In view of the new Tory leader David Cameron’s call for ‘social enterprise zones’, where local communities deal with local social problems, it may be worth reminding him of the alimentary schemes that the Romans developed for helping the children of the poor (alimentum, ‘provisions, maintenance’).
The general idea was that private individuals and public corporations should work together to relieve distress. So, for example, in ad 97 Pliny the Younger promised his home town of Comum (on Lake Como) 500,000 HS (sesterces) — c. £5 million — for the purpose, but instead of giving them a lump sum, he transferred property worth far more than that to a local land-agent. This official rented it out, yielding 30,000 HS a year (say, £300,000) for distribution among the needy — a scheme that preserved both the principal and the interest for the town to manage.
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