CHAP. VI. KISE OF PRICES IN ROME. 1 63 



periods, which are some centuries apart. Thus, 

 if when wheat was at three shillings the quarter 

 the adventitious circumstances lowered it, to the 

 populace, to two shillings the quarter ; and when 

 it was at three pounds the quarter, the same or 

 some other circumstances lowered it to two 

 pounds ; the difference between the two periods 

 would be nearly the same. 



Now we find, from Pliny, that the price of 

 wheat was brought down by Marius Marcius, 

 one of the aediles of the people, about 350 years 

 before Christ, to the price of an as the modius, 

 or three farthings the peck, being equal to two 

 shillings of our money the quarter; and at the 

 time of Pliny it had reached three pounds the 

 quarter. The few notices we have of prices in 

 the intermediate times seem to show that the 

 advance accompanied the increase in the pre- 

 cious metals; that like that increase it was at first 

 slow, but peculiarly rapid after the concentration 

 of the contents of the chief mines in the hands 

 of the Roman government. Thus the tribune 

 Clodius made a law that corn should be given 

 to the people gratis, though it had before been 

 sold at a rate equivalent to sixteen shillings and 

 three-pence the quarter of our money. A little 

 later, Cicero informs us, that two kinds of wheat 

 were brought from Sicily ; one, the decumanum, 

 or tithe-corn, was sold at fifteen shillings and 

 three-pence, and the other, called frumentum im- 



M 2 



