Social welfare: the alimenta

The alimenta, or child-feeding scheme, is an excellent example of humanitas Romana in a positive mode—not forbidding but doing, thus (exceptionally) dispensing with a criminal sanction.¹¹¹ Following on private philanthropic foundations that benefactors had begun setting up in Nero’s time,¹¹² the imperial government introduced an official scheme in Nerva’s reign.

The pattern of a typical scheme was as follows. The imperial treasury (the fiscus) made loans to farmers in a given district, as security for which the fiscus took mortgages. The average amount of a loan was of the order of one-twelfth of the value of the property. The farm-owner paid interest on the loan at the rate of 5 per cent per annum. The interest was paid into an alimentary fund administered by the relevant local authority, and these funds were earmarked for the maintenance of a predetermined number of poor children. Payments were gender-discriminatory, boys being given larger amounts than girls. For example, at Veleia (near Parma) loans in a total amount of 1,044,000 sesterces yielded interest of 52,200 sesterces. That amount was applied as to 47,040 sesterces to the maintenance of 245 legitimate boys at 16 sesterces per month each; 4,896 sesterces to 34 legitimate girls at 12 sesterces per month each; 144 sesterces (per annum) to one illegitimate boy, and 120 sesterces (per annum) to one illegitimate girl.¹¹³ The two illegitimates were probably included in order to balance the arithmetic; there are not enough of them to suggest a humane relaxation of the disadvantages of illegitimacy.

The scheme benefited the farmers as well as the children. It provided working capital at a lower rate of interest than the going rate, thus promoting the expansion of the country’s agricultural resources while combating poverty.¹¹⁵ In the same way as the farmer gladly (at this time though not later) accepted an appointment as a decurion or municipal councillor, thus performing a munus or public service, so did he welcome an alimentary loan. The imperial government made much of the propaganda potential of the scheme. It was commemorated on an arch at Beneventum, in numerous inscriptions, and on coins with the legend Alimenta Italiae.¹¹⁶ In at least Trajan’s case the scheme was regularly credited to the indulgentia of the Optimus Maximusque Princeps.¹¹⁷ By this time indulgentia was starting to function as one of the components of clementia/ humanitas.'¹

The purpose of the scheme has been convincingly identified¹¹⁹ as a response to the impoverishment of the rural sector, a problem sparked off by the swallowing up of small properties in the merger­mania¹²⁰ of the great estates (latifundia)¹¹¹ and aggravated by urban development and the growing wealth of the elite. The younger Pliny, himself our best-known benefactor under a private foundation, was inclined to see Rome’s manpower needs as an important motive.¹²² That is quite possible; a similar motive had prompted an earlier social welfare programme, in the shape of the Gracchan agrarian reforms of 133-121 BC.¹²³ But the idea does not fully account for the alimenta. Why were girls included at all? Perhaps a combination of military needs and social awareness would meet the case. A disruptive current of opinion doubts the poor-relief motif and argues that the alimenta was aimed at the children of comfortable middle-class families.¹²⁴ But apart from other objections to this theory,¹²⁵ can any amount of dotting i’s and crossing t’s explain why the imperial government should have adopted the principle that â€?To him that hath shall be given’?