bread and circuses

Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better
by Rob Reich
Published 20 Nov 2018

Also see Levy’s “From Fiscal Triangle to Passing Through: Rise of the Nonprofit Corporation,” in Corporations and American Democracy, ed. Naomi Lamoreaux and William Novak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), and Norman I. Silber, A Corporate Form of Freedom: The Emergence of the Nonprofit Sector (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001). 4. In this section, I draw on the excellent accounts offered by Paul Veyne, Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism (London: Penguin, 1992); Josiah Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); Vincent Gabrielsen, Financing the Athenian Fleet: Public Taxation and Social Relations (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Matthew R.

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Reflecting the dual elements of voluntarism and obligations, some scholars describe the trierarchy as a form of public finance and taxation (e.g., Gabrielsen) and others as a mechanism for private provision of public goods (e.g., Kaiser). The more familiar term among classicists is “euergetism,” defined as private liberality for public benefit in Paul Veyne’s classic formulation in Bread and Circuses. 14. Ober, Mass and Elite, 241–242. 15. Gabrielsen, Financing the Athenian Fleet, 220. Also, “The diversion of the naval command into the liturgical orbit placed munificence in this area under the regulatory mechanisms of democratic statutes that generally but unequivocally spelled out the obligation incumbent upon wealthy citizens to serve the state (or the people) with their ‘body and property’” (219). 16.

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Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2016. Turgot, Anne-Robert. “Fondation.” In The Turgot Collection, edited by David Gordon, 461–469. Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2011. U.S. Congress, Commission on Industrial Relations. “Report of the Commission on Industrial Relations: Final Report and Testimony.” 1912. Veyne, Paul. Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism. London: Penguin, 1992. Walsh, Frank. “Perilous Philanthropy.” Independent 83 (1915): 262–264. Warren, Mark. Democracy and Association. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Weisbrod, Burton A. “The Pitfalls of Profits.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2004. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_pitfalls_of_profits.

Humble Pie and Cold Turkey: English Expressions and Their Origins
by Caroline Taggart
Published 29 Sep 2021

Dating from two thousand years ago, the line from the Christian Lord’s Prayer that asks God to give us this day our daily bread is simply requesting enough to eat; when, a few decades later, the Latin poet Juvenal wrote that the Roman people had grown so self-indulgent that they weren’t interested in their democratic rights but were content with bread and circuses, it went without saying that they’d be happier with some salami and a few olives thrown in. Not to mention something in a flagon to wash it down. To earn your (daily) bread is to work for a living, and has been for several hundred years, while in Australian or New Zealand slang someone wondering about your line of business might ask What do you do for a crust?

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Index A above board ref1 abracadabra ref1 acid test ref1 after your own heart ref1 aftermath ref1–ref2 albatross around your neck, an ref1 all your ducks in a row ref1 amok, to run ref1–ref2 ampere ref1 apple of your eye ref1–ref2 apple-pie order ref1 aristocracy ref1 assassin ref1–ref2 auspices, under the ref1 auspicious ref1 avocado ref1 B babel ref1 back foot, on the ref1 back-handed compliment ref1 backlog ref1–ref2 baker’s dozen ref1–ref2 bandwagon ref1 ball is in your court, the ref1 ball rolling, keep/set the ref1–ref2 banksia ref1 baptism of fire ref1 barbecue ref1 bark up the wrong tree ref1–ref2 bat, off your own ref1 batten down the hatches ref1 battle royal ref1–ref2 beam ends, on your ref1 beat the living daylights ref1 beef ref1 beef something up ref1 benchmark ref1 berserk, to go ref1 between a rock and a hard place ref1 between the devil and the deep blue sea ref1 beyond the veil ref1 big shot ref1 big wig ref1 bikini ref1 birdie ref1–ref2 bistro ref1 bite the dust ref1 blackball ref1 black cap ref1 black comedy ref1 black humour ref1 black magic ref1 black sheep ref1–ref2 blackmail ref1 bleeding heart ref1 blockbuster ref1 blue blood ref1 blue moon, once in a ref1–ref2 board ref1 board, go by the ref1 boot is on the other foot, the ref1 bootleg ref1 bread and circuses ref1–ref2 breed like rabbits ref1 bright-eyed and bushy-tailed ref1 bring home the bacon ref1 Bristol fashion ref1–ref2 broad in the beam ref1 bulldozer ref1 burn your bridges/boats ref1 burton, gone for a ref1 burying the hatchet ref1 by and large ref1 by hook or by crook ref1 C calico ref1 call the shots ref1 cards, on the ref1 cash cow ref1 caught red-handed ref1 Celsius ref1 chance your arm ref1 cheesy ref1 chicken ref1–ref2 chicken-hearted ref1 chicken out ref1–ref2 chips are down, the ref1 chips, to cash in your/to have had your ref1 chock-a-block ref1 chopsticks ref1 clean slate ref1 cloak and dagger ref1–ref2 close to the wind ref1 cloud-cuckoo-land ref1–ref2 cloud nine, on ref1–ref2 cockpit ref1–ref2 cold turkey ref1–ref2 colours ref1 cook someone’s goose ref1 copybook ref1 corny ref1 coulomb ref1 cream of the crop ref1–ref2 crème de la crème ref1 cry wolf ref1 cupboard ref1 curium ref1 currying favour ref1 cut both ways ref1 cut of your jib, the ref1 cut the mustard ref1 D damask ref1 Dampiera ref1 dark horse ref1 deadline ref1 death’s door ref1–ref2 denim ref1 devil to pay ref1–ref2 devil’s advocate ref1 dilly-dally ref1 dishevelled ref1 divan ref1 dog in the manger ref1 double-edged sword ref1 dough ref1 Douglas fir ref1–ref2 dove ref1 down to the wire ref1 draconian/draconic ref1 draw a blank ref1 draw in one’s horns ref1 dreadnought ref1 dressed to the nines ref1 drum in/out/up ref1–ref2 duck ref1–ref2 dyed in the wool ref1 E eagle ref1, ref2 earn your (daily) bread ref1 eat humble pie ref1 eavesdrop ref1 F Fahrenheit ref1 fair game ref1–ref2 fall on your sword ref1 Fallopian tube ref1 false colours ref1 far cry ref1 faraday ref1 fast and loose ref1–ref2 fate is sealed ref1–ref2 favour ref1 feet of clay ref1–ref2 flash in the pan ref1 flowing with milk and honey ref1 fly in the ointment ref1 flying colours ref1 forensic ref1 forlorn hope ref1 forsythia ref1 freelance ref1 from pillar to post ref1–ref2 fruits of your labours ref1 full circle ref1 full monty ref1–ref2 G gallows humour ref1 galvanization ref1 galvanize into action ref1–ref2 ghoul ref1 give up the ghost ref1 gobbledygook ref1 good Samaritan ref1–ref2 grapevine, through the ref1 grass roots ref1 graveyard shift ref1 green ref1–ref2 green-eyed ref1–ref2 grist to the mill ref1 ground zero ref1 guillotine ref1 gunwales, packed to the ref1–ref2 H half-cock, go off at ref1 ham ref1–ref2 hamfatter ref1–ref2 ham-fisted/ham-handed ref1 hang fire ref1 hang in the balance ref1 hanky-panky ref1 hardball, to play ref1 hark back ref1 hat trick ref1 haul over the coals ref1 have someone’s guts for garters ref1 have the stomach for ref1 hawk ref1–ref2 head in the clouds, have your ref1 headless chicken ref1 heap coals of fire ref1 heart bleeds/is in your boots/in your mouth ref1 heartstrings ref1 helter-skelter ref1 hertz ref1 hide your light under a bushel ref1 higgledy-piggledy ref1 high horse ref1 hit below the belt ref1 hit for six ref1–ref2 hobby-horse ref1–ref2 hocus pocus ref1 hoist by your own petard ref1 hold the fort ref1–ref2 holy of holies ref1 I ironclad ref1 J Jack ref1 jeans ref1 jerry-built ref1 jetty ref1 K keen as mustard, as ref1 keep mum ref1 keep someone posted ref1 kelvin ref1 kiss of death ref1 know/learn by heart ref1 L lamb to the slaughter ref1–ref2 lambert ref1 lame duck ref1 Land of Nod ref1 last ditch ref1 leotard ref1 left field ref1 let the cat out of the bag ref1–ref2 let your hair down ref1 lily-livered ref1 limelight ref1 long chalk ref1–ref2 look to your laurels ref1 loop, in the ref1 love ref1 lurch, in the ref1 M macadamization ref1 magnolia ref1 mahonia ref1 main chance, to have an eye for ref1 man of my kidney ref1 manure ref1–ref2 marching orders ref1 maverick ref1 mayhem ref1 meander ref1–ref2 millstone around your neck ref1 milk of human kindness ref1 moonshine ref1 moot point ref1 mortician ref1 mumbo-jumbo ref1–ref2 mummery/mumchance ref1 museum ref1 N nail your colours to the mast ref1 neck and neck ref1–ref2 nest egg ref1 new-fangled ref1 no holds barred ref1–ref2 no room to swing a cat ref1 O ohm ref1 olive branch ref1 onions, to know your ref1–ref2 ostracize ref1 ottoman ref1 P pan out ref1–ref2 par for the course ref1 Parthian shot/parting shot ref1–ref2 pass the buck ref1–ref2 pay through the nose ref1 perfect storm ref1–ref2 perfume ref1 pick up the gauntlet ref1 pig in a poke ref1 piggyback ref1 pink, in the ref1 pipe dream ref1 piping hot ref1 plain as a pikestaff ref1–ref2 plums in your mouth ref1 plum job ref1 polonium ref1 pot, go to ref1 pot luck ref1 pour your heart out ref1 powwow ref1 pull the wool over someone’s eyes ref1 pull your punches ref1 punch above your weight ref1 push the boat out ref1–ref2 R rabbit in the headlights ref1 rabbit on ref1–ref2 rain check ref1 raise Cain ref1 rank and file ref1 read the riot act ref1 realtor ref1 red cent ref1–ref2 red herring ref1 red-letter day ref1 rest on your laurels ref1–ref2 restaurant ref1 ring the changes ref1 ropes, against the ref1 ropes, to know/to show someone ref1 round-robin ref1–ref2 rub salt in the wound ref1 Rubicon, to cross the ref1 run-of-the-mill ref1–ref2 run someone to earth ref1 run the gauntlet ref1 S salad days ref1 salt of the earth ref1–ref2 salt something away ref1–ref2 sardonic ref1 save your bacon ref1–ref2 saving grace ref1 say boo to a goose ref1 scapegoat ref1 scatter to the four winds ref1–ref2 schmaltzy ref1 scot-free ref1 sea change ref1–ref2 seal of approval ref1 separate the sheep from the goats ref1–ref2 seventh heaven, in ref1 shambles ref1 shilly-shally ref1–ref2 shipshape ref1 shoot fish in a barrel ref1 shoot your bolt ref1 short shrift ref1 shrapnel ref1 siemens ref1 silhouette ref1 sitting duck ref1 slogan ref1 soap box ref1 soap opera ref1 sofa ref1 sour grapes ref1 squirrel away ref1 speakeasy ref1 speed, up to ref1–ref2 steal a march ref1 steal someone’s thunder ref1 steeplechase ref1 stoic/stoical ref1 string to your bow, to have more than one ref1 stump, on the ref1 stumped, to be ref1 suede ref1 sweepstake ref1 T take candy from a baby ref1 take something to your heart ref1 taken aback ref1–ref2 talk turkey ref1 tantalize/tantalus ref1 tarmac ref1 tarred with the same brush ref1 tawdry ref1–ref2 teetotal ref1–ref2 three sheets to the wind ref1 through the mill ref1 throw in at the deep end ref1 throw in the towel ref1–ref2 throw your hat into the ring ref1–ref2 thug ref1 thumbs down/thumbs up ref1–ref2 Tom ref1 tomfoolery ref1 true blue ref1 true colours ref1–ref2 tulip ref1 turncoat ref1 tyrant ref1 U undertaker ref1 upper crust ref1 upper hand, to have the ref1 V vandalize ref1 vent your spleen ref1–ref2 volt ref1 vulcanization ref1–ref2 W wear your heart on your sleeve ref1 wellington ref1 whip hand, to have the ref1 whistle-stop tour ref1–ref2 white elephant ref1–ref2 white feather ref1 white-livered ref1 wild-goose chase ref1 willy-nilly ref1 win hands down ref1 wipe the slate clean ref1 with a grain/pinch of salt ref1 within cry/within cooee ref1 worth your salt ref1 wring someone’s withers ref1 writing on the wall ref1 Y yellow belly ref1 Z zero hour ref1

Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution
by Pieter Hintjens
Published 11 Mar 2013

In other countries, he would have been labeled as a "terrorist" and tortured for years. Abuse of children is a terrible thing. Branding teenagers who send nude pictures of themselves as sex offenders, with life-long consequences, does not protect anyone. We are often so afraid of losing our bread and circuses and so quick to fear and hate others that we're ready to give up our neighbors without a struggle. We often clap as authorities drag away the wretched lawbreakers. And the labeling continues: "extremist," "communist," "liberal," "union organizer," "intellectual," "atheist" -- and the midnight knock on the door is for our parents, brothers, children, ourselves.

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Bad things tend to happen elsewhere, to other people. Who may or may not deserve it. We're enormously complacent, if not smug, and anyone who seriously claims the state is working hard to reduce our freedoms tends to be seen as paranoid. However, while wealth and freedom correlate, full fridges and streaming TV shows do not equal freedom. Bread and circuses is a classic way to appease the people without giving them real freedom. We are so good at self-deceit, rationalization, and maintaining the sense of normalcy no matter how bizarre things get. "So far so good!" and "stop complaining!" fight for first place as the prime motto of the human race.

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It matters because people are only as stupid as their environments. That average person is the descendant of an infinite line of survivors, each meaner and more determined than their peers. Inside every calm, ordinary person sits a little implacable demon, able to come to life, grow and take charge if the situation demands it. Bread and circuses. The criminals inside the ring, fighting the wild animals, and the spectators outside, passively watching. That was the way the establishment hoped the Internet would develop. Except that the crowd jumped the barriers and joined the fracas in the ring. In 2008, the Church of Scientology tried to use copyright law to censor the video interview of a prominent Scientologist, Tom Cruise.

The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire
by Jeff Berwick and Charlie Robinson
Published 14 Apr 2020

Price controls and quotas and extortion fees became increasingly burdensome and trade began to collapse, causing desperate food shortages. Diversion: The last days of the Roman empire were marked by its moral decline, but in reality, it was the “bread-and-circuses” used by corrupt governments to placate a population that brought about the fall of the empire. “Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt.” – Juvenal, a poet in Ancient Rome. People became, and were encouraged to become, more interested in “being happy” than in education and training or being confronted with inconvenient truths that would force them out of their comfort coma.

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In the end, those that review how it all ended will feel the same way, have the same lack of empathy, and wonder the same things: how did they not see it coming, the signs were everywhere – starting with the flashing neon red arrows pointing out rogue governments all over the world. They do not care if the people become aware of their criminality, and they do not worry about prosecution because they know that they control the halls of (in)justice. They take the “bread and circuses” approach towards dealing with the general public since they do not respect them, and they treat the people as if they work for them, not the other way around. They conduct scientific experiments on the population without their consent and run human trafficking, organ harvesting, and weapons distribution operations.

Endless Money: The Moral Hazards of Socialism
by William Baker and Addison Wiggin
Published 2 Nov 2009

You would pay almost no income tax, save that your corporations pay to the extent they are not leveraged and hedged. Even that can be attenuated through the use of offshore havens.Then you would loudly sing support for the common man by calling upon government to raise the individual income tax, and you would magnanimously call for more bread and circuses for the masses. Another key part of the PR campaign would be to project a philanthropic image through several high-profile donations. In this way you would replicate the behavior of the senatorial class in ancient Rome, which also paid no taxes but was expected to contribute to the public good by building the occasional wall or aqueduct, which would be sure to impress the citizenry and prove one’s worth in the patronage system.

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The estates of Rome’s middle classes were eroded by governmental action, mostly the suppression of consumer price inflation through food price controls and repression of wages through competition for labor by slavery. The emergence of populist politicians such as the Gracchus brothers in the first century bc introduced land reform and welfare, and the Roman populace shifted to embrace a socialist framework of rewarding idleness with bread and circuses. The role of money in credit crises is carefully examined. The recurrence of credit panics on the surface seems incongruent with the discipline of hard money developed in the Republic. But as a reserve, silver expanded geometrically, acting as a rudimentary version of today’s fiat backing, and its production was under complete government control in state-owned mines.

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Instead it was a protracted slide that lasted hundreds of years. Rome’s entrepreneurial middle class would prosper at the apex of imperial prosperity, but its success would prove to be overly alluring to Rome’s rulers. Thinking 256 ENDLESS MONEY they were immune from political upheaval if a broad underclass could be pleased by bread and circuses, they crafted fiscal and monetary policies in such a way that they would plunder the most dynamic element within their society and cause a nearly modern civilization to regress for a millennia. Chapter 13 Other Perspectives his chapter is a potpourri of noneconomic explanations used to explain the decline of Rome.Variety abounds: Decadence is a popular attribution, but it offers little substance.

How to Fix Copyright
by William Patry
Published 3 Jan 2012

The new creators of culture were not the people, but rather industrialists; the people’s role was dumbed down into being passive purchasers of commodities. Much like Marx’s view of religion as the opiate of the masses, Horkheimer and Adorno worried that this new trend was shifting people’s attention away from their economic exploitation. Culture was becoming the equivalent of the Ancient Romans’ panem et circenses (“bread and circuses”), entertainment to appease the masses.139 Traditional creativity, produced by individuals, was increasingly being left to state-subsidized programs and could therefore hardly be said to be an industry. 122 HOW TO FIX COPYRIGHT Eventually, budgets for state programs were cut back. Rather than declare they were no longer interested in furthering culture—an option not open to countries with ministries of culture—governments simply declared that the marketplace was already supplying people’s cultural needs: The marketplace magically became the creative industries.

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See Robert Friedel, A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium (2007, MIT Press). 138. “The Dialectic of Enlightenment,” final chapter, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” A 2002 edition with a new translation by Edmund Jephcott and published by Stanford University Press is the best English language version. 139. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses. 140. “The Impact of Culture on Creativity” (June 2009), available at: http://www.keanet.eu/en/impactcreativityculture.html. 141. Report at 37. 142. Report at 51. 143. See Susan Galloway and Stewart Dunlop, A Critique of the Cultural and Creative Industries in Public Policy, 13 International Journal of Cultural Policy 17 (2007). 144.

January Fifteenth
by Rachel Swirsky
Published 13 Jun 2022

shouted a pretty girl in a long-sleeved jumpsuit, pushing through the crowd. “No one’s judging you! It’s just a game.” “Like hell it is,” said Mo. “You think anyone who uses their UBI doesn’t know exactly what this is? You think we don’t know exactly what—who!—you’re talking about? I’m not a waste! No one’s a waste! You actually call it bread and circuses. You admit you’re the ones who run the Colosseum!” Someone muttered something about class warfare. Mo glared them down. “You know, most rich people aren’t like this. Most rich people think this kind of thing is disgusting. This isn’t just about being rich. It’s about being rich and cruel.”

