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Updated: June 29, 2025
In the mighty successes which the Roman community externally achieved during the century from the last Veientine down to the Pyrrhic war we perceive that the patriciate has now given place to the farmers; that the fall of the highborn Fabian would have been not more and not less lamented by the whole community than the fall of the plebeian Decian was lamented alike by plebeians and patricians; that the consulate did not of itself fall even to the wealthiest aristocrat; and that a poor husbandman from Sabina, Manius Curius, could conquer king Pyrrhus in the field of battle and chase him out of Italy, without ceasing to be a simple Sabine farmer and to cultivate in person his own bread-corn.
But here is danger of a fallacy. It may be doubted whether wheat was the general bread-corn of that age; and if rye, barley, or oats, were the common food, and wheat, as I suspect, only a delicacy, the value of wheat will not regulate the price of other things. This doubt, however, is in favour of Ascham; for if we raise the worth of wheat, we raise that of his pension.
A numeral pound, in king Henry's time, contained, as now, twenty shillings; and, therefore, it must be inquired what twenty shillings could perform. Bread-corn is the most certain standard of the necessaries of life. Wheat was generally sold, at that time for one shilling, the bushel; if, therefore, we take five shillings the bushel for the current price, ten pounds were equivalent to fifty.
The annual consumption of bread-corn in this capital has, on an average, been computed at twenty-four millions of bushels.
The duty of providing grain at low prices which was unavoidably necessary with such a proletariate living wholly from hand to mouth was treated with the most unscrupulous frivolity, and the fluctuations in the price of bread-corn were of a fabulous and incalculable description.
While according to the Sempronian ordinance renewed by Cato every Roman burgess settled in Rome had legally a claim to bread-corn without payment, this list of recipients, which had at last risen to the number of 320,000, was reduced by the exclusion of all individuals having means or otherwise provided for to 150,000, and this number was fixed once for all as the maximum number of recipients of free corn; at the same time an annual revision of the list was ordered, so that the places vacated by removal or death might be again filled up with the most needful among the applicants.
"First of all I would give a few brief figures by way of calling to mind the degree to which England is dependent upon supplies of foodstuffs from overseas. "The proportion of imports in total British consumption averaged during the last years of peace as follows: "Bread-corn, close on 80 per cent.
To these belong all seeds and grain, especially the varieties of bread-corn, peas, beans, and lentils. It is a most curious fact that if we incinerate grain or its flour, peas, beans, and lentils, we obtain ashes, which are distinguished from the ashes of all other parts of vegetables by the absence of alkaline carbonates.
In the mighty successes which the Roman community externally achieved during the century from the last Veientine down to the Pyrrhic war we perceive that the patriciate has now given place to the farmers; that the fall of the highborn Fabian would have been not more and not less lamented by the whole community than the fall of the plebeian Decian was lamented alike by plebeians and patricians; that the consulate did not of itself fall even to the wealthiest aristocrat; and that a poor husbandman from Sabina, Manius Curius, could conquer king Pyrrhus in the field of battle and chase him out of Italy, without ceasing to be a simple Sabine farmer and to cultivate in person his own bread-corn.
The regents dropped hints, that through such opposition the equites might easily lose their new special places in the theatre, and the commons their bread-corn; people were therefore somewhat more guarded perhaps in the expression of their displeasure, but the feeling remained the same. The lever of material interests was applied with better success. Caesar's gold flowed in streams.
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