there were sold 180
Roman pounds (a pound = 11 oz.) of dried figs, 60 pounds of oil, 72
pounds of meat, and 6 -congii- (= 4 1/2 gallons) of wine--is scarcely
by reason of its very singularity to be taken into account; but other
facts speak more distinctly. Even in Cato's time Sicily was called
the granary of Rome. In productive years Sicilian and Sardinian corn
was disposed of in the Italian ports for the freight. In the richest
corn districts of the peninsula--the modern Romagna and Lombardy
--during the time of Polybius victuals and lodgings in an inn cost on
an average half an -as- (1/3 pence) per day; a bushel and a half of
wheat was there worth half a -denarius- (4 pence). The latter average
price, about the twelfth part of the normal price elsewhere,(11) shows
with indisputable clearness that the producers of grain in Italy were
wholly destitute of a market for their produce, and in consequence
corn and corn-land there were almost valueless.

Revolution in Roman Agriculture

In a great industrial state, whose agriculture cannot feed its
population, such a result might perhaps be regarded as useful or at
any rate as not absolutely injurious; but a country like Italy, where
manufactures were inconsiderable and agriculture was altogether the
mainstay of the state, was in this way systematically ruined, and the
welfare of the nation as a whole was sacrificed in the most shameful
fashion to the interests of the essentially unproductive population
of the capital, to which in fact bread could never become too cheap.
Nothing perhaps evinces so clearly as this, how wretched was the
constitution and how incapable was the administration of this
so-called golden age of the republic. Any representative system,
however meagre, would have led at least to serious complaints and to
a perception of the seat of the evil; but in those primary assemblies
of the burgesses anything was listened to sooner than the warning
voice of a foreboding patriot. Any government that deserved the name
would of itself have interfered; but the mass of the Roman senate
probably with well-meaning credulity regarded the low prices of grain
as a real blessing for the people, and the Scipios and Flamininuses
had, forsooth, more important things to do--to emancipate the Greeks,
and to exercise the functions of republican kings. So the ship drove
on unhindered towards the breakers.

Decay of the Farmers

When the small holdings ceased to yield an