A people so restless and unmanageable as were the Greeks and Romans, when pressed by hunger, required that the greatest care should be exercised for the supply of corn, and the easy sale of this precious provision. Hence nothing could be wiser than their regulations on this subject.
One of the laws of the twelve tables punished with death the individual who had premeditatedly set fire to his neighbour’s corn; and inflicted a fine or the whip on any one who caused so great a calamity by his imprudence.[II_25]
In Greece, a special magistrate, the “Sitocome,” was charged with the inspection of the corn; and various officers, such as the sitones, the sitophylaces, and the sitologes, were appointed to watch over its purchase.
And lastly, public distributors, under the names of siturches and sitometres, were exclusively occupied with the allotment of corn;[II_26] they prevented any one from purchasing a greater quantity than was actually necessary for his wants. The law forbad the delivery of more than fifty measures to one individual.[II_27] The Roman government was so convinced that abundance of bread was one of the best means of maintaining public tranquillity,[II_28] that Julius Cæsar created two prætors, and two ediles or magistrates, to preside over the purchase, conveyance, storing, and gratuitous distribution of wheat.[II_29] For we know that this people of kings, powerful but frivolous, and careless of the morrow, submitted to the incredible follies of their rulers on the sole condition of being well fed and amused by them.[II_30] In the time of Demosthenes the common price of wheat in Greece was about 3s. 11d. the four bushels.[II_31] In Rome, during the republic, wheat was distributed to 60,000 persons.[II_32] Julius Cæsar desired that 320,000 plebeians should enjoy this bounty; but this number was afterwards reduced to 150,000,[II_33] or perhaps, according to Cassius, to 160,000.[II_34] Augustus fed, at first, 200,000 citizens, then only 120,000.[II_35] Nero, who always went to extremes either in good or evil, gave corn throughout the empire to 220,000 idle people, including the soldiers of the prætorian guard.[II_36] Adrian added to this list all the children of the poor: the boys to the age of 18, and the girls to that of 14. Finally, this liberality, more politic than generous, and so foreign to our present manners, was carried, under the Emperor Severus, to 75,000 bushels per day.[II_37] The bushel weighed twenty pounds of twelve ounces each.[II_38]
The Greeks esteemed highly the corn of Bœotia, Thrace, and Pontus. The Romans preferred that of Lombardy, the present duchy of Spoletta, Sicily, Sardinia, and a part of Gaul. Sardinia, Sicily, and Corsica, supplied them every year with 800,000 bushels of twenty-one pounds weight, which made them call those islands “the sweet nurses of Rome.”[II_39]
Africa furnished 40,000,000 of bushels; Egypt 20,000,000, and the remainder came from Greece, Asia, Syria, Gaul, and Spain.[II_40]
The erudite are not agreed as to the aboriginal country of corn: some say it is Egypt, others Tartary, and the learned Bailly, as well as the traveller Pallas, affirm that it grows spontaneously in Siberia. Be that as it may, the Phocians brought it to Marseilles before the Romans had penetrated into Gaul. The Gauls ate the corn cooked, or bruised in a mortar; they did not know for a long time how to make fermented bread.
The Chinese attribute to Chin-Nong, the second of the nine emperors of China who preceded the establishment of the dynasties (more than 2,207 years B.C.), the discovery of corn, rice, and other cereals.
We find in the Black Book of the Exchequer, that in the reign of Henry I., when they reduced the victuals (for the king’s household) to the estimate of money, a measure of wheat to make bread for the service of one hundred men, one day, was valued only at one shilling.[II_41]
But in the reign of Henry III., about the 43rd year, the price was mounted up to fifteen and twenty shillings a quarter.[II_42]