Deinippus in Corinth ...

Sure, the New York of back then (basically), Corinth must have been hardest struck by the famine predicted in Acts (because commercial cities never are good at staying out of famine, you know, Dublin was the worst place in Ireland during potato famine, the country-side was fairly safe ... ?) and therefore an inscription marking off Deinippus as a very good overseer of the Annona means Corinthians in general and Corinthian Church in particular was stricken by famine when St Paul said it was preferrable not to marry.

Have you heard that story?

I have.

Virginity according to St Paul in I Cor 7:9 is preferrable ....

• in Corinth that moment, because Corinth is famine stricken?
• or - as tradition has it - because God likes virginity more than marriage, after the fall.

Those who hold the first have pointed to Deinippus as proof of Corinth, however improbable that is, having been famine stricken at the time when St Paul wrote his letter. Why would Corinth have a prefect of the Annona if there is no famine, after all?

Hmmmm ... socialism?

I mean, not like October Revolution 1917 (though parts of the civil war strifes after Punic wars were somewhat comparable to that or to National Socialism after WW-I loss, though the actual occasion was more like French peasants getting drafted and then having no earth to get back to when replaced by tractors - in ancient Rome megafamring with slaves) - but still kind of ... socialist welfare politics, so, socialism - could it be?

Yeah, there seems to be some ground behind the wiki I was presenting in response a few years ago.

Here is what J. Patrick Holding would presumably consider a scholarly source:

Grain Distribution at Rome
21/5/2015 by Emily Kittell-Queller :
http://emilykq.weebly.com/blog/grain-distribution-at-rome

Checking the scholarly part:

I am Women's and Gender Studies/Classics double major with a minor in Medieval Studies who really likes finding connections between the present and the things she's been studying.

Now, for the beef:

Starting in the late 3rd century BCE, politicians began distributing grain to the lower classes, mostly to men who could vote, in an effort to gain popularity and get elected. A century and a half later, Gaius Gracchus instituted a measure which allowed people to buy grain at a lower price. By this point, the availability of free or affordable grain to at least some of the populace of the City was so entrenched that to take it away might well have resulted in revolts. Julius Caesar, among others, tried to lower the number of people who were eligible, but the numbers always went up again. Eventually, the office of Prefect of Annona was set up to oversee the distribution. Emperors and other wealthy people also set up programs to supplement the official grain dole.

If you read on, you'll find, as a feminist she is upset that a woman could not get the grains on her own, she needed a husband.

This of course means, when the Church organised widows and sometimes even virgins in a kind of nunneries (see further on in same chapter) these women could not get the Annona, so, they needed men to do it for them, and since unmarried, this meant men in the Church supported them by donations.

And that in turn meant, in order to be really deflected from the obvious and traditional meaning by references to Deinippus, one really needs to have not read much of the rest of the chapter. Or to imagine, anachronistically, that in Ancient Roman Empire:

• everyone could support all needs by having a job
• and this was the case for women too.

On the contrary, an unmarried virgin needed support from the Church - and part of what the Reformation did was withdraw this.

Let's quote one more tidbit of the article:

The thing is, feeding the people of the City of Rome remained a problem for much of its history in the ancient period. The surrounding farmland simply couldn’t produce enough grain even before it started being used primarily to cultivate luxuries rather than food staples. Instead, they had to get grain from elsewhere.* There was another problem though: given the cost of importing grain, a significant portion of the lower classes in the city couldn’t actually afford to buy it.

This is relevant to what?

Well, to an article where I debunk the idea that "the city lights went out" at beginning of Middle Ages. Rather big cities became smaller and so citizens had an easier time supporting themselves. So, I here link to a little other article, where I deal with that idea (rehashed by - of all things - a Catholic, who should have known better than partake in Middle Ages bashing):

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : The City Lights Went Out, Did They?
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-city-lights-went-out-did-they.html

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Octave of All Saints
8.XI.2018