§ 1. Lucius Minucius was selected as the first Prefect of the Food Supply; he reported to the Senate that Spurius Maelius was devising plans for kingship. Thus Livy, book 4. Pompey’s prefecture was the most powerful of all, for he possessed greater command in the provinces than the men who administered them by lot.
Augustus himself discharged the prefecture; when already an old man he substituted Turranius for himself, and thereafter it was an ordinary Magistracy. Cassiodorus describes its office in book 6 of the Variae, 18: “It belongs to your diligence that the food supply be prepared for the most sacred city and an abundance of bread overflow everywhere. You make the rounds of the bakers’ workshops and foods; you exact the prescribed weight and cleanliness of bread. You mount the carriage of the Prefect of the City with just glory. At spectacles you are found most closely joined to him. If a complaint over bread, as is customary, is aroused, you, the promiser of abundance, dissolve civic seditions by instantaneous satisfaction. Not undeservedly is Pompey said, through the quantity of provisions furnished, to have arrived at the highest pinnacle of affairs. The privileges of the bakers have been made subject to your dignity; these extended through the various parts of the world with the widest possession. Assassins who are discovered also seem to be assigned to your examination. The Praetorian Prefecture procures the supplies of wheat; the Prefect of the Food Supply dispenses them and examines the bread by weight.”
He was furnished with Apparitors and through those whom they called Compulsors of the office exacted the established contribution. How greatly care for the grain supply aided the people is shown by the city in the war waged with Porsena. Livy, book 2: “Never before had so great a terror assailed the Senate, so powerful then was the Clusian state and so great Porsena’s name. They feared not only the enemies but even their own citizens, lest the Roman plebs, struck by fear, should receive the Kings into the city and accept peace even with servitude. Therefore many conciliatory favors were then granted to the plebs by the Senate. Care was taken first of all for the food supply, and men were sent to procure grain, some to the Volsci and others to Cumae. The power of selling salt, because it was sold at an excessive price, was taken from private persons into public hands at the whole expense. The plebs was also freed from tolls and tribute, so that the rich, who could bear the burden, should contribute; the poor paid tax enough if they reared children. Accordingly, amid the harsh conditions which followed during siege and famine, this indulgence of the Fathers held the state in such concord that the lowest no less than the highest abhorred the name of King; nor was any single man afterwards so popular by wicked arts as the whole Senate then was by good government.”
Complaints, murmurs, and even seditions arise from nothing more frequently than from scarcity of grain: Suetonius in Octavian; Symmachus, book 2, epistle 6; Marcellinus, book 21. At first, when Rome maintained its multitude and idleness from the harvests of others, Sicily was its granary; Sardinia was added, then Africa, and finally Egypt. Greece and Macedonia sometimes bore a part when the Libyan harvests failed.
Victor enumerates the warehouses and mills in this manner. In the first region at the Porta Capena: 13 warehouses, 20 mills. In the second region at the Caelimontium: 23 warehouses, 12 mills. In the third region: 18 warehouses, 12 mills. In the fourth region: 8 warehouses, 12 mills. In the fifth: 23 warehouses, 12 mills. In the sixth: 18 warehouses, 20 mills. In the ninth: 22 warehouses, 20 mills. In the tenth: 48 warehouses, 20 mills. In the eleventh: 16 warehouses, 12 mills. In the twelfth: 26 warehouses, 20 mills. In the thirteenth: 26 warehouses, 20 mills. In the fourteenth: 22 warehouses, 22 mills. I do not doubt that there were more at one time, and the Register of the Roman Empire indicates it. This is the total of the warehouses.
§ 2. There was a twofold construction of warehouses. Some were subterranean, as Vitruvius says in book 5, chapter 9: “Built sewers are dug and hollowed out as deeply as possible; those places, furnished with boards, are filled with charcoal; then above it those walks are strewn with gravel and leveled so that they are dry.” In these are the treasures of the city. For salt is easily brought there, and grain is more expeditiously gathered both publicly and privately.
In Philo, grain is heaped up not in such caverns but in upper rooms. Their walls, and the floor itself, were smeared with the dregs of olive oil; they had several windows toward the North, with nets stretched before them.
Warehouses had not only Curators but also Superintendents and Counts, and they were held in great honor; for to preserve the city’s food supply is a dignity no less than to preserve the treasury.
§ 3. The Prefecture of the Food Supply had its origin from the Greeks. The Athenians call its officers σιτονόμους and σιτῶνας; Suidas calls them σιτοφύλακας, and says that there were fifteen in the city and five in Piraeus. The Aetoli called them ἀγορανόμους, as is found in Plautus.
Now Princes who look to stable rule apply themselves with great spirit to preventing a failure of the food supply; for subjects draw all the things they suffer into the disrepute of the Magistrate. By caring for the food supply the Venetian Senate purchases the love of the plebs, for one will not easily find greater care of the food supply. On the contrary, although the Emperor of the Turks possesses the widest and most fertile regions, which formerly fed even foreign kingdoms, he chastises his subject people with perpetual famine. For because, through the harshness of his rule and the rapacity of his ministers, he reduces the land to a wilderness, it is cultivated only listlessly. They sow only as much as is necessary for themselves; the Collector of the established tax and the Attendant take away the surplus, or the things which are customarily laid away for use.
§ 4. To have care of a part of the food supply was formerly considered honorable. He was called the Grand Bread-Master, or Superintendent of Bread, who was accustomed to correct the bakers, examine the weights, and set the price of wheat.