted
of conspiring against the lives of men of illustrious rank. The conspira-
tors’ 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 provin-
cial 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, advo-
cates 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 leg-
islated 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,
Poverty and Roman law 203
those of modest resources. Moreover, Marcian was at least as much inter-
ested in upholding the dignity of Roman free-born status as of poverty.
Constantine’s laws against the sale of children into slavery by indigent par-
ents 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 Chris-
tian 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
220
Index 221
Catiline 8, 14, 23, 25, 26, 27 countryside 35, 53, 94, 113, 142–43, 162
Cato 13 see also economy; agricultural; peasants
Catullus 95, 97 covetousness 116
celibacy 117 see also marriage; asceticism Crassus 88
Celsus 188 crime 31, 33, 35, 106, 119
census 16, 48, 89, 91–92, 97, 99, 102 see also punishment; theft; violence
Chalcedon, Council of 197 Croesus 88
charity 5–6, 60, 100, 101, 164 Curran, John 116
see also almsgiving; poor relief; xenodocheia curses 80
chastity 119 Cybele 67
children Cynics 67, 74, 91, 96
as beggars 71–73, 77 Cyrenaics 91
exposure of 71, 73, 80
sale of 19, 71, 73, 189–90, 192, Daube, David 183
193–94 deacons 157
see also infant mortality; orphans debt 12, 22, 24, 132, 136, 142
China 78–79, 80 see also taxes
Han 41, 44 decurions 42, 45, 194
Qin 41, 53 De Ligt, Luuk 45
Qing 48 defensor ecclesiae 196
Christ 121, 138 democracy 11–12
and rich young man 116, 121, 122 Demosthenes 11
as example 18, 141 destitute 12, 16–17, 18, 35, 188
identified with poor 139, 155 absence of 106, 192–93
praises poor 118, 152 categorisation of 20, 29, 32, 172
Christ, Karl 43 see also beggars; poor; poverty
Christianisation 2, 9, 68, 100, 158–60, 187, 191, De Vinne, Michael 130
193 dicta Catonis 69
Christianity 11, 17, 101, 105, 201 diet 3, 4, 30, 32, 47, 55, 56, 58
churches Dio Chrysostom 67
architecture and decoration of 147–48, 149, Diocletian 113
150–51, 154–55, 157 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 50
see also bishops; presbyters; poor relief Dioscorus 143
Cicero 25, 50, 61–63, 65, 67, 68 disability 5, 70–72, 105–06, 109, 140–42
Cincinnatus 13, 35, 168 divorce 102, 105
citizenship 7–8, 12, 34, 39, 189 dogs 95, 96
loss of 177, 184 Domitian 97
see also status, political dowry 35, 187
Clark, E. A. 121 dreams 69–70, 75, 78, 89–90, 91
Clement of Alexandria 105, 122–23 Duncan Jones, Richard 52–53
clientage see patronage
Clodius 8, 27, 50 Ecclesiastes 121
clothing 35 economists, political 21–27, 39
coloni see tenants economy, agricultural 4, 5, 36, 37, 45
comedy 99 see also countryside
common good 168 education 55
community 19, 34–35, 38, 166–71 Egypt 16, 17, 45, 50–52, 57, 100–14, 142
unity of 169–70 population 105–14
Constantine 149, 184–86, 188–90, 195, 199, Ptolemaic 52, 100, 109, 112
201 elderly 68, 72
Constitutio Antoniana 10 elite see aristocracy; wealthy
