Poverty in ancient Rome is challenging to define as much of the Roman population lived in conditions resembling modern poverty. Roman society was largely agrarian and afflictions such as low literacy rates, high infant mortality, and poor diets were widespread throughout the populace. Poverty can be defined through landlessness; the majority of land in ancient Rome was concentrated in the hands of a small class of wealthy people, leaving the rest of the population with little land. However, people in urban settings likely could have lived well without owning land. Ancient Roman poverty can also be viewed through the lens of political disenfranchisement; the poor were less able to access political offices, had increased difficulty casting ballots, had votes of lesser significance, and had higher tax rates. The Codex Theodosianus, a late Roman legal document, describes various laws in which the poor were to be punished differently from the rich. Estimates of the GDP per capita in ancient Rome suggest that the majority of the population was living at subsistence levels, with enough money to live securely but not comfortably.

Roman writers such as Seneca and Cicero describe the poorer parts of the population as unvirtuous and immoral masses who were threats to the nation and unconcerned with the values of the Roman world. Sallust, a 1st-century BCE Roman politician and historian, argued that the plebeians envied wealthier individuals and were motivated by jealousy to destabilize Roman society; he cites the Catilinarian conspiracy, an attempted coup which Sallust believed was promoted by the plebs. Other Roman writers like the 1st-century Roman philosopher Seneca condemned wealth, decrying it as corruptive and leading to discontentment in life. The Romans also valued simple agrarian lifestyles, honoring heroes such as Cincinnatus who—according to legend—lived on a farm prior to his military campaigns. Ancient Roman Christian depictions tend to depict the poor as more sympathetic and often call for the wealthy to help them. John Chrysostom, a 4th-century Christian theologian, argued that if the rich redistributed their wealth amongst the populace "you would have difficulty in finding one poor person for every fifty or even every hundred of the others."John Chrysostom. Homilies on Matthew’s Gospel. 66.14. However, other Christian writers adopted less critical viewpoints on wealth; the 3rd-century theologian Clement of Alexandria portrayed wealth as morally neutral, arguing that the piety of the rich is not necessarily stifled by their wealth.

The ancient Roman government implemented various policies designed to provide financial aid to the poor: the was a grain redistribution program and the alimenta was a welfare program for impoverished children. Wealthy Roman philanthropy, while it did occur, was often more motivated by the desire to appear benevolent and to build up one's social status than genuine altruism. Philanthropists in ancient Rome expected to have statues and plaques commemorating their generosity built in their honor. The selfish motivations often underpinning Roman gift-giving were noticed and mocked by contemporary writers: Cicero described this phenomenon, stating "We may also observe that a great many people do many things that seem to be inspired more by a spirit of ostentation than by heart-felt kindness; for such people are not really generous but are rather influenced by a sort of ambition to make a show of being open-handed." Seneca promoted genuine charity in his writings, declaring that the "wise man" will "stretch out his hand to the shipwrecked mariner, will offer hospitality to the exile, and alms to the needy." However, Seneca did not advocate for unrestricted generosity, arguing that charity should be limited to "good men or to those whom it [charity] may make into good men." Similar ideas were expressed by the 3rd-century BCE comic playwright Plautus: "A man who gives a beggar something to eat or drink does him bad service: what he gives him gets wasted and he prolongs his life in misery."

Definition

Defining poverty in ancient Rome can be difficult. The conditions of most people in the Roman world resembled modern ideas of poverty; ancient Rome was a largely agrarian, rural society afflicted with high rates of infant mortality, poor diets, and low literacy. Furthermore, true destitution in the ancient world was possibly a fatal, unsustainable condition. These factors may have prevented the development of a uniquely poor social class. Limited archaeological evidence for poorer classes creates additional challenges for modern scholars, inhibiting their ability to determine the social classes of the inhabitants. The Roman poor may be conceptualized as the class to which these unidentifiable sites belonged. Roman writers typically do not differentiate between different social strata amongst the poorer plebeian classes, instead dividing society into the wealthy upper-class patricians or equestrians and the lower-class masses.

