scheme of
organisation except in one particular, the price at which the corn
was to be sold per _modius_ (peck): this was to be six and one-third
_asses_, or rather less than half the normal market-price of the day,
so far as it can be made out. Whether he believed that the cost of
production could be brought down to this level by regularity of demand
and transport we cannot tell; it seems at any rate probable that he
had gone carefully into the financial aspect of the business.[60] But
there can hardly be a doubt that he miscalculated, and that the result
of the law by which he sought to effect his object was a yearly
loss to the treasury, so that after his time, and until his law was
repealed by Sulla, the people were really being fed largely at the
expense of the State, and thus lapsing into a state of semipauperism,
with bad ethical consequences.

One of these consequences was that inconsiderate statesmen would only
too readily seize the chance of reducing the price of the corn still
lower, as was done by Saturninus in 100 B.C., for political purposes.
To prevent this Sulla abolished the Gracchan system _in toto_; but it
was renewed in 73 B.C., and in 58 the demagogue P. Clodius made the
distribution of corn gratuitous. In 46 Caesar found that no less than
320,000 persons were receiving corn from the State for nothing; by a
bill, of which we still possess a part,[61] he reduced the number to
150,000, and by a rigid system of rules, of which we know something,
contrived to ensure that it should be kept at that point. With the
policy of Augustus and his successors in regard to the corn-supply
(_annona_) I am not here concerned; but it is necessary to observe
that with the establishment of the Empire the plebs urbana ceased to
be of any importance in politics, and could be treated as a petted
population, from whom no harm was to be expected if they were kept
comfortable and amused. Augustus seems to have found himself compelled
to take up this attitude towards them, and he was able to do so
because he had thoroughly reorganised the public finance and knew what
he could afford for the purpose. But in time of Cicero the people were
still powerful legislation and elections, and the public finance was
disorganised and in confusion; and the result was that the corn-supply
was mixed up with politics,[62] and handled by reckless politicians
in a way that was as ruinous to the treasury as it was to the moral
welfare of the ci