Roman grain dole reforms

My understanding is that the grain dole was a great drain on the Roman state, it later evolved to include other staples such as olive oil. What if Marcus Aurielus along with suppressing the games reduced the numbers of people eligible for the handouts and used part of the funds to sponsor them as settlers to his newly conquered territories? They could also make money from selling the grain on the open market and use it towards large scale infrastructure projects to keep the population occupied.
 
I once asked my Classical Studies teacher this question. Why they didn't relocate some of the poor of Rome to the provinces... I mean it would be tough, as they werent farmers... But with patience and effort it could have secured a number of frontiers and reduced the drain on the public purse.
 
I'd heard it was fear of revolt. There were a heck of a lot of poor hungry people in Rome. Cut back the food and they'll riot with a good chance of burning a chunk of the city or something. The Romans feared the mob.
 
I'd heard it was fear of revolt. There were a heck of a lot of poor hungry people in Rome. Cut back the food and they'll riot with a good chance of burning a chunk of the city or something. The Romans feared the mob.

Moving the mob would certainly reduce that. If they revolt it would be wherever you moved them, not in Rome.
 
I once asked my Classical Studies teacher this question. Why they didn't relocate some of the poor of Rome to the provinces... I mean it would be tough, as they werent farmers... But with patience and effort it could have secured a number of frontiers and reduced the drain on the public purse.

Legally, it's not as though they could have. Nobody had the right to tell a Roman citizen he couldn't live in Rome (except by a legal judgement of exile). Of course that would not have stopped an emperor, but it would have seemed an act of tyranny, and quite possibly could have triggered riots.

Then, there is a matter of prestige: The dole exemplifies what it is to be Roman. It isn't welfare. It is the spoils of conquest, the wealth of subject peoples brought to the people of Rome. Ending it would not just be a fiscal consideration. It's not "our money", it's the emperor taking care of his loyal people.

I also wonder just how significant a drain the dole really was. We are not talking about the Empire actually feeding the city. The number of dole chits was limited, and the quantities not sufficient to feed a family. Considering the price level in the city, it looks more like a kind of cost-of-living adjustment. In the end, how much would this have cost? Probably nowhere near as much as maintaining thirty legions or four gladiator stables. Maybe there is a degree of confuision over the fact that the Roman dole was known as annona, but that is also the name of a local taxation in kind we see increasingly invoked from the third century onwards to meet the needs of the government on the spot. That one hurt.

Finally, there is a limited time window for the solution, Before the Civil War (and well into it), Roman veterans were generally unwilling to be settled outsidse of Italy. After Caracalla, there would not have been much colonisable land, and far too many Roman citizens. In between, there were colonies founded, but it was always an expensive proposition, building the city, measuring out the land, marking the boundaries. The annona might have looked cheaper.
 
Millions of Romans depended on the grain dole just to stay alive, so short answer?

Revolts out the rearward area, and Marcus Aurelius is remembered as a tyrant who was murdered by the Praetorian Guard.
 
Millions? Were people outside Rome itself given grain?

Not millions!

Initially 150.000 romans got grain. Iulius Caesar increased it to 300.000 and Augustus reduced it again.

If other cities imported grain regulary and subsidized it, it was out of the cities budget.
 
The point is, far too many Romans literally could not survive if they did not have access to that grain dole. It was not a welfare state as we know it, but they had to have it to keep going.

If the number of people eligible to receive grain was cut back suddenly, then it would lead to uprisings.
 
Legally, it's not as though they could have. Nobody had the right to tell a Roman citizen he couldn't live in Rome (except by a legal judgement of exile). Of course that would not have stopped an emperor, but it would have seemed an act of tyranny, and quite possibly could have triggered riots.

Then, there is a matter of prestige: The dole exemplifies what it is to be Roman. It isn't welfare. It is the spoils of conquest, the wealth of subject peoples brought to the people of Rome. Ending it would not just be a fiscal consideration. It's not "our money", it's the emperor taking care of his loyal people.

I also wonder just how significant a drain the dole really was. We are not talking about the Empire actually feeding the city. The number of dole chits was limited, and the quantities not sufficient to feed a family. Considering the price level in the city, it looks more like a kind of cost-of-living adjustment. In the end, how much would this have cost? Probably nowhere near as much as maintaining thirty legions or four gladiator stables. Maybe there is a degree of confuision over the fact that the Roman dole was known as annona, but that is also the name of a local taxation in kind we see increasingly invoked from the third century onwards to meet the needs of the government on the spot. That one hurt.

Finally, there is a limited time window for the solution, Before the Civil War (and well into it), Roman veterans were generally unwilling to be settled outsidse of Italy. After Caracalla, there would not have been much colonisable land, and far too many Roman citizens. In between, there were colonies founded, but it was always an expensive proposition, building the city, measuring out the land, marking the boundaries. The annona might have looked cheaper.
This. I question whether the dole was actually had any noticeable impact on the Roman treasury.

Millions? Were people outside Rome itself given grain?

Well if you count all the cities that had their own local equivalent, that sounds about right.
 
Well if you count all the cities that had their own local equivalent, that sounds about right.

Do you think the decision of a barbarian warlord to give his followers loot is also welfare? I also haven't heard of other cities in the Empire doing this, so would be curious about that.
 
This. I question whether the dole was actually had any noticeable impact on the Roman treasury.

There are more or less good estimations of historians about the budget of the roman empire.

In the Julio-Claudian Dynasty the budget for grain was perhaps about 50 Mio. HS. For the army the empire spend over 500 Mio HS. And the total budget might have been about 1 billion HS.

Such figures are always rather vague, but that's probably about the size of it.

If you look to some modern states (like Germany), the percentage of the budget used for dole is much higher. Of course a modern state is not comparable. On the other hand, the roman budget spend on dole looks not extraordinary.
 
I also haven't heard of other cities in the Empire doing this, so would be curious about that.

They did, e.g. Athens and Antiochia. But it was mostly just a subsidization of the grain price. And often just used in emergency case (e.g. after a drought).

And of course there was Constantinopolis. Same system like Rome.
 
There are more or less good estimations of historians about the budget of the roman empire.

In the Julio-Claudian Dynasty the budget for grain was perhaps about 50 Mio. HS. For the army the empire spend over 500 Mio HS. And the total budget might have been about 1 billion HS.

"Mio" is an abbreviation for million, perhaps?

But what is "HS"?
 
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