Beggars in Spain
by Nancy Kress
Published 23 Nov 2004

Finally, the Sleepless, nearly all of whom were invisible in Sanctuary anyway, were disregarded by Livers, if not by donkeys. All of it, the entire trefoil organization—id, ego, and superego, some wit had labeled it sardonically—was underwritten by cheap, ubiquitous Y-energy, powering automated factories making possible a lavish Dole that traded bread and circuses for votes. The whole thing, Leisha thought, was peculiarly American, managing to combine democracy with materialism, mediocrity with enthusiasm, power with the illusion of control from below. “Tell me, Mr. Cavanaugh, what do you and your friends do with all your free time?” “Do?” He seemed startled.

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“My Daddy was a little boy then. The Dole didn’t hardly provide nothin’ then.” “I remember,” Leisha said wryly; what the Dole had provided, courtesy of basic cheap Y-energy and social conscience, was nothing compared to what donkeys and government now provided, courtesy of the need for votes. Bread and circuses, saved from Roman barbarism only by that same cheap affluence. Comfortable and courted, Livers lacked the pent-up rage for the arena. She had expected Drew to pass over her reference to remembering his father’s era; most children regarded the past as irrelevant. But he surprised her. “You remember, you?

The Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground Was Built and How It Changed the City Forever
by Christian Wolmar
Published 30 Sep 2009

Menzler, address to the Institute of Public Administration, Lord Ashfield and the public corporation, 1951. 4 Ibid. 5 Barker and Robbins, p. 285. 6 Lord Ashfield, ‘London’s Traffic Problem Reconsidered’, The 19th Century and After Review, August 1924, p. 4. 7 John Glover, London’s Underground, Ian Allan, 1999, p. 39. 8 Gavin Weightman and Steve Humphries, The Making of Modern London, 1914–1939, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1984. 9 It was originally published in the Daily Herald and is quoted in Bernard Donoghue and G.W. Jones, Herbert Morrison, Portrait of a Politician, Phoenix Press, 2001, p. 116. 10 Donoghue and Jones, p. 121. 11 Ibid., p. 145. 12 House of Commons, 31 March 1931. 13 Financial News, 14 March 1931. 14 Donoghue and Jones, p. 145. 15 Jonathan Glancey, London bread and circuses, Verso, 2001, p. 38. 16 Indeed, this lack of integration still causes problems today. When Transport for London introduced the Oyster card in 2004, it could not be used on much of the suburban rail network for individual journeys and it took until 2009 before it could be generally used for all rail trips in London. 17 Menzler. 18 This was the first Lord Hailsham, the father of the one who was Lord Chancellor in the 1970s and 1980s. 19 House of Lords, 30 March 1933. 20 Donoghue and Jones, p. 114. 21 Barman, p. 155. 22 Ibid., p. 160. 23 Ibid., p. 155. 24 Glancey, p. 35.

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Dennis Edwards and Ron Pigram, The Romance of Metroland, Baton Transport, 1986. Andrew Emmerson, The Underground Pioneers, Capital Transport, 2000. Desmond Fennell, Investigation into the King’s Cross Fire, HMSO 1988, Cm 499. Clive Foxell, The story of the Met and GC joint line, self-published, 2001. Jonathan Glancey, London, Bread and Circuses, Verso, 2001. John Glover, London’s Underground, the world’s premier underground system, Ian Allan, 1999 (ninth edition). John Glover, Principles of London Underground Operations, Ian Allan, 2000. John Gregg, The Shelter of the Tubes, Capital Transport, 2001. Stephen Halliday, Making the Metropolis, creators of Victoria’s London, Breedon Books, 2003.

The Divided Nation: A History of Germany, 1918-1990
by Mary Fulbrook
Published 14 Oct 1991

At a rather basic level, people are less likely to rise in protest against an unjust and repressive system if the risks of rising are not counterbalanced by the pressures of acute material distress: consumerism is always a technique for rulers in repressive regimes to seek a modicum of popular quiescence. ('Bread and circuses' policies are as old as Roman civilisation.) This was the case in the peacetime years of the Third Reich: mindful of the need to sustain his personal popularity or 'charisma', on which the political system of the Third Reich was so dependent, Hitler had constantly to balance considerations of consumer satisfaction with the economic imperatives entailed by preparations for war.

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Under Honecker in particular, serious efforts were put into improvements in housing, social policy, the standard of living, the availability of consumer goods, while at the same time there were cultural clamp-downs and reversals of early promises of intellectual liberalization. It should not be suggested that such policies were of a purely cynical, 'bread and circuses' nature: there were very real and genuine attempts to improve the conditions of life of East German citizens, reinforcing the obvious political considerations. What is at issue here, however, is not so much the motives behind such policies, or the causes of the relative (in East European terms) success of the East German economy, as the consequences of East German economic performance.

Vanishing New York
by Jeremiah Moss
Published 19 May 2017

And so we call on Patti, now that she knows the truth, to cancel this event.” Smith responded to the outcry, writing on her website, “I am an independent person, not owned or directed by anyone. My allegiance is to the Hotel itself, and I have done nothing to tarnish it.” But many residents believed the concert was merely bread and circuses, a way to get them on board with the developer’s plans. On Hamilton’s Facebook page, concerned readers—myself included—planned a die-in protest. On the night of the concert, protesters would drop “dead” on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, hold up lighters, and recite the lyrics to Smith’s song “People Have the Power.”

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Creativity agendas can deceptively feel lefty, like old Jane Jacobs with her diversity and vibrancy and mixed use. As Peck points out, they “have an apple-pie quality,” generating support while disarming opposition. It’s hard to critique this stuff. Who doesn’t like public art, free Wi-Fi, and other nice things? Bread and circuses are an effective way to control opinion. When I criticized the High Line, I was attacked as a heretic. And don’t dare complain about bike lanes. Look, I enjoy riding in the bike lanes, but I’m not going to deny that they’re a tool of hyper-gentrification, attracting a certain class of people (to which I belong) and giving a boost to property values, facts that Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner knew well.

The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War
by Robert D. Kaplan
Published 1 Jan 1994

By "poor" Aristotle meant laborers, landowning peasants, arti­ sans, and so on—essentially, the middle class and below. 96 / THE COMING ANARCHY Is it not conceivable that corporations will, like the rulers of both Sparta and Athens, project power to the advantage of the well-off while satisfying the twenty-first-century servile popu­ lace with the equivalent of bread and circuses? In other words, the category of politics we live with may depend more on power relationships and the demeanor of our society than on whether we continue to hold elections. Just as Cambodia was never re­ ally democratic, despite what the State Department and the U.N. told us, in the future we may not be democratic, despite what the government and media increasingly dominated by corporations tell us.

The Retreat of Western Liberalism
by Edward Luce
Published 20 Apr 2017

There is no need to ban books if people are not reading them. If the people are entertained, they will also be docile. In the movie Gladiator, Senator Gracchus, played by Derek Jacobi, understands that patrician defenders of the Roman Republic, such as him, are weak competitors to Emperor Commodus’s bread and circuses. ‘The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the Senate, it’s the sand of the Colosseum,’ he says. ‘He’ll bring them death – and they will love him for it.’ Vladimir Putin is a better student of Huxley than Orwell. When he was a KGB agent based in Dresden in the 1980s, most of its population could pick up television from the West on their transmitters.

The Other Israel: voices of refusal and dissent
by Tom Śegev , Roane Carey and Jonathan Shainin
Published 15 Nov 2002

sc: Do you exclude the possibility of an IsraeH victory, despite the power differential? aa: We have had our "victory." In 1967, we occupied all the Palestinian lands. Once "terrorism is vanquished," what shall we do? This is absurd. The Palestinians want self-rule. Whoever wants to "vanquish" them, then offer them bread and circuses, understands nothing. The Israeli army is stronger than ever, our secret services are excellent; then why is the problem not resolved? Reoccupying the Palestinian Authority lands and killing Arafat, what would that change? Those who want victory want an unending war. SC: Yet, since September 11, many think that Israel can change the regional situation in its favor.

Eat People: And Other Unapologetic Rules for Game-Changing Entrepreneurs
by Andy Kessler
Published 1 Feb 2011

Develop and deploy the skills to hunt and gather for yourself and your tribe, but with today’s technologies. And tell them to stop wasting their time watching a bunch of freakishly tall folks run around in Chuck Taylors and start doing something useful. Beer and professional sports are today’s bread and circuses that Caesar used to sedate the masses. Right now, we have no time for trivia.” “You done?” “Hell no.” “You sound angry. Don’t get mad, get even. Punch the brownies. Isn’t that what you taught me?” I asked. Shelby once smashed an entire counter of brownies at a deli when the boho behind the counter insisted that all sandwiches had to have alfalfa sprouts.

Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future
by Johan Norberg
Published 31 Aug 2016

And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourself every girl who has never slept with a man’ (Numbers 31:17–18). God even gives advice on rape himself: ‘if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife’ (Deuteronomy 21:11). Source: Eisner 2003.4 Today many object to the cruelty of animals in circuses, but in Roman days, the circus in ‘bread and circuses’ meant the killing of perhaps several million people for entertainment in arenas such as the Colosseum. Gladiators fought to the death and naked women were tied to stakes and raped or torn apart by animals. Violence was not reserved for those on the bottom rungs of Roman society: thirty-four of the forty-nine Roman Emperors who ruled before the empire was divided were murdered.

Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity
by Charles L. Marohn, Jr.
Published 24 Sep 2019

If the government were willing to subsidize lobster to be cheaper than hamburger, I’d continuously dine on lobster. More to the point, I’d express a strong personal preference for lobster. The longer this subsidy went on, the more entitled my expectations for lobster would become. Middle-class housing subsidies and transportation spending are the bread and circuses of modern America. Americans express a preference for single-family homes on large lots along cul-de-sacs because that’s the lifestyle we subsidize. We’ve been willing to bankrupt our cities, and draw down the wealth prior generations built, in order to provide that subsidy. It can’t go on indefinitely.

