Blackwell Reference Online

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In the early years of the second century ad, the satirist Juvenal lamented that the Roman people, once concerned with weighty issues of war and peace, were now devoted solely to bread and circuses (Juv. 10. 78–81). The line is often quoted as summary of the impact of the imperial system on the city of Rome, of the effective disenfranchisement of the Roman people by the increasingly autocratic monarchy. A few years later an advisor to Marcus Aurelius remarked that the emperor had to do what the people wanted at the games, while legislation from this period sought to check the tendency of the crowd to demand the release of the guilty, the condemnation of the innocent, and the freedom of slaves belonging to the emperor (Fronto Aur. 1.8; Dig. 4.9.17; Cod. lust. 7.11.3). In point of fact Juvenal's comment is wholly misleading. Centuries earlier, in the last generation of formally democratic government at Rome, Cicero listed the theater and games as the best places to discern the true feelings of the Roman people, and reasonably so (Pro Sestio 106). Far more people could be accommodated for chariot races than in the voting pens of the Campus Martius.From the earliest to the last years of the classical city-state, public entertainment played a crucial role in defining the political order. The fact that sport and entertainment occupy a very similar position in early twenty-first century ... log in or subscribe to read full text