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The Conservative Caucus Podcast #12 – Colin Eliot

Published: August 20, 2025
Network: The Conservative Caucus
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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The debate over government welfare programs often invokes appeals to Christian charity and moral obligation, but what did ancient Roman charity actually look like? In this illuminating discussion, historian Dr. Colin Elliott of Indiana University reveals how ancient Roman charity operated through political patronage rather than altruism, and how early Christians revolutionized charitable giving through voluntary, sacrificial love—a stark contrast to today’s bureaucratic welfare state.

Topics Covered

• How Rome Responded to the Antonine Plague
• The Roman Patronage System: Politics Over Charity
• Early Christian Charity: A Radical Innovation
• Voluntary Giving vs. Government Extraction
• Modern Welfare Programs: No Historical Precedent
• Key Takeaways

How Rome Responded to the Antonine Plague

The Antonine Plague, which struck the Roman Empire around 160 AD during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, provides a revealing case study in how ancient governments approached crisis management. Dr. Elliott, author of Pox Romana: The Plague That Shook the Roman World, explains that while the disease likely killed between 5-10% of the population, its broader economic and social disruptions proved even more devastating.

The Roman government’s response was remarkably limited by modern standards. Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his co-emperor Lucius Verus paid for corpse removal in Rome and passed laws restricting where bodies could be buried—a far cry from comprehensive disaster relief. The primary “mitigation measures” were entirely religious: building statues to gods, performing public sacrifices, and inscribing protective words on amulets.

“For Romans, diseases were religious. They’re caused by gods being furious with the population. And so you have this group of Christians—about 10 to 40,000 people in the Roman Empire—that aren’t participating in all of the sacrifices and the statue building and the rituals that are supposed to ward off this pandemic.”
— Dr. Colin Elliott, Professor of Roman History, Indiana University

This religious framework created intense persecution for Christians, who refused to participate in pagan rituals. Romans viewed Christian non-compliance as the very cause of the plague’s continuation—a form of scapegoating that intensified during subsequent outbreaks like the Cyprianic Plague in the mid-3rd century.

The Roman Patronage System: Politics Over Charity

Understanding ancient Roman charity requires grasping the patronage system that defined Roman social relationships. Unlike modern welfare programs ostensibly designed to help those in need, Roman “benefactions” operated through a reciprocal exchange system where elites provided resources in return for political support, votes, and social status.

Dr. Elliott explains that Roman elites had obligations to their dependents—family members, slaves, and voluntary clients—but this relationship was fundamentally transactional. Clients would provide their patron with an entourage, vote for him in elections, and attend family funerals in exchange for financial advice, legal assistance, and occasional material support.

The Alimenta program under emperors Nerva and Trajan (late 90s-early 100s AD) represents perhaps the closest ancient parallel to need-based assistance. This program loaned war spoils to Italian farmers, with the interest funding support for poor and orphaned children. However, even this program had mixed motives—Trajan, the first emperor born outside Italy, used it to demonstrate his loyalty to the Italian heartland. Moreover, it helped only a fraction of needy children, perhaps one in ten or twenty.

“We should not think of Roman grain subsidies as welfare,” Elliott emphasizes. “It’s patronage or gift-giving at a grand scale, tied to prestige and status—totally different than modern charity which ostensibly aims to help people who have a need.”

Early Christian Charity: A Radical Innovation

Against this backdrop of transactional patronage, early Christian charity emerged as a revolutionary force in the ancient world. The Christian concept of agape—self-sacrificial love without expectation of return—represented a complete departure from Roman social norms.

Tertullian, the North African Christian apologist writing around 200 AD, provided a detailed description of early Christian charitable practices in his Apology (Section 39). His account reveals the stark contrast with Roman approaches:

“There is no buying and selling of any sort in the things of God. Though we have our treasure chest, it is not made up of purchase money as of a religion that has its price. On the monthly day if he likes, each puts in a small donation, but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able. For there is no compulsion. All is voluntary.”
— Tertullian, Apology 39

Tertullian goes on to describe how these voluntary donations supported “poor people, boys and girls destitute of means and parents, old persons confined now to the house, those who have suffered shipwreck, and any in the mines or banished to the islands or shut up in the prisons for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God’s church.”

During the Antonine Plague and subsequent pandemics, Christians distinguished themselves by caring for the sick—even at great personal cost—while Roman citizens fled cities or threw corpses in ditches. Church historian Eusebius records that Christians would visit the sick and then often die themselves, demonstrating their belief in resurrection through self-sacrificial service.

This witness proved powerful. As Dr. Elliott notes, “Romans are getting furious because Christians are kind of undermining them because they’re not able to care for anybody, and yet the Christians are helping people.” Emperor Julian, the last non-Christian emperor, complained in letters about how Christian charity was making his own governance look inadequate by comparison.