The Big Score
by Michael S. Malone
Published 20 Jul 2021

In time, some if not all of these programs would be adopted by other Silicon Valley firms, as they forever imitated HP in the hope of capturing some of its singular success. But few companies are courageous enough to step beyond the window dressing to the heart of the HP Way: a complete trust in and respect for every employee. Without that, the par courses and swimming pools and softball teams were just bread and circuses, an employee-relations tool that would be taken away as easily as it was given—as employees discovered to their dismay every time Silicon Valley fell into a recession. What made Hewlett and Packard great managers was their appreciation of the fact that the quality of an employee’s work was a direct function of the company’s trust.

…

Another morale builder came in 1980, when AMD declared an “American Dream Christmas in May” and gave away by raffle $1,000 a month for the next 20 years to a company employee. The winner was a 21-year-old Filipino woman holding one of the lowest positions in the firm, who had worked for AMD for just 14 months. On a Saturday morning, Sanders, flanked by camera crews, delivered the prize to the woman. This was pure bread and circuses, of course. Sanders knew it and the employees knew it and they reveled in it together. This wasn’t National, where the atmosphere was “business is business,” or Intel, with its intimations of immortality, but Jerry Sanders saying, “Look, I got into this business to make a lot of money and to have a hell of a good time, and there’s no reason that you shouldn’t, too.”

The Road to Wigan Pier
by George Orwell
Published 17 Oct 1972

It is quite likely that fish and chips, art-silk stockings, tinned salmon, cut-price chocolate (five two-ounce bars for sixpence), the movies, the radio, strong tea and the Football Pools have between them averted revolution. Therefore we are sometimes told that the whole thing is an astute manoeuvre by the governing class – a sort of ‘bread and circuses’ business – to hold the unemployed down. What I have seen of our governing class does not convince me that they have that much intelligence. The thing has happened, but by an unconscious process – the quite natural interaction between the manufacturer’s need for a market and the need of half-starved people for cheap palliatives. 1 For instance, a recent census of the Lancashire cotton mills revealed the fact that over 40,000 full-time employees receive less than thirty shillings a week each.

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism
by Calum Chace
Published 17 Jul 2016

Nozick died in 2002, so he won’t have to find out for himself – maybe he would be relieved. Other critics see the Oculus founders’ view of the future as possible but frightening. Ethan Zuckerman is director of the MIT Centre for Civic Media, and thinks that “the idea that we can make gross economic inequalities less relevant by giving [poor people] virtual bread and circuses is diabolical and delusional.” Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist and writer who founded VR pioneer VPL Research, and is generally credited with popularising the term virtual reality. He lambasts as “evil” the vision that the rich will become immortal, while “everyone else will get a simulated reality. … I’d prefer to see a world where everyone is a first-class citizen and we don’t have people living in the Matrix.”

The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath
by Nicco Mele
Published 14 Apr 2013

A handful of oligarchs, funded in large part by lucrative oil revenues, controlled most of the governments and militaries of North Africa and the Middle East. The United States and Europe helped to negotiate and maintain an uneasy truce between Israel and its Arab neighbors, in part because of the need to continually extract precious oil to fuel the global economy. To stay in power, the oligarchs reigned using bread and circuses mixed with terror, torture, and censorship. Over time the oligarchs aged and, over the last decade or two, found themselves as octogenarians struggling to control populations ballooning with young, frequently unemployed people. Reform movements across North Africa and the Middle East gained strength, from trade unions to student groups to militant political groups.

Cities: The First 6,000 Years
by Monica L. Smith
Published 31 Mar 2019

Revenue had to be kept up through taxation and through the delicate business of bringing in commerce for their city by relief from taxes along with other enticements and emoluments. In the Roman world, city managers had to address the perpetual and pressing need to bring grain into the city of Rome, where it would be handed out freely (along with the entertainment, hence the phrase “bread and circuses”). The result was a combination of carrot-and-stick approaches that involved other professionals, from tax collectors in the provinces who had to siphon off enough local production to Rome, to the ship owners on whose vessels the grain cargo was brought, to the insurance agents who guaranteed against losses incurred in shipwrecks.

The Globotics Upheaval: Globalisation, Robotics and the Future of Work
by Richard Baldwin
Published 10 Jan 2019

The economic calamity continues—especially in the US. For these voters, the policies adopted in the US and UK since 2016 are the economic equivalent of treating brain cancer with aspirin. Many populist voters also feel their communities are still under fire culturally. All that the Trumps and Brexiteers have provided is more “bread and circuses” to sooth the soul and primp the pride. These populist voters will still be yearning for big changes in 2020. And they will, I believe, soon have a lot of company. The urban, educated people who voted against populism will have a whole new attitude when globalization and automation get up close and personal.

From Gutenberg to Google: electronic representations of literary texts
by Peter L. Shillingsburg
Published 15 Jan 2006

Web browsers are independent of concerted efforts to develop coherent bodies of knowledge, thus a search provides at least initially a disordered array of information sites where reliable information and accurate representations of foundation documents are undistinguished, and perhaps indistinguishable, from rumors and gossip. They depend on a notional ‘‘cream rises’’ process that is undermined by a counter ‘‘bread and circuses’’ notion. The boundaries are unprotected and unmarked. The problem of reliability is crucial to the effective implementation of a democratized world of scholarship and its documentary source materials. 1 xml (Extended Markup Language), tei (Text Encoding Initiative), dtd (Document Type Definition).

The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class
by Guy Standing
Published 27 Feb 2011

Hedonistic happiness through play and ‘pleasure’ eventually induces addiction and intolerance of anything other than pleasure, a point brought out by behavioural biologist Paul Martin in his book Sex, Drugs and Chocolate: The Science of Pleasure (2009). Satisfaction is contentment with life in general and with one’s relationships. However, making a fetish of happiness is not a prescription for civilised society. The precariat must beware of the modern equivalent of a bread-and-circuses existence being offered by the state through pseudo-science and nudging. The therapy state While they set out to make people happy, libertarian paternalism and the utilitarianism underlying it have unleashed a cult of therapy, mirroring what happened in the period of mass insecurity at the end of the nineteenth century 142 THE PRECARIAT (Standing, 2009: 235–8).

Zeitgeist
by Bruce Sterling
Published 1 Nov 2000

“I gotta hand it to you, Mehmetcik: that new pitch is great! The World Bank and the IMF would totally love you for that. I bet you could do with a drink now.” But Ozbey was not to be derailed. He leaned forward intently, steepling his fingers like a talk-show pundit. “Victory centers on consumer goods and pop promotion. ‘Bread and circuses,’ in other words. If that is the battlefield, then I know that we can win. Can Kurdish separatists offer us platform shoes? Of course they can’t! Can mullahs make a pretty girl a star? They’d rather stone her to death! But the ‘military-entertainment complex’! Oh, yes!” Ozbey banged the laminated bar.

The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity
by Byron Reese
Published 23 Apr 2018

The desire to lop off a few heads as the French did not that long ago doubtless still lurks in us, barely held in check by civilization. The rich will know they have no divine right of kings keeping the angry mob well behaved. So the rich and the powerful have two choices: bribery or force. In the past, they have either bought off the poor with bread and circuses or violently suppressed them. What would you do? Remember, this is all against the backdrop of trillions upon trillions of dollars of new wealth? Do you risk it all trying to suppress the 99.9 percent? Or do the rich accept an expansion of the welfare state? I don’t see how the rational rich would choose the “suppress” option.

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World
by David Sax
Published 15 Jan 2022

Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults: Opportunities for the Health Care System. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2020. “Loneliness and Social Isolation Linked to Serious Health Conditions.” CDC. April 21, 2021. cdc.gov/aging/publications/features/lonely-older-adults.html. Stone, Lyman. “Bread and Circuses: The Replacement of American Community Life.” American Enterprise Institute. April 29, 2021. Lichtenstein, Jesse. “Digital Diplomacy.” New York Times Magazine. July 16, 2010. Stecklow, Steve. “Why Facebook Is Losing the War on Hate Speech in Myanmar.” Reuters. August 15, 2018. Frenken, Sheera, and Davey Alba.

The politics of London: governing an ungovernable city
by Tony Travers
Published 15 Dec 2004

References 213 Fuchs, Ester (1992) Mayors and Money: Fiscal Policy in New York and Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Gibbon, I. G. and R. W. Bell (1939) History of the London County Council, 1889–1939 (London: Macmillan & Co). Giddens, Anthony (1998) The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press). Glancey, J. (2001) London: Bread and Circuses (London: Verso). Gordon, Ian (1999) ‘London and the South East’, in M. Breheny (ed) The People: Where Will They Work? (London: Town and Country Planning Association). Government Office for the South-East of England (2001) Regional Planning Guidance for the South East (RPG9) (London: HMSO). Greater London Authority (2000) Congestion Charging London Assembly Scrutiny Report (London: GLA).

Berlin Now: The City After the Wall
by Peter Schneider and Sophie Schlondorff
Published 4 Aug 2014

But you could reach them by foot or bicycle, and there was usually a U- or an S-Bahn station relatively close by. What these clubs promised was the possibility of another life, one that celebrated the moment, the now. They were driven above all by the desire to escape from the real, everyday world of capitalism and to create a parallel world according to one’s own rules. Instead of “bread and circuses,” these places offered drugs, dancing, and games of love—and, if necessary, protest as well. The old ritual of Feierabend, or quitting time—workers going out dancing on Friday or Saturday nights, letting off steam, and falling into bed—no longer made sense to ravers. Wresting away just one or two nights from the daily routine wasn’t enough for them—they also wanted the subsequent morning and long days; even half the week, if possible.

