What was bread and circus

They were manned by Roman citizens — in first century Britain these were drawn from all over the Empire, from Italy, Gaul and the Danube provinces, but were not Britons. Their two stone built amphitheatres the only ones with stone outer walls in Britain were built by citizens, for citizens, and to celebrate the kind of festivals associated with the participation of the army in the Imperial cult.

There is no doubt that this included munera; these are the only two amphitheatres in Britain to produce gladiatorial imagery in any form. Here soldiers would see military virtue enacted, the ability to fight and die well. In this way the military amphitheatre performed a didactic function, reinforcing the requirement in the Roman legionary for courage, skill at arms, and the ability to die in combat without complaint.

The equipment of the different forms of gladiators was derived from barbarian prototypes, and perhaps this reinforced for the legionary that he would be required to fight someone who had very different fighting styles to those in which he was himself trained. London early became a boom town for pioneers interested in exploiting this latest conquest.

Incoming traders founded the town, which developed quickly. The settlement grew from scratch as a purely Roman place. The timber amphitheatre, dating to shortly after AD 70, was part of a process of the creation of familiar institutions in a new setting.

The story of the London amphitheatre is thus similar to the legionary sites, and it is probably no accident that these three are the only British amphitheatres to yield dedications to Nemesis and Diana-Nemesis, the most widespread deity of the amphitheatre, an impartial distributor of good and bad fortune, of success or failure, of life and death, who could intercede with the workings of destiny. By contrast the other urban amphitheatres of Britain were built in new tribal capitals Silchester, Dorchester, Cirencester, Carmarthen and Chichester , where existing populations were learning to adapt their behaviour and environment to new forms.

These buildings were different to the legionary structures, for instance. All were earthworks, with arena walls and entrances in timber, later stone, but none had outer walls. They were descended from the indigenous tradition of large communal earthworks, put to a different use. Those sites where excavation has been thorough enough show not seating on the earth banks but terraces for standing spectators. This suggests that it would not have been possible to hold day-long events but only spectacles of short duration.

It has been suggested, probably correctly, that Roman spectacles were simply not taken up with enthusiasm among the indigenous population of Britain. When an amphitheatre was located in an urban context, in Britain or elsewhere it was almost always on the fringe of the town. Like many aspects of the games and the amphitheatre, this was symbolic. The amphitheatre is of two phases, the first of timber, then stone.

The remains of the stone-built entrance, carceres beast pens , part of the arena wall, and timber elements, including the main drain, can be seen in the basement of the Guildhall Art Gallery. The best preserved and most completely excavated amphitheatre in Britain.

This fully exposed and conserved legionary amphitheatre is the one British site where it is possible to appreciate the scale and complexity of these structures. The eight entrance ways are particularly well preserved. Half the arena, two entrances and a quadrant of the seating area are currently accessible.

The Silchester amphitheatre had two timber phases and a final stone phase. The tree-clad seating banks preserve the 18th-century appearance of the site. The stone-built arena wall, two main entrances and semi-circular niches around the arena are on display. Tony Wilmott is a senior archaeologist and Roman specialist with English Heritage. Oh sure, there has always been a vocal minority, crying, calling attention to the wrath that is to come, but those small, few, voices have been so marginalized that they are almost and altogether unnoticed.

The rest of us have enjoyed our bread and games. The earliest instances of bread and circuses that I have found are from The Spirit of Study , by a certain G. Notremah, published in The Globe London of Thursday 19 th August ; interestingly, the author does not consider the terms bread and circuses as complementary, but as mutually exclusive:. The popular mind has such a difficulty in understanding the spirit of study, that, if a man does anything, it attributes his activity to one of two motives, either the desire of gain or the desire of amusement.

The Roman populace was kept in good humour by bread and circuses —in other words, with food and amusement ; and it may be said, metaphorically, with perfect truth of our own populace that the two inducements which are typified by bread and circuses are the only motives to activity which it quite understands. Hence, if a man is not working for his bread , it is at once inferred that he is working for his amusement —any other motive being inconceivable.

The theory and practice of amateurship have been due to this binary conception of the nature of all work. Either your work is bread to you, or it is circuses to you; therefore, if you do not earn your living by it, you are merely amusing yourself.

But this conception of the nature of work and its motives is too narrow to meet the facts. The idea that people can be pacified by food and entertainment when they should be rallying to their prescribed civic duties isn't a new one.

In fact, the concept was first described in ancient times by the satirical Roman poet Juvenal, who penned the Latin term panem et circenses , which means "bread and circuses. Within a mere years, Rome underwent massive governmental changes. What in B. Thus, Juvenal's term, "bread and circuses" went viral, used by scores of people -- then and now -- to describe people who voluntarily trade their democratic freedoms in exchange for stable-yet-controlling government.

Back then, the Roman government kept the Roman people pacified by offering them free food and rousing entertainment in the Roman Colosseum. Now, "bread and circuses" applies to any civic or governmental entity -- or any situation, really -- in which the masses willingly accept short-term solutions to ease their discontent. The "bread and circuses" concept is also a fitting descriptor for Dominant Ideology. Dominant Ideology is a Marxist construct exemplified by the idea that economically disadvantaged classes will accept that it's their fate to remain so [source: Purdue ].

It's possible that the moral of the story is one of independence -- in thought, action and economics.