WORLD CIVILIZATION

Detailed explanation-1: -In the final years of the Roman Republic, the Senate kept the masses happy by distributing cheap food and staging big spectacles known as the circus games to get votes. In his satires, the Roman poet Juvenal observed witheringly that governance had been reduced to panem et circenses (bread and circus/games).

Detailed explanation-2: -Juvenal here makes reference to the Roman practice of providing free wheat to Roman citizens as well as costly circus games and other forms of entertainment as a means of gaining political power.

Detailed explanation-3: -Will Luden in “Bread and Circuses for the Masses – Not Just Ancient Rome” describes the Roman government policy as “Emperors, in the later stages of the Empire, used both free bread (and other food) and free entertainment to placate the larger number of people who were otherwise poorly served by their government.”

Detailed explanation-4: -Rome’s leaders wanted the people’s obedience. Although Rome had large populations of poor and unemployed people who could not support themselves, they were able to keep their people obedient and happy in part, by giving them daily rations of bread.