Against Everything: Essays
by Mark Greif
Published 5 Sep 2016

It means something different when it exists in a medium we switch on to see “what’s on TV” rather than to find a given single work; when the goal is more often to watch television than to watch a particular drama and then turn it off. From its beginnings in the early 1950s, TV has been blamed for encouraging overindividualism, for hastening consumer suckerdom, for spurring passivity and couch-potatoness, and for making up the sensational bread-and-circuses of mass-culture tyranny. That pretty much covers it. And yet when opponents tried to divide the wretched things flickering inside the idiot box into categories, they made excuses for quite unnecessary forms that they felt they recognized (highbrow TV dramas) while deriding unique and far more important items that didn’t suit their vision of dramatic art (game shows, local news, now reality shows).

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class
by Joel Kotkin
Published 11 May 2020

Occupations and social status came to be determined by heredity. The middle ranks of citizens, whom Gibbon called “the most respectable part of the community,” were burdened by debt. A growing portion of the citizenry, unable to feed themselves or find honest work, subsisted on state-sponsored “bread and circuses”: in the late Roman Empire, 300,000 Romans held bread tickets.42 The backbone of the res publica had become something of a proletarian mob. In the feudal era, most people labored in fields they did not own, and most were illiterate. The idea of self-government for the masses would have seemed absurd, even sacrilegious, and was barely even considered.43 A comeback of democracy depended principally on a property-owning middle class and on respect for commercial enterprise, which was widely viewed as ignoble in the Middle Ages.

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture
by Ellen Ruppel Shell
Published 2 Jul 2009

Harvard cultural historian Lizabeth Cohen has pointed out that mass-market consumption offers the façade of social equality without forcing society to go through the hard work of redistributing wealth. Low prices lead consumers to think they can get what they want without necessarily giving them what they want—or need. The ancient Roman phrase for this is panem et circenses, bread and circuses, the art of plying citizens with pleasures to distract them from pain. Today, low prices are the circus. In the postwar boom years of 1947 to 1973, real median family income doubled, as did the value of what the typical worker produced. Fully one-third of Americans belonged to labor unions that secured jobs, benefits, and wages, and those who didn’t benefited as well because nonunion employers strove to keep workers happy to dissuade them from organizing.

The Caryatids
by Bruce Sterling
Published 24 Feb 2009

The buildings would still end up demolished, but they’d be killed in front of huge street crowds, who would watch the effort and heartily approve it as an act of mass entertainment. The huge street crowds certainly weren’t hard to find; they were composed of the refugees and the destitute, packed like sardines in their bunks and cots across a huge expanse of Southern California. Having briefly been a refugee herself, Radmila knew their lives: Angeleno bread and circuses. Crackers, soup, foam mattresses, and immersive illusions. The city grid of Los Angeles doubled as a giant game board for immersive game players: one would see these game adventurers, mostly young, angry, and unemployed, on foot, on bicycles, clambering walls, jumping fences, bent on their desperate virtual errands.

Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future
by John Brockman
Published 18 Jan 2011

But new media have emerged, too, whose content arose for, or on, the Internet. These include blogging, Wikipedia, and YouTube, along with new forms of shared communication, such as Facebook, Google Groups, and Twitter. Will these new forms replace the ready-made contents? It’s unclear. Amid the bread-and-circuses element of the Internet, there is a need for good-quality materials and a means to sort the wheat from the chaff. Garbage in, garbage out, as computer programmers say. It is our choice, some will argue, yet I find myself looking with sheer disbelief, or ironic amusement, at what people have chosen to put up on the Net.

Felaheen
by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Published 1 Jan 2003

On the street below, workmen were busy stringing green-and-red bunting from one lamppost to another and adjusting crowd barriers under the bored gaze of traffic policemen. One of the many street parties would be held there. Enthusiasm fuelled by Ashraf Pasha's announcement that all the food would be free. Bread and circuses . Eduardo was still trying to work out exactly when His Excellency meant. "You own this?" "I rent it from the city," Isabeau said. "My brother also used to live here." "You have a bedroom?" "Obviously." "Show me," Eduardo said. The sex was perfunctory, almost matter-of-fact. And Eduardo thanked her when it was done.

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All
by Adrian Hon
Published 14 Sep 2022

But this says more about modern attitudes about what makes for a good life than anything else. Is it really so surprising that some might trade boring, low-status, poorly paid jobs with a life of entertainment? If automation eventually reduces the number of jobs available in the economy, perhaps games might become subsidised as a form of social control, cutting-edge bread and circuses to keep people happy. Researchers are already investigating how to distract hackers from causing damage to real servers by creating gamified, narrative-based “honeypot” servers containing faked but enticing data; why not extend the principle to other areas?7 The reason we instinctively shrink from a Matrix-like future where humans are kept in a blissful virtual reality (or metaverse) is that it concedes there isn’t anything better we can offer people.

Break Through: Why We Can't Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists
by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus
Published 10 Mar 2009

The banker makes of you a tool.”1 The line, which is from an 1892 populist song, neatly sums up Frank’s view, shared by many liberals and Democrats, that the success of the modern conservative movement was the result of Republican success in manipulating working-class Americans into voting against their material self-interest. Kansas is, in this way, an ancient narrative about the deployment of bread and circuses by the ruling class, wrapped in hip, bristling prose. The gag that runs throughout the book has Frank constantly turning to the readers as though to say, Can you believe how deranged my people are? Like environmentalists who see their fellow humans as essentially opportunistic and reactive, Frank tends to view the average conservative Kansan as someone whose ability to reason dispassionately has been occluded by the passions.

Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance
by Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna
Published 23 May 2016

Democracy Index 2015: Democracy in an Age of Anxiety. London: The Economist. Retrieved from www.eiu.com/democracy2015. 6. World Trade Organization (2015). “Members and Observers.” Retrieved from www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org6_e.htm. 7. The Economist (2015, August 8). “Bread and Circuses.” The Economist. Retrieved from www.economist.com. 8. Rhodes, Neil and Jonathan Sawday (2000). The Renaissance Computer: Knowledge Technology in the First Age of Print. London: Routledge, p. 1; Brotton, Jerry (2012). A History of the World in Twelve Maps. London: Allen Lane. 9. Brant, Sebastian (1458–1521) (1498).

The City on the Thames
by Simon Jenkins
Published 31 Aug 2020

Subsequent estimates later put the total cost at nearer £15 billion. All was forgiven when the games were declared a success, with the prime minister, David Cameron, promising they had been worth £13 billion in exports, an absurd figure. But there was no question a pride surged over London that summer, as Nero’s bargain held, of ‘bread and circuses’ for public contentment. London 2012 saw a curious inversion of London’s traditional modesty. Housing crisis – or not A sense of suspended hysteria followed the 2012 Olympics, including much controversy over their ‘legacy’. Tourism did not rise, sports activity fell and a huge site at Stratford stood aching for reuse.

For Profit: A History of Corporations
by William Magnuson
Published 8 Nov 2022

Roman corporations were created to solve a problem. The Roman Republic had expanded too far, too quickly. It was good at conquering, but it now had to become good at administering. But with no government bureaucracy to speak of, this was hard to imagine happening. Who was going to provide the Roman people with bread and circuses? Who was going to build the bridges and roads? Who was going to equip the armies? Who was going to collect the taxes? The societates publicanorum solved the problem. Rather than have the republic invent an administrative state out of thin air, Rome used the money, manpower, and expertise already in the hands of private capitalists to perform the state’s key functions.

What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence
by John Brockman
Published 5 Oct 2015

The first issue is potentially resolved by a guaranteed basic income—an answer that begs the question of how we, as societies, distribute and redistribute our wealth and how we govern ourselves. The second issue is even more complicated. It’s certainly not Marx’s simplistic notion of fishing in the afternoon and philosophizing over dinner. Humans, not machines, must think hard here about education, leisure, and the kinds of work that machines cannot do well or perhaps at all. Bread and circuses may placate a population, but in that case machines that think may create a society we don’t really want—be it dystopian or harmlessly vacuous. Machines depend on design architecture; so do societies. And that is the responsibility of humans, not machines. There’s also the question of what values machines possess and what masters (or mistresses) they serve.

The Powerful and the Damned: Private Diaries in Turbulent Times
by Lionel Barber
Published 5 Nov 2020

I suspect Cameron’s behaviour does not bode well for the coalition. SUNDAY, 13 NOVEMBER Mario Monti, my old friend and source when he was EU single market and competition commissioner in Brussels, has been appointed the head of a new technocratic government in Italy. And so ends Silvio Berlusconi’s bread-and-circuses act. His allies are casting the president of Italy’s intervention on behalf of Monti as a coup from Frankfurt/Brussels. They’re half right. There has been no election; but Italy has been paralysed for months, unnerving financial markets and driving up bond yields. Something had to give. Monti is a world apart from the fun-loving Cavaliere.

Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
by Rick Perlstein
Published 17 Mar 2009

He enrolled at the Harvard Law School instead—then quit to quickly raise the means to win the hand of the daughter of a wealthy Akron, Ohio, businessman. His brother had a candy business outside Boston. So candy it would be. Welch specialized in sales. The frustrated writer’s first book, in 1941, The Road to Salesmanship, proclaimed selling a profession more important than law or medicine. “Instead of the bread and circuses handed out to idle mobs by politicians,” salesmen drove progress itself by inducing Americans to want more things and then to strive to better themselves in order to earn enough to buy them. Wartime experience as an Office of Price Administration consultant for the candy industry hardened Welch’s conservatism; lobbying as chair of the Washington Committee of the National Confectioners Association (he was named Candy Industry Man of the Year in 1947) petrified it.

…

he would howl after outlining the perfidies of Bobby Baker and Billie Sol Estes. “Or have you already forgotten about them?” He went on existential rambles. “I can’t help but wondering, sometimes, if you’ve asked yourselves why my campaign is the way it is.” Think of the Romans, he said. “They traded their votes for ‘bread and circuses.’ They traded away their Senate for an emperor.” It was the only way he himself could understand this great national salivation over an opponent he now despised. He now viewed his job as just smacking people back to their senses. Just think about it for a moment. Do you want my opponent to “let us continue”?

