Grain Distribution in Late Republican Rome
By Alessandro Cristofori
The Welfare State: Past, Present, Future, edited by Ann Katherine Issacs (Edizioni Plus, 2001)
Introduction: Among the diverse themes which cross through Roman history, from its origins until Late Antiquity, the grain provisioning of the city of Rome is certainly one of the most interesting. Although there is still debate over how many inhabitants it had in the age of its maximum expansion, it is clear that Rome was undoubtedly the largest “market” of the ancient world. Supplying the city, particularly with cereals, which constituted the basis of its inhabitants’ diet, was a complex challenge for a world that did not yet have the technical knowledge about agricultural methods and transportation that we have today.
In this long history, distributions of grain at a low price or even completely for free were the object of different grain laws in Late Republican times. These laws open a new chapter, marking for the first time a deep involvement of the state in the provisioning problem.
The practice of distributing grain at a reduced price, or even for free, was not a novelty in absolute: in the Roman annals we find record of numerous instances in the Early and Middle Republican period in which Roman magistrates had distributed low-cost or free grain; the grain was obtained from the provinces as taxes or else voluntarily sent to Rome by friendly or subject states, or even by purchase on the market. Such measures, however, always had an episodic character, linked to a dearth or a sudden rise in prices. Such is the case, for example, of the episode which is revealed to us by an epigraph from Thessaly. In a year which was probably 129 B.C. the questor Q. Caecilius Metellus turned to the Thessalian League in order to organise a shipment of grain to Rome, suffering from a famine. What is new in the period of the grain laws is the permanent and regular character that the grain distributions (frumentationes) now came to have.
In the scholarly debate, on the basis of judgements which we find in ancient sources, the grain laws are often considered to be, mainly, a political tool used to win approval from the Roman plebs. In this chapter I propose to verify whether that verdict is justified or whether the frumentationes did not have also and above all the aim of remedying a concrete provisioning problem which Rome actually had. To this end, I shall consider in particular the problem of the number of inhabitants that benefited from the distributions, the requisites necessary in order to receive grain, and the debate on the financial burden which the frumentationes placed on the state. Special attention will be given to the best documented examples: that is, Gaius Graccus’ lex frumentaria (grain law) of 123 B.C., the senatus consultum promoted by Cato in 62 B.C. and the lex Clodia frumentaria of 58 B.C.
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