bread and circuses

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English

WOTD – 4 September 2019

Etymology

From Latin panem et circenses (literally “bread and circuses”), a reference to Satire 10 of the Roman poet Juvenal’s Satires (early 2nd century C.E.). The relevant passage states: “ nam qui dabat olim imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, panem et circenses” (“or that sovereign people that once gave away military command, consulships, legions, and every thing, now bridles its desires, and limits its anxious longings to two things only,—bread, and the games of the circus!”). Juvenal was commenting that the Roman people no longer cared for political involvement, and were satisfied with cheap food and entertainment provided by politicians.

Pronunciation

Noun

bread and circuses pl (plural only)

  1. (idiomatic) Food and entertainment provided by the state, particularly if intended to placate the people.
    Synonym: bread and games
  • 1877, Amelia B Edwards, “Cairo and the Mecca Pilgrimage”, in A Thousand Miles up the Nile, London: Longmans, Green, & Co., →OCLC, page 35:
    Take a Mahommedan at his devotions, and he is a model of religious abstraction; but see him in his hours of relaxation, or on the occasion of a public holiday, and he is as garrulous and full of laughter as a big child. Like a child, too, he loves noise and movement for the mere sake of noise and movement, and looks upon swings and fireworks as the height of human felicity. Now swings and fireworks are Arabic for bread and circuses, and our pleb's passion for them is insatiable.
  • 2012 March 22, Scott Tobias, “The Hunger Games”, in The A.V. Club‎, archived from the original on 4 January 2019:
    In movie terms, it suggests Paul Verhoeven in Robocop/Starship Troopers mode, an R-rated bloodbath where the grim spectacle of children murdering each other on television is bread-and-circuses for the age of reality TV, enforced by a totalitarian regime to keep the masses at bay.
  • (by extension) Grand spectacles staged or statements made to distract and pacify people.

    • Translations

    References

    1. ^ “bread and circuses”, n., in “bread, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1888; “bread and circuses, phrase”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
    2. ^ Juvenal (1852) “Satire X”, in Lewis Evans, transl., The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius, Literally Translated into English Prose, , London: Henry G Bohn, , →OCLC, page 107.

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