The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful--And Their Architects--Shape the World
by Deyan Sudjic
Published 27 Nov 2006

It was a remarkable performance, but in the end Blair was attempting to justify the unjustifiable, the building at enormous expense of a theme park run by the Government. What on earth made him believe that it was in any way equipped to deliver such a thing, any more than the Government could deliver football champions, or chart-topping musicians? This was a not very exciting, indeed an entirely bloodless version of bread and circuses, and in the light of the condescending, ill-conceived, and vastly over-budget nature of the majority of the Dome’s content, for anybody who actually went, Blair’s words are impossible to read now without cringing. To walk to the new world of the Dome from familiar, scruffy, nineteenth-century London you must first negotiate the grimy Victorian streets of Greenwich.

The Unpersuadables: Adventures With the Enemies of Science
by Will Storr
Published 1 Jan 2013

Very typical Labour manifesto – very appealing to those who are not used to making their own way in the world. Somebody else will provide. So they got into office on this idea of a National Health Service, universal pensions, universal benefits, full employment.’ ‘Free stuff?’ I say. ‘Sweeties!’ he nods. ‘Bread and circuses! The problem was, we couldn’t afford it and so we had to go to the United States to say, “Please can we have the money to pay for the welfare state and the health service?” They said to us, “If you want help, then you’re going to have to bring the empire to an end.” Which, of course, the Labour Party wanted to do anyway.’

The Dice Man
by Luke Rhinehart
Published 1 Jan 1971

'Your second question was going to be "Oh my goodness, perhaps we should discuss why the religion of the Die attracts some people." 'Oh yes? . `May I give my answer now?, 'Oh yes do. Go ahead.' Father Wolfe's prosecuting-attorney voice snaps out from the same screen from which looks Dr. Rhinehart. `The devil has always attracted men through gaudy disguises ah, through bread and circuses ahh and through promises he cannot fulfil unh. I believe-' `Wouldn't it be interesting if he never came out of it?' interrupts Rabbi Fishman's voice. `I beg your pardon, I was speaking.'[Father Wolfe.] `Oh he'll come out of it says Dr. Dart. `The permanent catatonic looks more tense but less alert.

Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition
by Charles Eisenstein
Published 11 Jul 2011

In the old days of explicit empires, China would have been called a “vassal state” and the stuff it sends us would have been called “tribute.”3 Yet China too will do everything it can to sustain the present Story of Money, for essentially the same reason we do: its elites benefit from it. It is just as in Ancient Rome. The elites of the imperial capital and the provinces prosper at the expense of the misery of the people, which increases over time. To mollify them and keep them docile and stupid, the masses are provided with bread and circuses: cheap food, cheap thrills, celebrity news, and the Super Bowl. Whether we declare it to end, or whether it ends of its own accord, the story of money will bring down a lot with it. That is why the United States won’t simply default on its debt. If it did, then the story under which the Middle East ships us its oil, Japan its electronics, India its textiles, and China its plastic would come to an end.

Howard Rheingold
by The Virtual Community Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier-Perseus Books (1993)
Published 26 Apr 2012

These critics believe that information technologies have already changed what used to pass for reality into a slicked-up electronic simulation. Twenty years before the United States elected a Hollywood actor as president, the first hyper-realists pointed out how politics had become a movie, a spectacle that raised the old Roman tactic of bread and circuses to the level of mass hypnotism. We live in a hyper- reality that was carefully constructed to mimic the real world and extract money from the pockets of consumers: the forests around the Matterhorn might be dying, but the Disneyland version continues to rake in the dollars. The television programs, movie stars, and theme parks work together to create global industry devoted to maintaining a web of illusion that grows more lifelike as more people buy into it and as technologies grow more powerful.

The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America
by Victor Davis Hanson
Published 15 Nov 2021

The independence of the small farmer and his need to combine brain and muscle to produce food were considered to offer vital traits for self-governance, from pragmatism to individualism. Unfortunately, the once agrarian legions gradually either became mercenary or were manned by those without a stake in Roman society. To keep ruling, the elite relied on sending public largess to the army and to the poor, the stereotypical “bread and circuses” (panem et circenses) of the poet Juvenal, who caricatured the urban and often idle masses kept afloat by the combinations of state-subsidized food and free entertainment. Yet, even after the collapse of the classical world in the latter fifth century AD and the transitory disappearance of a vestigial middle class, the idea of Western broad-based citizenship never quite died.

Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest
by Zeynep Tufekci
Published 14 May 2017

Without attention, information means very little. The insight that attention, not information, is the prize in the struggle for power is not new. Almost two thousand years ago, the Roman satirical poet Juvenal wrote about how people’s demands for representation could be diluted by “panem et circenses” (bread and circuses), that is, by providing distracting entertainment while also making sure that they were fed.12 In the twenty-first century, the same dynamics hold, but this time, the circus is online. Very few countries have the kind of vast censorship apparatus that can carefully censor much of the information coming from outside the country and respond in real time by taking down potentially effective posts.

The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community
by Ray Oldenburg
Published 17 Aug 1999

Perhaps it is because America is the world champion in both the achievement and exportation of modernization that its people overlook one of modernization’s major consequences. It is the transformation of traditionally free forms of public entertainment into that which is cost prohibitive—at least on a routine basis—for the majority of people. The bread and circuses that placated a Roman citizenry of old included, at least, free circuses. The American middle mass is mollified in much the same way, but entrance to our arenas is far from free. That salaries running to six and even seven figures are paid to Neanderthals named Bubba testifies both to the need for collective forms of diversion in the society and to the greedy profit-taking made possible when the society is otherwise unable to satisfy such needs. 

Rome
by Lonely Planet

A glorified mix of legend, history and moral instruction, it tells how Aeneas escapes from Troy and after years of mythical mishaps ends up landing in Italy where his descendants Romulus and Remus eventually found Rome. Little is known of Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, better known as Juvenal, but his 16 satires have survived as classics of the genre. Writing in the 1st century AD, he combined an acute mind with a cutting pen, famously scorning the masses as being interested in nothing but ‘bread and circuses’. Ancient Histories The two major historians of the period were Livy (59 BC−AD 17) and Tacitus (c 56−116). Although both wrote in the early days of empire they displayed very different styles. Livy, whose history of the Roman Republic was probably used as a school textbook, cheerfully mixed myth with fact to produce an entertaining and popular tome.

Fifty Degrees Below
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Published 25 Oct 2005

Or rather they bring all the politicians and tourists, the lobbyists and diplomats and refugees and all the others who come from somewhere else, often for suspect reasons, and thereafter spend their time clogging the streets and hogging the show, talking endlessly about their nonexistent city on a hill while ignoring the actual city they are in. The bad taste of all that hypocrisy can’t be washed away even by the food and drink of a million very fine restaurants. No—bastion of the world government, locked vault of the World Bank, fortress headquarters of the world police; Rome, in the age of bread and circuses—no one can like that. So naturally when the great flood washed over the city, wreaking havoc and leaving the capital spluttering in the livid heat of a wet and bedraggled May, the stated reactions were varied, but the underlying subtext often went something like this: HA HA HA. For there were many people around the world who felt that justice had somehow been served.

The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession
by Peter L. Bernstein
Published 1 Jan 2000

Hence, $2500 was a generous annual stipend. Indeed, the Romans used coinage-money to a far greater extent than any of their predecessors in history. Thousands of soldiers throughout the empire had to be paid, and some Roman generals even minted their own gold coins to distribute to their troops. Furthermore, bread and circuses did not come for free, but promoting domestic tranquility among the Roman politii was essential if emperors hoped to remain in power. The doles were distributed in cash on occasion, but even the more frequent payments in kind, the alimenta, or bread rations, were largely imported from outside Italy and had to be paid for with coinage.

Them And Us: Politics, Greed And Inequality - Why We Need A Fair Society
by Will Hutton
Published 30 Sep 2010

The same YouGov survey discovered that appearing on a reality television programme was a popular career option among teenagers.17 Another poll found 26 per cent of sixteen–nineteen-year-olds believe they will easily secure a career in sports, entertainment or the media. This is hardly surprising. The saturation coverage the media devotes to the likes of The X Factor, The Apprentice and Dragons’ Den raises a false illusion of a meritocracy that does not exist in quotidian lived reality. It is a British version of bread and circuses for the hoi polloi in ancient Rome. The people are served up a populist exemplar of merit to divert them from the wider social truth that so little exists. And if they can be convinced that they might be catapulted to success, they are less likely to criticise the high rewards of those already at the top.

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole
by Benjamin R. Barber
Published 1 Jan 2007

The consumer of the cornucopia of spectator commodities available from a hardworking, overproducing entertainment industry must work even harder than the producers to take it all in. Can any consumer keep up with the movies, television programs, internet offerings, video games, music downloads, and athletic competitions that constitute the modern marketplace’s new bread and circuses? It makes for disciplined work for an individual to stay abreast with any one of these sectors. Yet unless she does, the market economy falters. No wonder leisure, squeezed between the extended hours of work, often feels like a full-time job. If as Dan Cook has declared, childhood makes capitalism hum, the kids better get to work. 4 Privatizing Citizens: The Making of Civic Schizophrenia Libertarianism is a political philosophy for Peter Pans, an outlook on the world premised on never growing up.

Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made the Modern World
by Andrew Lambert
Published 1 Oct 2018

Sea states will continue to build and operate navies to protect their vital national interests, and as part of the US-led Western liberal collective. Economic sanctions remain a powerful tool, and the threat they pose explains why Russia and China still talk of war and conquest as part of the ‘bread and circuses’ of totalitarian politics. While sea states do not choose war, because it is bad for business, they may find that, like their seapower precursors, they do not have the option. The right of innocent passage through continentalised maritime space must be upheld, jointly and collectively – lest the oceans that Mahan described as ‘the great common’ are lost.

