Gracchus saw that the work of supply needed thorough
organisation in regard to production, transport, warehousing, and
finance, and set about it with a delight in hard work such as no Roman
statesman had shown before, believing that if the people could be
fed cheaply and regularly, they would cease to be "a troublesome
neighbour."[59] We do not know the details of his scheme of
organisation except in one particular, the price at which the corn
was to be sold per _modius_ (peck): this was to be six and one-third
_asses_, or rather less than half the normal market-price of the day,
so far as it can be made out. Whether he believed that the cost of
production could be brought down to this level by regularity of demand
and transport we cannot tell; it seems at any rate probable that he
had gone carefully into the financial aspect of the business.[60] But
there can hardly be a doubt that he miscalculated, and that the result
of the law by which he sought to effect his object was a yearly
loss to the treasury, so that after his time, and until his law was
repealed by Sulla, the people were really being fed largely at the
expense of the State, and thus lapsing into a state of semipauperism,
with bad ethical consequences.
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