Alimenta

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Statue of Trajan in front of the Amphitheater of Colonia Ulpia Traiana in the Xanten Archaeological Park

The alimenta was a Roman welfare program that existed from around 98 AD to 272 AD. It was probably introduced by Nerva and was later expanded by Trajan. It was designed to subsidise orphans and poor children throughout Italy, but nowhere else, with a cash income, food and subsidized education. The program was an Imperial gift, supported during Trajan's reign by booty from his Dacian wars and estate taxes on landowners.[1] Landowners who registered to contribute received a lump sum from the imperial treasury as a loan, and were expected to repay a given proportion annually, as their contribution to a charitable fund.[2] The program was likely terminated by emperor Aurelian.[3]

Goals

Although the system is well documented in literary sources and contemporary epigraphy, its precise aims are disputed by modern scholars. Some assume that the program was intended to bolster citizen numbers in Italy, a continuation of Augustus' moral legislation (Lex Julia), which favoured procreation on moral grounds. This was openly acknowledged by Pliny.[4] He wrote that the recipients of the alimenta were supposed to populate "the barracks and the tribes" as future soldiers and electors. In reality, both these roles were ill-fitted to an empire ruled as an autocracy,[5] no longer centered exclusively on Rome or Italy, nor exclusively reliant on purely Roman or Italian civil and military manpower.[6] The scheme's restriction to Italy suggests that it might have been conceived as a form of political privilege accorded to the original heartland of the empire.[7] According to the French historian Paul Petit, the alimenta should be seen as part of a set of measures aimed towards the economic recovery of Italy.[8] Finley thinks that the scheme's chief aim was the artificial bolstering of the political weight of Italy, as seen, for example, in the stricture — heartily praised by Pliny — laid down by Trajan that ordered all senators, even when from the provinces, to have at least a third of their landed estates in Italian territory, as it was "unseemly [...] that [they] should treat Rome and Italy not as their native land, but as a mere inn or lodging house".[9]

Scope

"Interesting and unique" as Finley finds the scheme, it remained small.

Moses I. Finley sees the alimenta as little more than a form of random charity, an additional imperial benevolence.[14] It is possible that the scheme was, to some extent, a forced loan, something that tied unwilling landowners to the imperial treasury in order fund civic expenses.[15] In this respect, the alimenta was not unusual, and may have been one of the more outstanding among similar and lesser fund-raising schemes. The senator Pliny had endowed his city of Comum a perpetual and heritable right to an annual levy (vectigal) of thirty thousand sestertii on one of his estates.[16] Pliny probably hoped to engender enthusiasm among fellow landowners for such philanthropic ventures. Trajan did likewise, but since "willingness is a slippery commodity", Finley suspects that, in order to ensure Italian landowners' acceptance of the burden of borrowing from the alimenta fund, some "moral" pressure was exerted.[17]

In short, the scheme was so limited in scope that it could not have fulfilled a coherent economic or demographic purpose — it was directed, not towards the poor, but to the community (in this case, the Italian cities) as a whole.[18] The fact that the alimenta were expanded during and after the Dacian Wars and twice came on the heels of a distribution of money to the population of Rome (congiaria) following Dacian triumphs, points towards a purely charitable motive.[19] The fact that the alimenta were restricted to Italy highlights the ideology behind it: to reaffirm the notion of the Roman Empire as an Italian overlordship.[6] Given its limited scope, the plan was, nevertheless, very successful in that it lasted for a century and a half.

End

Roman prefect

Cura Annonae to replace the dole of grain by a dole of bread, salt and pork, as well as subsidized prices for other goods such as oil and wine.[20]

References

  1. ^ "Alimenta". Tjbuggey.ancients.info. Archived from the original on February 10, 2014. Retrieved April 25, 2014.
  2. ISBN 0-203-41870-0
    , page 158
  3. ^ Southern, Pat, The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine (2004), pg. 123.
  4. ISBN 978-0-19-978154-6
    p. 344
  5. ^ Veyne 1976, p. 769.
  6. ^ a b Veyne 1976, p. 654.
  7. ISBN 978-84-9772-985-7
    , page 151
  8. ^ Petit 1976, p. 76.
  9. ^ Finley 1999, p. 119.
  10. ^ Finley 1999, p. 40.
  11. ISBN 0-521-24970-8
  12. ISBN 978-90-04-17118-3
  13. ISBN 88-8265-111-8
    , page 297
  14. ^ Finley 1999, p. 201–203.
  15. ISBN 0-19-513912-7
  16. ISBN 0-521-24970-8
  17. ^ Finley 1999, p. 203.
  18. ^ Finley 1999, p. 39.
  19. ISBN 0-415-23578-2
    , page 26
  20. ISBN 978-0-415-73807-1
    , page 181

Sources and Further Reading
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