Give Them Bread And Circuses And They Will Never Revolt

I saw a meme on Facebook this morning that said “Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt.”

This is attributed to the Roman poet, Juvenal – it is well-documented that in ancient Rome, provided the people (i.e. the plebeians) had their food (bread) and their entertainment (the “games” held in places such as the Colosseum), they were happy and, more importantly, controllable.

Anyway, that quote made me think about sport in general.

I have never been much of a sports fan, which isn’t to say I haven’t watched some during my time, and I’ve played a few as well – some by choice, and some because I was at school and it was mandatory.

I suppose my first exposure to sport was snooker (which is a popular game in England and in a few other countries colonized, or, more accurately, invaded, by England).

When I was still very young, probably five or so, my father taught me how to play – I was so young I had to stand on a box to even reach the table – and it was a game I would enjoy playing, and watching, for the next 30 years or so.

There were few other games I enjoyed, the only one I can think of being fives, which is another peculiarly British game that is usually only played in what they call public schools (which is a weird term because to attend you have to pay money).

Fives is a bit like squash (or is that racquetball in the USA?), except the court has only three walls, there being no rear one (at least in the version at the school I attended, Rossall, where they played Eton Fives, but other variants do have four walls), and instead of using a racquet, you use your hands (wearing padded gloves, because it hurts like hell if you don’t and you hit the ball wrong). And the ball is not soft and spongy, as in squash, but hard, more like a leather-bound golf ball.

On television, I was attracted to more unusual sports, including American football (which was unusual in England when it was first televised in the 1980s on Channel 4), sumo (where I enjoyed the actual sport but found the background and spirituality side boring), kabaddi, and probably other weird things, as well as less weird ones like downhill skiing.

The ones I never enjoyed were the traditional British games, such as football (or soccer to those in the USA), rugby, and cricket, which is like watching paint dry. How can you play a game for five entire days and still have it end in a draw?

And for a while, after moving to the USA, we watched some tennis, but only because my late wife used to enjoy it, although she too became bored with it after a few years.

In fact, when it came to playing games, I was somehow turned off completely by any team games, preferring those where it was all up to you.

But the one thing I have never done is follow any specific team or player.

And that’s bearing in mind that I grew up literally across the road from the local football team, Preston North End.

I went to a couple of games during the years we lived there, not by choice but because my father, in a rare act of trying to behave like a parent, thought I should go.

And the same happened with cricket – I was taken to a few games at a reasonably local ground, but that was largely because it was what my father wanted to do, as that was another of his “passions”.

I was also in the USA once for a long weekend, staying with a friend, and he took me to a baseball game at Shea Stadium, and once again, it was an interesting experience, but nothing I could ever devote time or energy to doing on a regular basis.

What has fascinated me for a long time is how attached some people get to specific teams – often teams located in places the person has never lived in or even visited.

And have you ever noticed how, when “their’ team wins, they’ll say something like “we played really well yesterday”, as though they were somehow part of the team, but when “their” team loses, it’s more a case of “they had bad luck”, when they suddenly distance themselves from the team.

I have to say I don’t really understand why sports are so seemingly important in so many people’s lives.

To be fair, I have spent (or is that wasted) a large number of hours watching some sports, but only in my younger years.

And let’s face it, a game of American football is a lengthy affair – even the “highlights” show we used to get in England was an hour, and on the couple of occasions I went to watch games at the old Wembley stadium, you more or less had to write off most of the day.

Another sport I used to watch (on television, although I did once go to Silverstone on practice day) was Formula 1 Grand Prix motor racing – until, one afternoon in the middle of whatever race it was that day, I realized that I really didn’t care who won and didn’t find it that entertaining after all – it’s only cars going round a track for an hour or two.

Watching it had become a habit, and it certainly wasn’t a productive one at that.

Some say that people only watch motor racing in case there’s an accident, which I think says a lot about human nature.

And that was true for most of the sports I watched – I was more interested in it being a “good” game, where you could see a clear demonstration of skill (e.g. as is the case with snooker) and where the players involved behaved in what has become known as a sportsmanlike manner.

That was largely why I stopped watching American wrestling when I was back in England – it was less about who was a better wrestler and more about the modern equivalent of gladiatorial games and satisfying the public’s blood lust through vicarious violence.

The sad part about sports is how they can divide people.

There was a time in England, and maybe it’s still there, when football matches were an excuse for opposing supporters to have a big punch-up.

There was evidence that some of these fights were organized and nothing to do with the soccer game, but there were also plenty of examples of fans fighting because they supported the “wrong” team.

These situations were often triggered, of course, by the consumption of alcohol, but not always.

As somebody who has always shied away from any form of confrontation, and who has never hit anybody in their life (except when I was forced to do a bit of boxing at school), I find all of this bizarre.

I don’t understand why people want to fight and hit each other (which is one reason why boxing has never been a “sport” I took to), and I don’t get why you would attack (verbally or physically) people for no other reason than the fact they support a different team to you.

Is it all part of some crazy group-think, an adult version of “my dad is better than your dad”, or is it simply the expression of pent-up rage, at, for example, injustice and mistreatment?

But returning to the quote I opened this article with, I will be interested to see what pans out given the coronavirus outbreak that is all over the media right now.

In the USA at least, food is becoming harder to find, in part at least because people are going crazy and hoarding stuff in massive quantities, and many areas have cancelled large gatherings of people, which of course includes live sporting events.

So, if the people are denied their “bread and circuses”, will they revolt or not?

A lot will depend, I think, on how much the people trust the government and the official stories about this virus.

If they do, which I suspect will unfortunately be the case, then those who are truly in power will get to do whatever it is they want, safe in the knowledge that most people will simply acquiesce.

And if they don’t, as seems to be the case with an increasing but still relatively small number of people, then will this be the situation that finally motivates them to rise up?

Either way, it doesn’t look good to me, and I think the country (or maybe the world) will be a very different place once this is all over, but I’m willing and hoping to be proven wrong.