1
Alimenta schemes
DAMIÁN FERNÁNDEZ
The alimenta schemes consisted of a
government-run program of low interest loans
to Italian landowners whose returns were used
to maintain sons and daughters of poor, free
people until they reached adulthood. The pro-
gram had previous, private antecedents, and
a public system of this type may have existed
during Nerva’s reign. However, most of
our evidence dates the program to the reign
of TRAJAN, in the early second century CE. Our
last reference to the system appears in the year
271, and alimenta were in all likelihood
abandoned before the beginning of the fourth
century.
Alimenta schemes existed almost everywhere
in Italy, although they seem to have been con-
centrated in the central areas of the peninsula.
There is some evidence of similar mechanisms
in other parts of the empire. Yet they are limited
to one or two cities, for which the alimenta
remain a distinct Italian institution. In actual
practice, landowners who received govern-
mental loans would have to provide a security
estimated at an average of twelve and a half
times the amount of the loan and make an
annual payment of five percent of the princi-
pal. Municipal officers known as quaestores
alimentorum were in charge of collecting and
distributing these payments among the bene-
ficiaries of the program, but they worked
under the general oversight of higher officials
of senatorial or equestrian rank.
The actual working of the program is mainly
known thanks to two inscriptions, both from
The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, First Edition. Edited by Roger S. Bagnall, Kai Brodersen, Craige B. Champion, Andrew Erskine,
and Sabine R. Huebner, print pages 315–316.
© 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah22010
the reign of Trajan. The first one comes from
the city of Veleia (near Piacenza) and includes a
list of properties pledged as security for the
alimenta loans. The second one, from the terri-
tory of the Ligures Baebiani (near Benevento), is
a list of the items that were gathered by the local
administration of the program for distribution
to the beneficiaries of the alimenta.
The debates over the purpose of the
alimenta schemes remain unsettled. Some
scholars have argued that the main purpose of
the program was to provide affordable loans to
encourage agriculture in Italy. Others believe
that the alimenta were intended to reverse the
demographic decline of the peninsula through
financial aid to families that could not main-
tain newborn children. Another interpretation
sees the alimenta as part of the traditional
Roman munificence toward the citizen body,
particularly the poor but free urban population.
SEE ALSO: Benefactors; Patron, patronage,
Roman.
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Bourne, F. (1960) “The Roman alimentary
program and Italian agriculture.” Transactions
of the American Philological Association 91:
47–75.
Duncan-Jones, R. (1974) The economy of the
Roman Empire: quantitative studies.
Cambridge.
Inscriptions: CIL XI 1147 and CIL IX 1455.
Woolf, G. (1990) “Food, poverty and patronage:
the significance of the epigraphy of the Roman
alimentary schemes in early imperial Italy.”
Papers of the British School at Rome 58:
197–228.