Hey! I learned something new today!

And now I can quote Juvenal in the original Latin!

I was over on Charles' blog, and one of the comments on the Patriots blog posting asserted, "Our society worships the wrong things... distraction[s] like Bread and Circus." Huh? Isn't that like a whole foods market or somethin'? Hello, wikipedia?

Bread and Circuses refers to low-cost, low-quality, high-availability food and entertainment that have become the sole concern of the People, to the exclusion of matters that some consider more important: e.g. the Arts, public works projects, human rights, or democracy itself.

Umm.. you mean like Big Macs and Paris Hilton? Uh oh. It goes on:

This phrase originates in Satire X of the Roman poet Juvenal of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries. In context, the Latin phrase panem et circenses (bread and circuses) is given as the only remaining cares of a Roman populace which has given up its birthright of political freedom:

... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions - everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses

... iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, panem et circenses. ... (Juvenal, Satire 10.77-81)

I think I'll memorize that as a party trick! Buuuuurp.