Voluntary Giving vs. Government Extraction

The fundamental distinction between ancient Christian charity and modern welfare programs lies in the voluntary nature of giving. Jim Pfaff emphasizes this critical difference: “Christian charity was always a voluntary collection. People gave as they were able to give. It was redistributed through church officials on the basis of true genuine need.”

In contrast, modern welfare systems extract money involuntarily through taxation, filter it through bureaucratic administrative apparatus (losing significant portions to overhead and inefficiency), and distribute it according to political criteria rather than genuine need or personal knowledge of recipients.

The effectiveness of these different models speaks volumes. As Elliott observes, “The Anona program in Rome fails spectacularly eventually. The Roman Empire isn’t here anymore. Christian charity continues to thrive. The church continues to thrive. I think that’s a pretty clear sign as to which model makes sense.”

Even the scale and infrastructure of Christian charity proved superior. Modern hospitals, for example, originated from Christian charitable institutions, not government programs. The sustainability and effectiveness of voluntary, faith-based charity over two millennia contrasts sharply with the repeated failures of state-mandated redistribution schemes.

Modern Welfare Programs: No Historical Precedent

Perhaps the most striking revelation from this historical examination is how utterly without precedent modern welfare states are in human history. “Modern bureaucratized welfare states and social systems—nothing even remotely like this would be present in any ancient society that I know of,” Dr. Elliott states definitively.

This historical reality undermines common progressive Christian arguments that invoke biblical commands about caring for the poor as justification for government welfare programs. The early church never conceived of secular government as the appropriate vehicle for charity, nor did they advocate for such systems.

When the New Testament discusses charity—Paul’s collections for the Jerusalem church, James’s admonitions to care for widows and orphans, Jesus’s teachings about the poor—the context is always voluntary giving within the faith community and personal acts of mercy, never taxation-funded government redistribution.

“There’s just such a huge difference between impersonal, bureaucratized, involuntary welfare programs and early Christian charity. The differences are stark.”
— Dr. Colin Elliott

The biblical principle that “if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8) reflects the early church’s emphasis on personal responsibility and family-based support systems, with church charity serving as a safety net for those truly without family support—widows, orphans, and the destitute.

Dr. Elliott also addresses the common counter-argument that modern democratic voting makes welfare programs “voluntary”: “Christianity is concerned not just with the ends of something but also the means. We should do right things the right way. We should not break commandments in order to fulfill other commandments.”

He illustrates this with a simple analogy: “If I knew that my elderly neighbor was in need, it would be wrong for me to go to another one of my neighbors, rob them of their money, and go and give it to my elderly neighbor. I would be doing good for one neighbor but I would be violating the basic commandment not to steal.”

Key Takeaways

1. Ancient Roman Charity Was Political, Not Altruistic – Roman “welfare” programs like the grain dole operated through patronage systems designed to secure votes and legitimize political power, not to help those in genuine need. Benefits went to citizens as markers of status, not based on poverty.
2. Early Christians Revolutionized Charitable Giving – Christian charity introduced the radical concept of agape—voluntary, self-sacrificial love without expectation of return. This represented a complete departure from transactional Roman social relationships and proved transformative during crises like the Antonine Plague.
3. Voluntary vs. Coerced Giving Matters Morally – The voluntary nature of early Christian charity allowed for character formation, personal connection between giver and recipient, and sustainable effectiveness. Modern welfare systems extract money involuntarily, filter it through bureaucracy, and distribute it impersonally.
4. Modern Welfare States Have No Ancient Precedent – Bureaucratized government welfare programs are entirely modern inventions without parallel in ancient civilizations. Progressive Christian appeals to biblical charity commands ignore this historical reality—the early church never conceived of government as the vehicle for charity.
5. Effectiveness Validates the Christian Model – Christian charitable institutions have sustained themselves for two millennia and created enduring infrastructure like hospitals. Roman welfare programs collapsed along with the empire, and modern welfare systems consistently fail to achieve their stated goals while creating dependency.
6. Biblical Commands Address Personal and Church Charity – New Testament teachings about caring for the poor consistently refer to voluntary giving within faith communities and personal acts of mercy, never taxation-funded government redistribution. The emphasis on providing for one’s own household contradicts the modern welfare state’s displacement of family responsibility.
7. Local, Personal Charity Proves Most Effective – Whether in ancient times or today, charity works best when givers personally know recipients, can assess genuine need, and maintain accountability. The abstraction and distance of government programs—whether foreign aid or domestic welfare—undermines effectiveness and enables waste.

Dr. Colin Elliott hosts the Pax Romana Podcast, available on all major podcast platforms, where he provides accessible history lessons on the Roman Empire. His book Pox Romana: The Plague That Shook the Roman World is available from Princeton University Press.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast August 20, 2025 on The Conservative Caucus.