ABSTRACT
“Poverty”, it has been written, “is an unwieldy term”, “referring to a state that is easier to describe than define”. Except for cases of political crimes, it was relatively rare for Roman noble families to descend into what is termed “absolute poverty” by modern researchers. In Republican and Imperial Rome specifically, Latin terminology with regard to the semantic field of “poverty” is notoriously ambivalent. Apicius is doubtless a particularly egregious example, but there are numerous others including members of this elite using the terms pauper or paupertas as self-ascribed descriptors even in the face of considerable wealth. Martial, for one, continuously refers to himself as pauper, his possession of a number of slaves, properties in Rome and Nomentum, and his equestrian census notwithstanding. Aristocratic financiers were instrumental in providing a degree of balance to a financial rivalry among the elite, a rivalry that had become increasingly ruinous for all but the richest.
