ii, 131–36) affirms a restoration of Italian "prosperity" from 80 B.C. onwards, by way first of a general cultivation of the vine and the olive by means of Oriental slaves used to such culture, and later of slave manufactures in the towns. But the evidence falls far short of the proposition. The main items are that about 52 B.C. Italy began to export olive oil, and that certain towns later won repute for pottery, textiles, arms, and so on. On the new agriculture cp. Dureau de la Malle, i, 426–27.
[179] W.W. Carlile, The Evolution of Modern Money, 1901, pp. 46, 48.
[180] Cp. M'Culloch, Essays and Treatises, 2nd ed. pp. 58–64, and refs.
[181] Cp. Hodgkin, The Dynasty of Theodosius, 1889, pp. 19–20. From Severus onwards the silver coinage had in fact become "mere billon money," mostly copper. Carlile, as cited.
[182] On this cp. Pöhlmann, Die Uebervölkerung der antiken Grossstädte, p.37, and Engel, as there cited.
[183] As to the probable nature of this much-discussed law see Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, i, chs. xi and xii. Cp. Niebuhr, Lect. 89.
[184] Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, c. 8.
[185] As Long remarks (i, 171), it does not appear what Tiberius Gracchus proposed to do with the slaves when he had put freemen in their place. Cp. Cunningham, p. 150.
[186] Cp. Pelham, Outlines, pp. 191–92; Ferrero, ch. iii.
[187] Robiou et Delaunay, Les institutions de l'ancienne Rome, 1888, iii, 18.
[188] Cp. Juvenal, iii, 21 sq.; 162 sq.
[189] For the history of the practice, see the article "Frumentariae Leges," in Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities.
[190] The first step by Gracchus does not seem to have been much resisted (Merivale, Fall of the Roman Republic, p. 22; but cp. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, i, 262), such measures having been for various reasons resorted to at times in the past (Pliny, Hist. Nat. xviii, 1; Livy, ii, 34); but in the reaction which followed, the process was for a time restricted (Merivale, p. 34).
[191] It seems to have been he who, as consul, first caused the distribution to be made gratuitous. See Cicero, ad Attic. ii, 19, and De Domo Sua, cc. 10, 15. The Clodian law, making the distribution gratuitous, was passed next year.
[192] Suetonius, Julius, c. 41.
[193] Dio Cassius, xliii, 24.
[194] It must have been the relative dearness of land transport that kept the price of corn so low in Cisalpine Gaul in the time of Polybius, who describes a remarkable abundance (ii, 15).
[195] Suetonius, Aug. cc. 40, 41.
[196] Hist. Nat. xviii, 7 (6).
[197] Cp. his Economicus, chs. 5, 9, 11, 20, etc.
[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.
[208] Gibbon, ch. xvii; Bohn ed. ii, 194, and notes.
[209] Symmachus speaks of a famine about the time of the confiscation of the temple revenues. Ep. x, 54.
