Before anything else I think a crucial misconception should be addressed:

Would they have just eaten the free bread or what?

If you're referring to the scene in Gladiator where they throw loaves of bread into the crowd, like much in that movie they made that up. Somebody seems to have though that Juvenal's line panem et circenses to read panem in circensibus, for which there is no textual evidence. Moreover, the publicly-subsidized grain to which Juvenal refers is just that, grain. It is decidedly not bread--recipients of public grain had to bake their own bread (usually in communal ovens) or pay for somebody to do it for them