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That's fine. I meant to contrast the dominant view of the poor in the Christian era in the West to that of the pagan era. I shouldn't have said "invented."
I don't know too much about Trajan so I'll defer to you guys on that.
The dominant philosophies, stoicism, for example, promoted "goodness," but not compassion or feeling. Many of the public charities were to aggrandize the wealthy and weren't of the selfless type. I don't know that there were bands of men and women in pagan Europe dedicated to helping the wretched.
This is a huge topic that takes a lot of time. We can call a truce on this.
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