122 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
among them were just going to make bread – for they had run out of it.
One of them straightaway threw some wheat into a pot and boiled it, and
after adding a little salt, gave it to us to eat. We naturally had to eat it, since
we were hungry from our long journey. For this reason, too, we made a
good meal of it, though it felt as heavy as mud in our stomachs. And the
whole of the next day we had bad indigestion, and could take no food at
all, having no appetite and being full of wind. We also had blackouts
before the eyes, for nothing of what we had eaten could be evacuated. But
that is the only way by which indigestion can be relieved. (VI 498–9)Galen’s hosts may well have enjoyed the discomfort of their guests, but it
would be perverse not to read the passage as an illustration of harmonious
relations between peasants and city- folk, at least on an individual and non-
offi cial level, and as evidence of the availability of wholesome food in
peasant households.
Subsistence or near- subsistence peasants were certainly vulnerable,
especially tenants burdened by both rent and tax, but also owner- occupiers
forced to raise cash- crops in order to pay tax, in the process undermining
their subsistence base and exposing themselves to the instability of market
forces. But peasants were also resilient, and they operated effective,
traditional strategies for survival. We should also allow for the role of rural
patronage in blunting the sharp edges of confrontation between rich and
poor, and the access enjoyed by rural labourers with an urban base to
whatever supply systems evolved in the cities.^28
We turn now to cities, and start with a concrete problem. Casson raised
the question of the effect of the annexation of Egypt in 30 BC on the
communities of the eastern Mediterranean. The East, he says, would have
starved, had it not been the case that Rome was already drawing regularly
on Egyptian grain stocks in the last century of the Republic. Unfortunately
for this argument, there is a complete lack of evidence from the late Republic
for the import of grain from Egypt. The silence of Cicero is particularly
puzzling, notably in the De imperio Cn. Pompeii, where Rome’s three
sources of support are identifi ed as Sicily, Sardinia and Africa. Starvation in
the East (and glut in the West) therefore remains a possibility.^29
The following considerations may be adduced.
First, Rome may have reserved the lion’s share of the exportable surplus
of Egypt, but it did not want or take the whole of it. There is scattered
evidence from Greece, Asia Minor and Judaea for the relief of food shortage
with Egyptian grain, covering the whole period from the fi rst decade of the
Augustan Principate to the early third century. The principle, as laid down
in a second- century inscription from Ephesos, is that the city of Rome heads
the queue. An unidentifi able emperor writes to the Ephesians:
It is clear that you will make prudent use of this agreement, bearing in
mind the necessity that fi rst the imperial city should have a bounteous