8 flint's natural HISTOET. [Book XVIII. 



in his ffidileship," at, one as per modius, in remembrance of 

 which statues were erected in honour of him also in the Capi- 

 tol and tlio Palatium : on the day of his funeral he was borne to 

 the pile on the shoulders of the Roman people. In the year,^* 

 too, in which the Mother of the Gods was brought to Home, the 

 harvest of that summer, it is said, was more abundant than it 

 had been for ten years before. M. Yarro informs us, that in the 

 year^ in which L. Metellus exhibited so many elephants in 

 his triumplial procession, a modius of speit was sold for one as, 

 which was the standard price also of a congius of wine, thirty 

 j)ounds' weight of dried figs, ten pounds of olive oil, and 

 twelve pounds of flesh meat. JSTor did this cheapness originate 

 in the wide-spread domains of individuals encroaching con- 

 tinually upon their neighbours, for by a law proposed by Lici- 

 nius Stolo, the landed property of each individual was limited 

 to five hundred jugera; and he himself was convicted under 

 his own law of being the owner of more than that amount, 

 having as a disguise prevailed upon his son to lend him his 

 name. Such were the prices of commodities at a time when 

 the fortunes of the republic were rapidly on the increase. The 

 words, too, that were uttered by Manius Curius^^ after his 

 triumphs and the addition of an immense extent of territory 

 to the lloman sway, are well known: ''The man must be 

 looked upon," said he, " as a dangerous citizen, for whom 

 seven jugera of land are not enough;" such being the amount 

 of land that had been allotted to the people after the expulsion 

 of the kings. 



^^'hat, then, was the cause of a fertility so remarkable as 

 this ? The fact, we have every reason to believe, that in 

 those days the lands were tilled by the hands of generals 

 even, the soil exulting beneath a plough-shai'e crowned with 

 wreaths of laurel, and guided by a husbandman graced with 

 triumphs : wliether it is that they tended the seed with the 

 same care tliat they had displayed in the conduct of wars, and 

 manifested the same diligent attention in the management of 

 tlieir fields that they had done in the arrangement of the camp, 



'^ A.u.c, 345. 



^ A.u.c. .5.50 He alludes to the introduction of Cybele, from Pessinus 

 m Galatia, in the Second Punic war. 

 ^ A.c.c. 604. Sec B. viii. o. 6. 

 2' AlaniisCurius Dentatus, Consul a.u.c. 464. 