Pandora's Box: How Guts, Guile, and Greed Upended TV
by Peter Biskind
Published 6 Nov 2023

The water cooler conversations of the prepandemic era have since become our only conversation, thanks to social media. Witness the blizzard of words devoted to analyzing, recapping, and speculating about the final season of Game of Thrones, the last episode of which boasted of 19.3 million viewers. Jon Snow, Daenarys Targaryen, and the Lannisters were household names, and the episodes were our bread and circuses. Nor is this solely an American phenomenon. Other countries have made series that equal or surpass the best American productions, like Peaky Blinders, Line of Duty, The Crown, and Slow Horses from England; Spiral and A French Village from France; Money Heist from Spain; My Brilliant Friend from Italy; Fauda from Israel; Borgen from Denmark, as well as so-called Nordic noir like The Bridge, also from Denmark.

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
Published 20 Mar 2012

Again the innovation was turned down because of the threat of creative destruction, not so much because of its economic impact, but because of fear of political creative destruction. Vespasian was concerned that unless he kept the people happy and under control it would be politically destabilizing. The Roman plebeians had to be kept busy and pliant, so it was good to have jobs to give them, such as moving columns about. This complemented the bread and circuses, which were also dispensed for free to keep the population content. It is perhaps telling that both of these examples came soon after the collapse of the Republic. The Roman emperors had far more power to block change than the Roman rulers during the Republic. Another important reason for the lack of technological innovation was the prevalence of slavery.

The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth
by Michael Spitzer
Published 31 Mar 2021

As the performers danced and played, delinquent youths mocked and mimed them with rude gestures and verbal insults (one can imagine their modern descendants chucking beer cans). The pantomime became the first comic play when authors added plot and dialogue.116 The need to keep the citizens happy with bread and circuses even led to the formation of the world’s first international music union. This was by mutual arrangement. After the defeat of Macedonia in 167 bc, Greek musicians poured into Rome, and were recruited to play in the triumphal games organised by General Anicius Gallus to celebrate their own conquest.117 The musicians then unionised into a guild of ‘Dionysiac artists’ (Dionysiaci artifices), vastly improving the organisation of public festivals.

The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron
by Colin Shindler
Published 29 Jul 2015

Jabotinsky commented that this word would not have been found ‘in our vocabulary thirty years ago’. The young generation was simply not interested in parliament, freedom of the press and free speech. ‘All the recent fashionable dictators have relied on young people.’3 Fascism and Communism, he pointed out, were the choices of youth: An entire people sometimes shouts for ‘bread and circuses’ and it later turns out that the chief trait of the time was a thirst for a new religion. It is far from seldom that people, especially in their youth, do not exactly understand what it is that they thirst for, while it is this ‘thirst’, the tastes and appetites of a generation which define its ‘soul’.4 His youthful interest in Italy never left him.

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown
by Philip Mirowski
Published 24 Jun 2013

The neoliberals concede that it may appear that the existing market system sometimes fails; but the answer to these hiccups is to impose more markets, since nothing else can ever begin to cope with the complexity of evolution. The prescription for market failures is always more markets; however, that prescription can only reliably and successfully be imposed by a strong state. Moreover, since democratic electorates are always clamoring for bread and circuses, which threatens to thwart the telos of economic improvement from their perspective, a strong state must vigilantly strive to keep them in line; ideally, a state controlled by neoliberal politicians. This sometimes appears confusing to outsiders, who cannot understand how neoliberals can so blithely demonize the state and simultaneously concede its necessity.

The Idea of Decline in Western History
by Arthur Herman
Published 8 Jan 1997

Blood and Soil: Walter Darré and Hitler’s Green Party . Kensal, Bourne End, 1985. -----. Ecology in the 20th Century: A History . Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1989. Brandt, Willy , et al. North-South: A Program for Survival . MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1980. Brantlinger, Patrick . Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture as Social Decay . Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1983. Bridgewater, Patrick . Poet of Expressionist Berlin: The Life and Work of Georg Heym . Libris, London, 1991. Broderick, Francis . “German Influence on the Scholarship of W.E.B. Du Bois.” Phylon 19 (1958), 367-71.

Frommer's Egypt
by Matthew Carrington
Published 8 Sep 2008

At the other end of the oasis, the women around the tomb of Pasha Hindi in Bashendi have been selling local jewelry to visitors for several years, and on my most recent visit their wares included some locally made clothes and a neat handmade wooden lock that you can see not only in the Ethnographic Museum in Mut, but in use around the orchards and pens of the oasis. 5 Kharga Kharga has been a place of exile and banishment for at least 2,000 years. Roman satirist Juvenal (the man who came up with the phrase bread and circuses) is said to have been sent here at the ripe old age of 80 to end his life, and a number of other big names suffered the same fate. One of these, Bishop Nestorius of Constantinople— who gave his name to the kind of doctrinal innovation that gets you sent out into the desert—left behind bone-chilling accounts of 5th-century raids and plunder by Nile Valley tribes. 13_259290-ch10.qxp 7/22/08 12:40 AM Page 286 Kharga 5 6 Nasser Square Area of inset map below i Fountain by Tourist Mahmoud Mabrouk Information Sh ar Office ia Bu rS ai d ATTRACTIONS Al Bagawat 2 Deir al Kashef 1 Kharga Museum of Antiquities 7 Temple of an-Nadura 4 Temple of Hibis 3 ACCOMMODATIONS Hamadallah 8 Kharga Oasis Hotel 6 Pioneers Hotel 5
7 W National Bank of Egypt RN T TE ES SER DE E G Y P T Re d 0  Nile Cairo Sea Kharga 200 mi Gamal Abdel Nasser Mosque EgyptAir Office 8  Nada St.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years
by David Graeber
Published 1 Jan 2010

Even within the Persian Empire, Persians did not have to pay tribute to the Great King, but the inhabitants of conquered provinces did.51 The same was true in Rome, where for a very long time, Roman citizens not only paid no taxes but had a right to a share of the tribute levied on others, in the form of the dole—the “bread” part of the famous “bread and circuses.”52 In other words, Benjamin Franklin was wrong when he said that in this world nothing is certain except death and taxes. This obviously makes the idea that the debt to one is just a variation on the other much harder to maintain. None of this, however, deals a mortal blow to the state theory of money.

The Eternal City: A History of Rome
by Ferdinand Addis
Published 6 Nov 2018

For the great majority of the empire’s inhabitants, the circle of production and consumption was a very small one: you ate what you grew. In this world, where wealth was created through agriculture, cities seemed to exist almost as parasites; the surplus of the countryside was creamed off by urban elites who in turn sustained the urban poor with bread and circuses. If cities were parasites, Rome was the arch-parasite, squatting vast and useless on its seven hills, with its roots sunk into the flesh of the decaying empire. So long as its nutrient channels continued to flow – water from the hills; grain from Africa; slaves from the north; oil from Spain – life in the capital could continue more or less as it had always done, albeit without the gloss of regular imperial patronage.

Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding, 1953-1975
by Hannah Arendt
Published 6 Mar 2018

Biological life, in turn, is always a metabolism that nourishes itself through the ingestion of things, whether it labors or is at rest, whether it consumes or amuses itself. The things offered by the entertainment industry are not values to be used and exchanged; rather, they are objects of consumption as apt to be depleted as any other such object. Panem et circenses (bread and circuses)—these two do indeed go together: both are necessary for the life process, for its sustenance and its recovery; both are also swallowed up in this process, that is to say, they both have to be produced and performed time and again if this process is not to come to an eventual halt. This is all well and good, as long as the entertainment industry produces its own objects of consumption, and one could reproach this industry no more than one could reproach a bakery for creating products of such limited durability that they have to be depleted in the instant of their creation lest they spoil.

The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind
by Jan Lucassen
Published 26 Jul 2021

The majority of nation states appear to be against global monopolies but, with the exception of China, they are no match for behemoths such as Amazon, Apple, IBM and Microsoft. These tech companies seem increasingly able to determine the public’s taste. The ultimate consequence of this is the reduction of the citizen, and therefore also of the working citizen, to a mere consumer of ready-made fare. The ultimate ‘Bread and Circuses’ society – Yuval Harari’s ‘Age of Shopping’ or even Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932).13 Having surveyed the whole history of work, then, what can this survey tell us about what to expect of its future? While no single scenario can be clearly argued to hold (or not), we can react to a number of established, even celebrated, projections in relation to the future of work: the ‘end of capitalism’, increased inequality, the role of the ‘free’ market in distributing work and pay, and the consequences of robotization.

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
by Peter Frankopan
Published 26 Aug 2015

So great was the change that one Japanese architectural journal likened the transformation of the Iraqi capital to that of Paris in the late nineteenth century under the direction of Baron Haussmann.40 Naturally, this provided those in power with valuable political capital: regimes across the Persian Gulf could make grandiose statements that linked the new affluence with their personal power. It was no coincidence, therefore, that as the streams of cash flowing into the heart of the world turned into a torrent, the ruling classes became increasingly demagogic in their outlook. The funds at their disposal were so great that, although they could be used to provide bread and circuses in the traditional method of autocratic control, there was simply too much to lose by giving others a share of the power. There was a marked slowdown in the development of pluralistic democracy and instead a tightening of control by small groups of individuals – whether related by blood to the ruler and the ruling family as in the Arabian peninsula and in Iran, or espousing common political causes as in Iraq and Syria.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
by Robert Tressell
Published 31 Dec 1913

If the Church of England (which had given its blessing to the Anglo-Boer War) was the Tory party at prayer, then the Liberal-inclined Nonconformists of the chapels promoted laissez-faire capitalist values (as Matthew Introduction xix Arnold had concluded in his Culture and Anarchy of 1868, and as the economic historians Max Weber and R. H. Tawney would argue). Tressell saw the Church, just as he saw newspapers, pubs, and much popular culture as, in one discourse, bread and circuses and, in another, a class and state apparatus, moulding the ideology of work- ing people towards a self-destructive passivity and acceptance of their situation in the face of their own exploitation and expropri- ation. In particular, Noonan had an acute ear for the conservative ideology of the songs of the Victorian and Edwardian music hall that run so profusely through his book (see the Explanatory Notes, below).

