Bread, circuses and the price of silence

Sep 03, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

(Kaieteur News) – Juvenal, the Roman satirist, looked upon his fellow citizens nearly two thousand years ago and wondered what had become of a people who once cared passionately about the affairs of the Republic. “We have sold our votes,” he wrote, before observing that the Roman citizenry had come to desire only two things: panem et circenses—bread and circuses.

Juvenal was not merely complaining that politicians were buying votes with food and entertainment; he was making the more unsettling observation that citizens had willingly exchanged the burdens of political responsibility for the comforts of being provided for and amused. The tragedy, in his telling, was not simply that power had become corrupt but that the people had become sufficiently comfortable, distracted and preoccupied to stop caring very much about what the powerful did with it.