consumption 57 emperor 9, 15, 34
contracts 198 empire, Roman 2, 8, 9–11, 25, 29, 37, 39, 45–52
Conybeare, Catherine 147 see also poor relief, imperial; treasury, imperial
corruption 163 England 48
222 Index
Ephesus 70 God 126, 127–28, 132, 150, 154
Epictetus 67, 90 disobedience to 172: see also sins
Epicureans 91 judgement of 124, 166–67
Epicurus 93 human beings before 135, 137, 140,
episcopalis audientia 190 168–69
epitaphs 31, 35, 38, 67 see also providence
equites 44, 50 goldsmiths 45
Eulogius 141 Goldstone, Jack 47
Europe, western 47 Good Samaritan 140–42
Eustochium 116 Goths see barbarians
exclusion 33–35, 177 Gracchus, Tiberius 37
grain
Fabianus 91 dole 6–7, 9, 14, 24, 26, 27, 33,
Fabiola 160–61 39
Fabricius 88, 168 prices 110–11
family 30, 34, 38, 72, 73, 77, 79, 103–04 storage 111, 142
see also children; marriage; paterfamilias; supply of 38
parricide; widows Gratian 76
famine 23, 33, 110, 140, 193 Greece 1, 6, 9, 13, 45–48, 57, 60
fate 64 Grey, Cam 19
Fayum 45, 112 Grig, Lucy 19
see also Ibion Eikosipentarouron; Karanis; Grodzynski, Denise 126
Philadelphia guardianship 198–99
Felix, St 151–52
Fiedrowicz, Michael 131 Hadrian 10, 108
Finley, Moses 6, 11, 14 hagiography 18, 131, 144
Finn, Richard 18 Hands, A. R. 3
floods 107, 110 Hanson, A. E. 102, 104
food 4, 5, 7 Hanson, Victor 48
distribution of 45, 109–10 Harris, William 44
shortage of 5, 15, 21, 110 health 40
supply of 1, 33, 38, 39 see also disability; illnessi
see also diet; famine; grain; poor relief Heliodorus 66
fortune 91, 185 heresies 165, 201, 202
Foxhall, Lin 46 Hermogenianus 197–98
free-born 30, 31, 185–86, 189–90, 192, Hermopolis 52, 53, 109
193–96 Herodes Atticus 65
freedmen 30, 31, 38, 44, 192–93, 195 Hesiod 13
responsibility for patrons 193, 195 Himmelfarb, G. 28
French Revolution 23, 24 Histria 45
Friedlander, Ludwig 86 Holland 48
friendship 83 Holman, Susan 130
Frier, Bruce 56, 102, 111 homeless 80
funerals 78, 80, 146 honestiores 10, 40–42, 43, 124, 201
Hopkins, Keith 7
Gades 50, 52 Horace 70, 97
Gaius 188, 197 Horden, P. 10
Garnsey, Peter 3, 43, 58, 83, 92, 183, housing 7, 47
201–02 Human Development Report 56
Gaul 19, 162–82 humanitas 62, 63, 169, 176–77
Gaza see Mark the Deacon Hume, David 16, 21
GDP 54–55, 56 Humfress, Caroline 19–20
gender 40, 102 see also women; widows humiliores see honestiores
Gennadius 164–65 humilis 183, 200
Gini coefficient 46, 52–53, 56 humility 119
Index 223
Hunter, David 116 landlords see tenants
Hypatius see Callinicus Laurence, St 19, 145–46, 148
law 17, 34, 43
Iavolenus 203 on begging 12, 17, 68, 76
Ibion Eikosipentarouron 107 canon 196–97: see also under individual
illness 33, 35, 69, 70, 112, 143 councils and synods
see also disability; plague Christian 170
immigrants 34, 38, 39, 73 Roman: 123–25, 183–03 see also Constitutio
see also migration Antoniana; Justinianic Code; Justinianic
impoverishment 90 Digest; Theodosian Code
India 55–56 see also law-courts; litigation; status
Industrial Revolution 36 law-courts 123, 190
inequality, economic 36, 47, 55, 56 Lazarus 136–37
