From Ben Moreell, “Of Bread and Circuses,” The Freeman, 1/1/1956:
Rome was sacked by Alaric and his Goths in 410 A.D. But long before the barbarian invasions, Rome was a hollow shell of the once noble Republic. Its real grandeur was gone and its people were demoralized. Most of the old forms and institutions remained. But a people whose horizons were limited by bread and circuses had destroyed the spirit while paying lip service to the letter of their once hallowed traditions.
The fall of Rome affords a pertinent illustration of the observation by the late President Lowell of Harvard University that “no society is ever murdered—it commits suicide.”
I do not imply that bread and circuses are evil things in themselves. Man needs material sustenance and he needs recreation. These needs are so basic that they come within the purview of every religion. In every religion there is a harvest festival of thanksgiving for good crops. And as for recreation, we need only recall that our word “holiday” was originally “holy day,” a day of religious observance. In fact, the circuses and games of old Rome were religious in origin. The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease. The moral decay of the people was not caused by the doles and the games. These merely provided a measure of their degradation. Things that were originally good had become perverted and, as Shakespeare reminds us, “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”
“…the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games…” Sound familiar?
curious as to the exact frame of reference about which he wrote for the times of 1956