ither from Etruria, Campania, or even northern
Italy. In the natural course of things therefore transmarine corn
could not but flow to the peninsula, and lower the price of the grain
produced there. Under the unnatural disturbance of relations
occasioned by the lamentable system of slave-labour, it would perhaps
have been justifiable to impose a duty on transmarine corn for the
protection of the Italian farmer; but the very opposite course seems
to have been pursued, and with a view to favour the import of
transmarine corn to Italy, a prohibitive system seems to have been
applied in the provinces--for though the Rhodians were allowed to
export a quantity of corn from Sicily by way of special favour, the
export of grain from the provinces must probably, as a rule, have been
free only as regarded Italy, and the transmarine corn must thus have
been monopolized for the benefit of the mother-country.

Prices of Italian Corn

The effects of this system are clearly evident. A year of
extraordinary fertility like 504--when the people of the capital paid
for 6 Roman -modii- (1 1/2 bush.) of spelt not more than 3/5 of a
-denarius- (about 5 pence), and at the same price 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