[198] Meyer, Gesch. des Alterthums, iii, 682 (§ 379).
[199] Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, c. 8.
[200] E.g., in the provinces of Africa (Gibbon, Bohn ed. iii, 445) and Sicily (Pelham, Outlines, p. 121).
[201] Cp. Pliny, as last cited.
[202] The Italians consumed large quantities of pork, mainly raised in the north (Polybius ii, 15; xii. fr. 1). Aurelian began a pork as well as a wine and oil ration for the Romans (Vopiscus, Aurelianus, 35, 47); and under Valentinian III the annual consumption in the city of Rome was 3,628,000 lbs., there being then a free distribution to the poor during five months of the year. Gibbon calculates that it sold at less than 2d. per lb. (Bohn ed. iii, 417-18.)
[203] Cp. Spalding, Italy and the Italian Islands, i, 372-75, 392, 398; Merivale, History, c. 32; ed. 1873, iv, 42; M'Culloch, as cited, pp. 286-92; Finlay, History of Greece, i, 43; Gibbon, Bohn ed. iii, 418; Dill, Roman Society in the Last Years of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed. p. 122 and refs.; and Blanqui, Histoire de l'économie politique, 2e éd. i, 123, as to the progression of the policy of feeding the populace. Cp. also Suetonius, in Aug. c. 42.
[204] There is, however, reason to surmise that the murder of Pertinax was planned, not by the prætorians who did the deed, but by the official and moneyed class who detested his reforms. See them specified by Gibbon, ch. iv, end.
[205] It is noteworthy that in the United States the New England region, producing neither coal nor iron, neither cotton nor (latterly) wheat, continues to retain a manufacturing primacy as against the South, in virtue of the (in part climatic) industry and skill of its population.
[206] Mommsen, History of Rome, Eng. tr. large ed. v, 5 (Provinces, vol. i); Gibbon, ch. iii, near end (Bohn ed. i, 104); cp. Mahaffy, The Greek World under Roman Sway, p. 397; Milman, History of Christianity, Bk. I, ch. vi; Renan, Les Apôtres, ed. 1866, p. 312; and Hegewisch, as cited by Finlay (i, 80, note), who protests that the favourable view cannot be taken of the state of Greece and Egypt. Mr. Balfour (Decadence, 1908, p. 18) chimes in with Mommsen and the rest.
[207] Cp. Pelham, Outlines, p. 473.