Transport too, whether by road or river, was full of difficulty, while on the other hand a glance at the map will show that the voyage for corn-ships between Rome and Sicily, Sardinia, or the province of Africa (the former dominion of Carthage), was both short and easy--far shorter and easier than the voyage from Cisalpine Gaul or even from Apulia, where the peninsula was richest in good corn-land.

So we are not surprised to find that, according to tradition, which is fully borne out by more certain evidence,[54] corn had been brought to Rome from Sicily as early as 492 B.C.to relieve a famine, or that since Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa had become Roman provinces, their vast productive capacity was utilised to feed the great city.
Nor indeed need we be surprised to find that the State has taken over the task of feeding the Roman population, and of feeding it cheaply, if only we are accustomed to think, not merely to read, about life in the city at this period.

Nothing is more difficult for the ordinary reader of ancient history than to realise the difficulty of feeding large masses of human beings, whether crowded in towns or soldiers in the field.

Our means of transport are now so easily and rapidly set in action and maintained, that it would need a war with some great sea-power to convince us that London or Glasgow might, under certain untoward circumstances, be starved; and as our attention has never been drawn to the details of food-supply, we do not readily see why there should have been any such difficulty at Rome as to call for the intervention of the State.

Perhaps the best way to realise the problem is to reflect that every adult inhabitant needed about four and a half pecks of corn per month, or some three pounds a day; so that if the population of Rome be taken at half a million in Cicero's time, a million and a half pounds would be demanded as the daily consumption of the people.[55] I have already said that in the last three centuries B.C.there was a universal tendency to leave the country for the towns; and we now know that many other cities besides Rome not only felt the same difficulty, but actually used the same remedy--State importation of cheap corn.[56] Even comparatively small cities like Dyrrhachium and Apollonia in Epirus, as Caesar tells us while narrating his own difficulty in feeding his army there, used for the most part imported corn.[57] And we must remember that while some of the greatest cities on the Mediterranean, such as Alexandria and Antioch, were within easy reach of vast corn-fields, this was not the case with Rome.