CHAP. VI.
periods, which are some centuries apart. Thus,if when wheat was at three shillings the quarterthe adventitious circumstances lowered it, to thepopulace, to two shillings the quarter; and whenit was at three pounds the quarter, the same orsome other circumstances lowered it to twopounds; the difference between the two periodswould be nearly the same.
Now we find, from Pliny , that the price ofwheat was brought down by Marius Marcius,one of the asdiles of the people, about 350 yearsbefore Christ, to the price of an as the modius,or three farthings the peck, being equal to twoshillings of our money the quarter; and at thetime of Pliny it had reached three pounds thequarter. The few notices we have of prices inthe intermediate times seem to show that theadvance accompanied the increase in the pre-cious metals; that like that increase it was at firstslow, but peculiarly rapid after the concentrationof the contents of the chief mines in the handsof the Roman government. Thus the tribuneClodius made a law that corn should be givento the people gratis, though it had before beensold at a rate equivalent to sixteen shillings andthree-pence the quarter of our money. A littlelater, Cicero informs us, that two kinds of wheatwere brought from Sicily ; one, the decumanum,°r tithe-corn, was sold at fifteen shillings andthree-pence, and the other, called frumentum im-
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