injustice 171–73, 175, 197 Lebanon 142
see also taxes, oppressive legacies 19, 37, 184, 186, 193, 195–96, 202
insolvency 187 Lérins 164–65
Isaiah 139 letters, pacifical and commendatory 197
Islam 41, 48 Libanius 80, 141, 162–63
Italy 16, 31, 36, 37, 48–51, 57 Liber Pontificialis 149
Lieu, Judith 130
James, St 121, 174 life expectancy 4, 34, 47, 55
Janes, Dominic 150 see also mortality, infant
Jerome 138, 160, 161 Ligures Baebiani 51, 53
and asceticism 116, 117, 126, 154–56 literacy 28, 40, 55, 56
Jerusalem 71, 116 litigation 188, 190, 197–98, 200
Jews 67 liturgies 103, 105, 106, 109
John Chrysostom 71, 72, 77, 78, 130, 140 Lucian 99
John the Almoner 114 Lucilius 97
Jongman, Wim 44 Lucretius 87
Josephus 3 Luke, St 118, 120–21, 124–25, 137
judges 200, 202 Lunn-Rockliffe, Sophie 18
Julian 67, 201 lust 119
Julian Saba 141 luxury 9, 17, 24, 26, 87, 90
justice 119, 168 criticism of 13, 88, 89
Justin, the emperor 196 goods 7, 45
Justinianic Code 187, 195–96
Justinianic Digest 123–24, 188, 197 MacMullen, Ramsay 159
Juvenal 27, 31, 74, 78 Manichees 138
Satire 3 35, 85, 86, 93–94 Malthus, Thomas 23–24, 25, 36
Satire 10 25, 26 Manilius 91
Marcian 19, 183, 184–89, 193, 195
Kalighat see Calcutta Marcus Aurelius 199
Karanis 45, 52 Mark, St 121, 122
Kerkeosiris 52 Mark the Deacon 131, 140, 142–43
king 120 marriage 80, 102, 105, 116, 183, 184–87
Krause 101–02 Marseilles 162, 164–65
Kwassa wa’umma 41 Martial 17, 70, 94–99
Martin of Tours 141
La Bonnardière, Anne-Marie 131–32 martyrdom 146
labour 7–8, 35, 37 Marx, Karl 36
Lampadius 93 Matthew, St 121, 139
land 4–5, 6, 33, 37, 47, 113, 175–79, 180 McGinn, T. A. J. 102
ownership of 46, 53–54, 180–81 medicine 55
public and private 112–13 Menander 11
landless 5, 8, 53–54 metallisation 48
224 Index
middle class 16, 30, 32, 42–54, 94, Peloponnesian War 46
188 Peter, St 141
see also poverty, relative Petronius 93
migration 31, 38, 72 Philadelphia in Fayum 52, 107, 110
Modestinus 193, 195–96, 198 Philo of Alexandria 3, 105
money 38, 113, 114 philosophers 67
Morley, Neville 5, 7 see also under names of individuals and schools
Morris, Ian 46, 47, 57 Philostratus 70, 74
Morstein-Marx, R. 39 pity 71, 118–19
mortality, infant 28, 55 see also poor, pity for
mortgage 176, 178 plague 87, 107, 111, 112
munera 148, 151, 152, 194, 199–200 Plato 12–13
see also liturgies Plautus 65, 66, 68
plebs 43, 44, 45
Neri, Valerio 141 Pleket, Willy 44
Nero 108 Pliny 68, 98, 111
New Comedy 90 Plutarch 50
Nola 150–51 poetry 151–53
poets, represented as poor 97–99
oligarchy 11–12, 46 Polybius 14
orphans 143, 172–73 poor relief 3, 23
Orpheus 100, 101 civic 6, 45: see also grain, dole; xenodocheia
Osborne, Robin 46 ecclesiastical 101, 114, 194–96
Ottomans 41 imperial 108, 191–93
Oxyrhynchus 100, 110, 112, 113 see also charity
poor, the
Paine, Thomas 23, 36 adoption of 141
pagans 134, 142, 143–44, 170 as blessed 125–28, 146, 148, 174
Palladius 184 as vicious 14, 25, 27, 39
Pammachius 146–48, 155–56, 160 contempt for 5, 15, 134, 136–37, 158, 164,
Panegyric to Piso 99 174
