Bread and circuses, welfare and sports – the essentials are the same. From Chris MacIntosh at internationalman.com:
Ancient Rome was the world’s most powerful empire for 500 years.
At its height, Rome boasted of roads, public baths, and much else that was close to miraculous for the rest of the planet. Then came the Great Fall, and what happened has lessons for the world TODAY.
In his book The City In History (1961), Lewis Mumford explains how Rome went from “Megalopolis to Necropolis.”
This great city set up its own demise in two ways: Panem et circenses (or “bread and circuses”). Mumford says, “Success underwrote a sickening parasitic failure.”Advertisements
about:blank
REPORT THIS AD
As ancient Rome became prosperous, it became an unsustainable welfare state. Mumford writes that “indiscriminate public largesse” became common. A large portion of the population “took on the parasitic role for a whole lifetime.” More than 200,000 citizens of Rome regularly received handouts of bread from “public storehouses.”
Lewis Mumford also wrote the desire to lead an industrious productive life had severely “weakened.”
So what did people spend their time on? Distractions, which meant circuses.
Der Friedensstifter 