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Updated: June 25, 2025
Panem et circenses! was the watchword of the Roman populace when hungry or wearied. The nation was really in a most admirable situation. It never knew the prosaic occupation of labour.
The Military and Bureaucratic Despotism which keeps the many quiet, as in old Rome, by panem et circenses bread and games or, if need be, Pilgrimages; that the few may make money, eat, drink, and be merry, as long as it can last.
Antoine furniture, so as to prevent an imminent collapse of credit and a recrudescence of Jacobinism in those industrial centres; for as he said: "I fear a rising brought about by want of bread: I had rather fight an army of 200,000 men than that." In the main, this policy of giving panem et circenses was successful in France; at least, it kept her quiet.
Often, indeed, it is disgraced by the characteristics of a slavish populace, a mean selfishness, a mad frivolity, and fawning adulation on the ruler who dispenses panem et circenses. Such has been the course of many a political reaction, from the time of degenerate Athens and imperial Rome down to the decay of Medicean Florence and the orgies of the restored Stuarts.
But besides supplying panem he also provided circenses to an extent never known even in the days of Louis XV. State aid was largely granted to the chief theatres, where Bonaparte himself was a frequent attendant, and a willing captive to the charms of the actress Mlle. Georges.
He, too, adapted, from a design in a drug-store window picturing a sponge fisherman in action, the cross-section illustration for news. Within a few weeks he had displaced the outdated art editor and was in receipt of a larger salary than the city editor, who dealt primarily in news, not sensations, panem not circenses. Sensationalism of other kinds was spurred to keep pace with the sex appeal.
Antoine furniture, so as to prevent an imminent collapse of credit and a recrudescence of Jacobinism in those industrial centres; for as he said: "I fear a rising brought about by want of bread: I had rather fight an army of 200,000 men than that." In the main, this policy of giving panem et circenses was successful in France; at least, it kept her quiet.
Gregory the Great feeding the pauper-masses of Rome, on the first day of every month, from the fruitful corn-bearing estates in Sicily; keeping up the 'Panem; but substituting, thank Heaven, for the 'Circenses' at least the services of the Church. Of course, the man who could keep the Roman people alive must needs become, ipso facto, their monarch.
Now, as to the man of the 18th century, Greek was to him as much a sealed language as Chinese; and, even with regard to Latin, his own secretary doubts, upon one occasion, whether he were sufficiently master of it to translate Juvenal's expressive words of Panem et Circenses.
He could have wished indeed, so far as this went, that Chad were less of a mere cicerone; for he was not without the impression now that the vision of his game, his plan, his deep diplomacy, did recurrently assert itself of his taking refuge from the realities of their intercourse in profusely dispensing, as our friend mentally phrased et panem et circenses.
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