Paphnutius 142 fear and disgust of 70, 74–75, 79, 81, 138–39,
Papirius Fabianus 88 160–61, 173
Parkin, Anneliese 3 friendship with 155
Parkin, T. 103 pity for 61, 62–5, 67, 70–73, 79, 171, 173: see
parricide 191–92 also humanitas
parties 19, 145–61 shame of 35, 38, 125–28
Patavium 50–52 virtuous non-Christian 12–15, 62, 74,
paterfamilias 170–71 94
Patlagean, Evelyne 2, 3, 101, 113, 133, 197 virtuous Christian 118–21, 171, 173, 187
patronage 16, 19, 38, 47, 62, 83, 84, 178–80 visibility of 17, 18, 130–40, 141, 144, 160,
as security 132 197–200
by poor 154 see also beggars; destitute; patronage; poverty;
literary 97, 98 subsistence
paying tax 109, 142 population 23–24, 31, 36, 37, 47
patrocinium 163 see also Rome, population; Egypt, population
poor excluded from 34, 36, 38, 85 Porcius Latro 89, 91
reciprocity within 168–69 Porphyry, bishop of Gaza see Mark the Deacon
see also benefaction; freedmen Possidius 133
Paul, St 127–28 potentiores 42
Paul the jurist 72, 186–87, 189 poverty,
Paulinus of Nola 19, 142, 146–55, 160 abolition of 25
peace 39 artistic representation of 68, 200
peasants 33, 37, 152, 180–81 conjunctural 5, 73, 77, 108, 132, 142–44;
see also countryside; economy meaning of 1, 28–29: see also subsistence
Index 225
definition of 1, 16, 27–36, 40, 57–59, 171–73; rights
in law 183, 186–87, 197–98 civic 6
explanations of 25, 100–01 of Man 23
Greek view of 11–15 legal 40
literary representation of 17, 25–27, 29, 39, Rome
83–99, 130–44, 145–61, 163 city of 6–9, 14–15, 16, 17, 21–39, 83–99, 115–17
relative 11, 15, 19, 59, 171, 183, 187–88 in literature 83–99
social analysis of 32–36 population 1, 7–8, 9, 38
structural 1, 6, 28–29, 36 see also Laurence, St; St Peter’s, Rome
terminology of 11, 103, 105, 133–34, 135–36, Romulus 88
137–38 Rosenstein, N. 37
voluntary see asceticism; renunciation Runciman, W. G. 42
see also beggars; destitute; poor; subsistence
power, political 7–9, 14–15, 34, 168 St Peter’s, Rome 19, 138–39, 146–50, 156, 158, 160
preaching 115, 130–40, 159, 165 Sallust 14, 25
Prell, Marcus 2, 3 salvation 120, 122–23, 124, 128
presbyters 115–16, 157, 192, 194–96 Salvian 3, 19, 162–82
pride 119 sanitation 55
Proba 121 satire 61, 85–86
property Say, Jean-Baptiste 24–25
private 23 Scheidel, Walter 16, 20, 32, 111–12
redistribution of 22, 23, 24, 36 Scripture 131, 139, 141, 143, 144, 153, 171
rights to 47 see also under individual books
see also land; wealth security 180
prostitution 31 Sen, Amartya 57, 58
providence 165, 166 senators 44, 148, 151, 184–86
provinces 9–10, 23, 33 Seneca the Elder 14, 66, 71–73, 80, 88–89, 90, 91,
see also Africa; Egypt; Gaul 94
Prudentius 145, 148 Seneca the Younger 3, 61–64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69,
Pseudo-Chrysostom 140 70, 72, 78, 92–94
Pseudo-Quintilian 69, 79 Serapis 106
punishment 123–25, 201–02 serfdom 163
corporal or capital 120, 124–25, 132, 191, 193, seviri 42, 45
201 sexuality 87
divine 126, 165, 166 Shaw, George Bernard 21
fines as 192–93, 195 shopkeepers 75–76, 132
poverty as 202 sins 163, 166, 170
