Bread and circuses

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This article is about the phrase. For other uses, see Bread and circuses (disambiguation).

“Bread and circuses” has come to be a derogatory phrase that can criticize either government policies to pacify the citizenry, or the shallow, decadent desires of that same citizenry. In both cases, it refers to low-cost, low-quality, high-availability food and entertainment that have become the sole concern of the People, to the exclusion of matters that the speaker considers more important: e.g. the Arts, public works projects, human rights, or democracy itself. The phrase is commonly used to refer to short-term government palliatives offered in place of a solution for significant, long-term problems.

1 History
2 Notes
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

This phrase originates in Satire X of the Roman poet Juvenal of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries CE. In context, the Latin phrase panem et circenses (bread and circuses) is given as the only remaining cares of a Roman populace which has given up its birthright of political freedom:

... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man,

the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time

handed out military command, high civil office, legions - everything, now

restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things:

bread and circuses

... iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli

uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim

imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se

continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat,

panem et circenses. ...

(Juvenal, Satire 10.77-81)

Juvenal here makes reference to the elite Roman practice of providing free wheat to some poor Romans as well as costly circus games and other forms of entertainment as a means gaining political power through popularity. The Annona (grain dole) was begun under the instigation of the populist Gracchi in 123 BCE; it remained an object of political contention until it was taken under the control of the Roman emperors.

A reference in the The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (1993) states that Juvenal displayed his contempt for the declining heroism of his contemporary Romans in this passage.^[1] Spanish intellectuals between the 19th and 20th centuries complained about the similar pan y toros ("bread and bull[fight]s").