population, from whom no harm was to be expected if they were kept
comfortable and amused. Augustus seems to have found himself compelled
to take up this attitude towards them, and he was able to do so
because he had thoroughly reorganised the public finance and knew what
he could afford for the purpose. But in time of Cicero the people were
still powerful legislation and elections, and the public finance was
disorganised and in confusion; and the result was that the corn-supply
was mixed up with politics,[62] and handled by reckless politicians
in a way that was as ruinous to the treasury as it was to the moral
welfare of the city. The whole story, from Gracchus onwards, is a
wholesome lesson on the mischief of granting "outdoor relief" in any
form whatever, without instituting the means of inquiry into each
individual case. Gracchus' intentions were doubtless honest and good;
but "ubi semel recto deerratum est, in praeceps pervenitur."

The drink of the Roman was water, but he mixed it with wine whenever
he had the chance. Fortunately for him he had no other intoxicating
drink; we hear neither of beer nor spirits in Roman literature. Italy
was well suited to the cultivation of the vine; and though down to the
last century of the Republic the choice kinds of wine came chiefly
from Greece, yet we have unquestionable proof that wine was made in
the neighbourhood of Rome at the very outset of Roman history. In the
oldest religious calendar[63] we find two festivals called Vinalia,
one in April and the other in August; what exactly was the relation of
each of them to the operations of viticulture is by no means clear,
but we know that these operations were under the protection of
Jupiter, and that his priest, the Flamen Dialis, offered to him the
first-fruits of the vintage. The production of rough wine must indeed
have been large, for we happen to know that it was at times remarkably
cheap. In 250 B.C., in many ways a wonderfully productive year, wine