Purcell, N. 10, 29, 31, 34, 37 see also poor; vices; wealthy
Siphnos 6
quality of life 40, 55 slaves 3, 24, 47, 69, 72
Quintilian 97 master’s responsibility for 192–93
owning of 35, 45, 84
ransom 157 status of 30, 58, 190
Rapp, Claudia 140 see also children, sale of
Rathbone, Dominic 17, 32 Smith, Adam 22, 23, 24, 25, 36, 57
re’ayya 41 Solon 5
reciprocity 168–69 Sparta 47
redistribution 12, 40–54 splendour 145–61
renunciation 117, 122, 151, 153, sportulae see bribery
159 status
see also asceticism economic 10, 40–54, 91–92: see also census;
Republic, Roman 48, 168 middle class
see also Rome, city of legal and political 3, 6, 10, 18, 30, 40, 124–25,
rhetoric 88–89, 90 183, 184–88: see also honestiores; humilis;
see also poverty, literary representation of free-born; slaves
226 Index
status (cont.) Valentinian I 192–93, 195
social 3, 7, 10, 91–92, 134, 174 Valentinian II 76, 192–93
Stoics 11, 16, 61, 64–65, 70, 90–91, 122 Valentinian III 192, 193–94
see also Seneca the Younger Valerius Maximus 35
Strabo 50 Vandals see barbarians
study 119 Van Dam, Raymond 140
subsistence 28, 29, 32, 33, 37, 44, 54 Veleia 51
see also poverty, conjunctural Verus 199
Suetonius 9 Vespasian 106
Sulpicius Severus 153 Veyne, Paul 2, 16, 68, 69, 70
Synesius 143 vices 167–68
Syria 45 see also poor; sins; wealthy
systacts 43 violence 8, 106, 142
against poor 132, 138–39, 142,
Tacitus 26, 80 156
Taipei 71, 72, 75, 78, 80 of poor 21, 39
Taoism 80 virtues 2–3, 18, 62, 63, 88, 89, 122–23,
taxes 12, 36, 113 154
evasion of 178, 200 and free birth 185
in Egypt 103, 107–09, 111 see also poverty; wealthy
oppressive 142, 162, 171–72, 175–77 Vittinghof F. 43
see also patronage; treasury vulnerability 33, 35–36, 132, 136
Tchalenko, G. 45
Tebtunis 110 war 25, 33, 47, 48
Temin, Peter 49 wealth 10, 17, 36, 90–93, 98–99, 189
temples 105, 110 definition of 188
tenants 162–63, 176–77, 179–80 obligations of 174
tenuiores 42, 54–55 use of 69, 88–89, 153–54, 157–58, 159: see also
theft 38, 125, 174 almsgiving; benefaction
Themistocles 6 see also impoverishment; luxury; property;
Theodoret 142 splendour; wealthy
Theodosian Code 19, 80, 124, 162, 184 wealthy, the 22, 117–18, 152, 159, 161
Theodosius I 76, 146, 192, 193 perspective of 26, 61, 84–85
Theodosius II 192–93, 195, 200 relations with poor 62, 68–69, 74,
Theophilus 143 175–80
Thucydides 14 sins and vices of 118–20, 123, 126–27, 135–37,
Tiber 38 174: see also avarice; injustice; taxes,
Tibullus 97 oppressive
Toner, Jerry 44 virtues of 26, 118–21
torture 201 see also Christ; Clement of Alexandria; wealth
towns 5, 9–10, 33, 35, 41, 53, 72, 143 Whitaker, C. R. 2
see also urbanisation widows 73, 135, 143, 172–73
trade 35, 47, 50, 52 in Egypt 17, 100, 101–05
Trajan 191–92, 193 in Luke 21 118, 120–21, 151, 152
transport 10, 38 winter 140, 142
treasury, imperial 163, 193, 195 women 72, 184–86
see also poor relief, imperial see also widows
Trout, Dennis 153 Woolf, Greg 14, 17
Tryphonius 188 work 5, 13–14, 15, 44, 73, 143–44
Tubero 88
tyranny 25 xenodocheia 155, 195–96