In many cases, Roman social strata were organized according to political power more than economic standing. For example, the and were Roman social distinctions that classified army veterans, senators, equestrians, and municipal decurions as and the rest of the population as . The , being composed of individuals ranging from consuls to army veterans, almost certainly comprised a variety of distinct economic classes. Likewise, the must have consisted of individuals of a wide range of wealth as the Roman population almost entirely fell into this category. In the 2nd century CE, the Roman jurist Gaius argued that "The principal division of the law of persons is as follows, namely, that all men are either free or slaves."Digestes. 1.5. According to the classicist Dr. Peter Garnsey and the legal historian Dr. Caroline Humfress, the significance of the distinction between the free poor and slaves declined over the course of Roman history. Punishments traditionally reserved for slaves were becoming more common as punitive measures for other classes. Callistratus—a jurist who lived during the reign of Emperor Septimius Severus ()—claimed that the penalty of immolation, although once exclusive to slaves, became a punishment for plebeians and "men of low rank" (). During the reign of Emperor Diocletian (), the system of tenant farmers—known as —became more prominent; this system effectively reduced the Roman peasantry to serfdom.

Poverty itself may have been partially defined by the lack of political power; during the Roman Republic, only a small fraction of the massive population was truly capable of partaking in or influencing the political process. Upper-class individuals had easier access to political offices compared to lower-class people. The Centuriate Assembly, which elected higher magistrates, was divided into 193 centuriae organized according to property value. Senators, equestrians, and the first class held 88 centuriae; the 2 lowest classes held only 30 centuriae, and the lowest class—the proletarii—held only 1. Much of the Roman population was disenfranchised because they either lacked the legal ability to vote due to non-citizenship or because they lacked the practical capacity to deliver their ballot. The 1st-century BCE Greek historian Plutarch claims that during the tribunal election of the 2nd-century BCE populist reformer Gaius Gracchus, the Campus Martius could not accommodate all of the voters; instead, according to Plutarch, they shouted their chosen candidate from the rooftops nearby.Plutarch. Caius Gracchus. 3.1.

Another uncertainty is the presence of a Roman middle class. Their society may have consisted of a handful of wealthy individuals that made up 0.6% of the population, an army that made up 0.4% of the population, and the poor masses that made up 99% of the populace. However, the Roman census tracked numerous different social strata, implying that there were likely more middling classes consisting of people who maintained sizeable amounts of wealth without qualifying as rich. Other scholars, such as the classicist Dr. William Harris divided Roman society into three economic classes: those who relied on other's work, those who were well-off although they still worked, and the slaves and menial laborers. However, these distinctions do not identify the various unique subclasses within the broader classification of the Roman poor. Landownership may also have distinguished the poor from the wealthy in much of the Roman countryside. Those with significant amounts of quality land capable of yielding good crops were undoubtedly much wealthier than those without such luxuries. Such persons would have been freed from concerns affecting poorer civilians, such as food insecurity. Land was widely used as security for loans, making it harder for landless people to acquire wealth. Urbanized settings contained populations of landless, yet not necessarily impoverished, people; artisans and laborers in towns or cities could enrich themselves through their work, or at least benefit from food security. Cicero, a 1st-century BCE Roman statesman, claims that the Servian constitution, a legal text allegedly instituted by a legendary Roman king named Servius Tullius, classified the rich as the and the poor as the . According to Cicero, the were the wealthy while the were those who lacked more than 1,500 . Cicero believed that the were primarily expected to contribute children to the Roman population.Cicero. De Re Publica. 2.40-42.

Wealth inequality

Estimates of the prices in ancient Rome suggest that even a small amount of money, amounting to 375 sesterces, could have equated to an annual income between of grain. For a family of 4, this income likely could have provided between of grain per person each year. This number is around the estimated GDP per capita of the Roman empire, which could have amounted to around of grain. If these estimates are correct, which they may not be, then the poorer parts of the Roman population likely could reliably sustain themselves, although not necessarily live comfortably. The GDP per capita of Roman Italy was possibly similar to the economies of 18th-century Netherlands or Spain. Although incomes were certainly lower in the provinces, potentially around half the wages in Italy, archaeological evidence of urban development suggests that the population was growing during the early empire. Significant population growth further implies that the average provincial Roman had enough wealth to exist at subsistence living, facilitating population expansion. The historians Walter Scheidel and Steven Friesen estimated that, during the Roman Empire, around 612% of the Roman population had "middle-class" incomes, with the poor constituting around 80% of the population. They estimate that the Roman Empire had a Gini coefficient—a method for measuring wealth inequality—of 0.42 or 0.44.