BOOK XVIII. .XI. 62-.X11. 65 



pounds more bread per peck than other emmer 

 wheats. According to \ errius enimer was the only 

 corn uscd hv the Iloman nation for 300 ycars. 



XII. There are several kinds of wheat" that have ivheat,it.i 

 been produced by various races. For my own part '"a/'"^*""'' 

 I shoukl not rank any of them with Italian wlicat for iari,ties. 

 whiteness and for weight, for which it is particularly 

 di^^tinguished. Foreign whcat can onlv be conipared 

 with tliat of the mountain regions of Italv ; among 

 forcign kinds Boeotia has obtained the first rank, 

 thcn Sicilv, and after that Africa. The third pLice 

 for weight used to belong to Thracian and Sp-ian 

 wheat and later also to Egyptian, by the vote of 

 athletes in those days, whose capacity for cereals, 

 resembHng that of cattle, had established the order 

 of merit that we have stated. Greece also gave 

 praise to wheat from Pontus, which did not get 

 through to Italy ; but of all the varicties of grain 

 Greece gave the preference to dracontias,'' strangias 

 and the whcat of Sehnunte, recognized by the thick- 

 ncss of the straw, because of which it used to count 

 thcsc kinds as appropriate for a rich soik For sowing 

 in damp soils Greece prescribed speudias, averylight 

 and extremely scanty-growing grain with a very thin 

 stalk, because it required a grcat deal of nourish- 

 ment. These were the opinions held in the reign of 

 Alexander the Great, when Greece was most famous 

 and the most powerful state in the whole world, 

 although nevertheless about 145 years before his 

 death the poet Sophocles in his play Triptolernus 

 praised Italian corn before all other kinds, in the 

 phrase '^ of which a Uteral translation is : ' And that 

 haj)pv Italy glows white with bright white wheat ' ; 

 and also to-day the Italian whcat is espcciallv dis- 



231 



