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With a population steadily
rising since the war with Hannibal, and after the acquisition of two
corn-growing provinces, to which Africa was added in 146 B.C., it was
natural that they should turn their attention more closely to the
resources of these; and now the provincial governors had to see that
the necessary amount of corn was furnished from these provinces at a
fixed price, and that a low one.[58] In 123 B.C. Gaius Gracchus took
the matter in hand, and made it a part of his whole far-reaching
political scheme. The plebs urbana had become a very awkward element
in the calculations of a statesman, and to have it in a state of
starvation, or even fearing such a state, was dangerous in the
extreme, as every Roman statesman had to learn in the course of the
two following centuries. The aediles, we may guess, were quite unequal
to the work demanded of them; and at times victorious provincial
governors would bring home great quantities of corn and give it away
gratis for their private purposes, with bad results both economic
and moral.


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