CHAP. VI.

RISE OF PRICES IN ROME.

165

were somewhat higher than in the time of Au-gustus , namely, three pounds three shillings andsixpence the quarter.

The price of bread in Rome -when Pliny livedseems to have been nearly the same or a littlelower than it usually is in our day in London .The Romans made bread of very different qua-lities and prices. Pliny enumerates four de-scriptions of them, viz. Ostrearii, or loaves bakedwith oysters; Artolagani, which correspondwith our cakes, or rather rolls ; Speustici, fromthe quick mode of the preparation; and Arto-pticii, or those baked in ovens, so called fromthe kind of furnace in which they were prepared.This last must have been of nearly the same qua-lity as our middle sort of wheaten bread, andwas sold, according to the calculation of Arbuth-not, at the rate of three shillings and two-pencethe peck loaf.

The prices of cattle kept pace in their increasewith those of corn. At an early period of thehistory ofRome, in the time of Epicharmis, aboutfour hundred years before our era, the price of acalf was one shilling and seven-pence, of a sheepseven-pence three farthings, and of an ox asmuch as ten sheep. This is inferred from thefines inflicted for offences, which were originallypaid in cattle ; having been commuted for moneyat the value which cattle bore when the penal-ties were enacted. The prices at a later period