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
by Adam Tooze
Published 31 Jul 2018

Only weeks before the General Assembly opened in New York, the world had been given two demonstrations of the reality of multipolarity. On the one hand, China’s staggering Olympic display put to shame anything ever seen in the West, notably the dismal Atlanta games of 1996, which had been interrupted, it is worth recalling, by a pipe bombing perpetrated by an alt-right fanatic.10 If bread and circuses are the foundation of popular legitimacy, the Chinese regime, bolstered by its booming economy, was putting on quite the show. Meanwhile, as the fireworks flared in Beijing, the Russia military had meted out to Georgia, a tiny aspirant to NATO membership, a severe punishment beating.11 Sarkozy came to New York fresh from cease-fire talks on Europe’s eastern border.

The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
by David Abulafia
Published 4 May 2011

III The grain trade was not simply a source of profit for Rome’s merchants. In 5 BC Augustus Caesar distributed grain to 320,000 male citizens; he proudly recorded this fact in a great public inscription commemorating his victories and achievements, for holding the favour of the Romans was as important as winning victories at sea and on land.27 The era of ‘bread and circuses’ was beginning, and cultivating the Roman People was an art many emperors well understood (baked bread was not in fact distributed until the third century AD, when Emperor Aurelian substituted bread for grain).28 By the end of the first century BC Rome controlled several of the most important sources of grain in the Mediterranean, those in Sicily, Sardinia and Africa that Pompey had been so careful to protect.

The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam
by Max Boot
Published 9 Jan 2018

Banzon would investigate complaints about the troops or other information provided by average Filipinos utilizing a cheap ten-centavo telegram. Magsaysay often told his troops, “I want every enlisted man of the Philippine army in uniform to serve as a public relations man for the Army and for our government.”20 Such efforts to woo the population have a long pedigree, stretching back to the “bread and circuses” that the Roman Empire provided to keep its subjects compliant. But an emphasis on the softer side of warfare was a relatively recent development in modern Western military doctrine, which had been relentlessly focused on conventional warfare since the days of Marlborough and Napoleon. Tactics designed to win what another contemporary counterinsurgency commander, General Gerald Templer in Malaya, called “hearts and minds” were still seen as novel in Lansdale’s day, and it was his success in the Philippines, along with Templer’s success in Malaya, that would help convince many regular soldiers of their importance.

Europe: A History
by Norman Davies
Published 1 Jan 1996

Like Rome itself, the provincial cities developed into major urban centres, characterized by imposing public works—paved streets, aqueducts, baths, theatres, temples, monuments—and by the growth of merchant, artisan, and proletarian classes. The city mob—constantly pacified, in Juvenal’s words, ‘through bread and circuses’, panem et circenses, became a vital social factor. In the countryside, the villas of local dignitaries stood out above the toiling mass of slaves who worked the great latifundia. An intermediate and, in the nature of things, enterprising group of lib-ertini or ‘freed slaves’ grew in importance, as the import of fresh slave populations tailed off with the end of the Republic’s conquests, [SPARTACUS] Despite the extreme contrasts of Roman society—between the vast power and wealth of the patricians and the lot of their slaves, between the opulence of many city-dwellers and the backwardness of the desert tribes and barbarian settlers on the periphery—it is a tribute to the flexible paternalism of the Roman social tradition that the outbreaks of class conflict were relatively few and far between.

…

‘Political life’, he wrote, ‘was stamped and swayed not by the parties and programmes of a modern parliamentary character, not by the ostensible opposition of Senate and People … but by the struggle for power, wealth, and glory.’16 Particularly important in an age of civil war was a politician’s ability to control the army and to satisfy the soldiers with lands, money, and respect. Fighting, it would seem, was only a secondary preoccupation for successful generals. LUDI THE people who have conquered the world’, wrote Juvenal, ‘now have only two interests—bread and circuses.’ ‘The art of conversation is dead!’ exclaimed Seneca. ‘Can no one today talk of anything else than charioteers?’ The Ludi or ‘Games’ had become a central feature of Roman life. Originally staged on four set weeks during the year in April, July, September, and November, they grew to the point where the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum were in almost permanent session.

The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
by Robert Fisk
Published 2 Jan 2005

Ah yes, if only it was that easy, if only there was no need for the Palestinian midnight security courts and the twenty-fiveyear prison sentences and the after-dark arrests that were now part of life in Gaza for those who disagreed with Arafat. Then the president of Palestine opened the races while his men handed out baskets of sweet wafers to the hundreds of sheikhs and family leaders who sat beneath the awning. The people ate, the horses raced. Yes, the old man gave his people bread and circuses to mark his birthday. For Arafat was running a little dictatorship down in Gaza, with the total approval of Israel and the United States. Under the pretext of stamping out “terrorism” on Israel’s behalf, he now had more than ten competing Palestinian intelligence services under his command, a grand total exceeded only by Arab leaders in Baghdad and Damascus.

…

Soft music plays as white-jacketed waiters serve the UN’s finest, the sanctions boys and the arms inspectors and the men and women who try desperately to undo the suffering caused by the gentlemen in the glass building on the East River 5,990 miles away. But despite the white-liveried waiters, whatever you do, don’t mention the Titanic. Iraqi state television has shown James Cameron’s film three times (he can forget about the royalties) as a balm for hardship, the Baghdad equivalent of bread and circuses. But unlike the Titanic, the Babeesh has no third class diners. This is a restaurant for those who measure money by the kilo rather than the Iraqi dinar note. Now that the dinar is worth 0.0006 of a dollar (thanks to the employers of the Babeesh’s clientele), my own meal for three needed a stack of 488 one hundred dinar notes, a wad of cash a foot thick.

A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s
by Alwyn W. Turner
Published 4 Sep 2013

When comparisons were made between voting numbers on reality television and those in elections, the lesson generally drawn was of the declining state of democracy in the country. Sometimes an accusation was levelled that there was a causal connection between the two phenomena, that a combination of cheap, imported electronic goods and the material consumed via those goods constituted a latter-day bread and circuses. It was equally possible, however, to see the growing interactivity of the media as the first, inchoate stirrings of a new model of politics. ‘It may be that the era of pure representative democracy is coming slowly to an end,’ reflected Peter Mandelson in a 1998 speech, observing that the political elites that had dominated democracy for so long – including those in the intellectual, trade union and local council spheres – came from ‘an age that has passed away’.

Rainbow Six
by Tom Clancy
Published 2 Jan 1998

He'd gotten this job because he was fluent in three languages, French, Spanish, and English, and thus could be helpful to the majority of the visitors - "guests" - to this new Spanish city, all of whom needed to urinate from time to time, and most of whom, evidently, lacked the wit to notice the hundreds of signs (graphic rather than lettered) that told them where to go when the need became overwhelming. Esteban, Andre saw, was in his usual place, selling his helium filled balloons. Bread and circuses, they both Ought. The vast sums expended to build this place-and for what purpose? To give the children of the poor and working classes a brief few hours of laughter before they returned to their dreary homes? To seduce their parents into spending their money for mere amusement? Really, the purpose of the place was to enrich further the Arab investors who'd been persuaded to spend so much of their oil money here, building this fantasy city.

Post Wall: Rebuilding the World After 1989
by Kristina Spohr
Published 23 Sep 2019

Of course, nobody expected that his midnight magic would replenish the grocery shelves overnight, and many feared that this was all too late to halt the disintegration of the Soviet Union into warring sovereignties.[83] Still, for the first time in many months, Gorbachev seemed to have regained a foothold on the slippery terrain of Soviet domestic politics. The Izvestiya commentator Stanislav Kondrashev remarked that the apparent pointlessness of democracy was making the idea of a ‘strong hand’ attractive to the public, citing the old adage of the Roman emperors, ‘bread and circuses’. But, said Kondrashev, ‘when bread rations are rapidly declining, people are prepared to sacrifice parliamentary circuses’.[84] Old-guard communists welcomed what seemed to them the strengthening of the state and a blueprint for slower, controlled reform. Conversely, Gorbachev hoped that liberals would regard his actions as a sign that he was still maintaining the momentum for reform, while seeking compromises across the political spectrum.

Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First
by Frank Trentmann
Published 1 Dec 2015

In the modern city, that sense of space underwent a transformation as remarkable as the physical changes brought about by water pipes and glass windows. Entertainment was crucial to that change. In addition to goods and people, cities were channelling emotion. To be sure, cities remained spaces of work, and they had offered bread and circuses since ancient times. All the same, the period roughly from the 1880s to the 1920s witnessed a dramatic proliferation of commercial spaces dedicated to fun – the music hall, the cinema the amusement park, the football stadium and the velodrome. Their holidays and spending money may look miserly to today’s reader, but most working people of the period were enjoying more disposable income and holiday time than ever before.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
by Steven Pinker
Published 24 Sep 2012

Gladiators fought each other to the death; our thumbs-up and thumbs-down gestures may have come from the signals flashed by the crowd to a victorious gladiator telling him whether to administer the coup de grâce to his opponent. About half a million people died these agonizing deaths to provide Roman citizens with their bread and circuses. The grandeur that was Rome casts our violent entertainment in a different light (to say nothing of our “extreme sports” and “sudden-death overtime”). 27 The most famous means of Roman death, of course, was crucifixion, the source of the word excruciating. Anyone who has ever looked up at the front of a church must have given at least a moment’s thought to the unspeakable agony of being nailed to a cross.