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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kevin McGonigal, post: 6359987, member: 72790&quot;]Those of us who like to study the culture of Antiquity, in this case its food, are well aware of the importance of grains, olives and grapes in the ancient diet. In this thread we are going to delve into the grains part, the basis of the diet of Mediterranean peoples from the Black Sea to the Pillars of Hercules and not just as diet. but as part of governing and even a major cause of of everything from angst to riots to hostilities.</p><p><br /></p><p>First a little bit on the word, grain. In British English the common word for grain is &quot;corn&quot;. That creates some confusion with English speakers in North America where the word, corn, means American Indian corn or maize so, when the words for grain in Latin (frumentum) or Greek (sitos, chondros) are rendered into English by British writers North Americans get the wrong idea. I don&#039;t know if this is so for Australia and New Zealand, but maize is native to the New World and was unknown to the ancients. The ancient grains we are talking about are mostly wheat and barley (maybe oats for the Picts and Caledonians) which were used by the ancients for foods like porridge and bread, especially for bread. For them bread was the staff of life, the main source of calories in their daily diet, common at all meals, dipped in olive oil and washed down with wine. The ancient words for bread &quot;panis&quot; in Latin, &quot;artos&quot; in Greek (both attic and Biblical Koine) appear commonly in the writings of the period. As the raw material, grain, they appear commonly in legal and historic writings, and as we will see, on their coinage.</p><p><br /></p><p>For the governing of ancient polities, ancient leaders had to be aware of where their supply of grain was coming from. A few states, Egypt, Carthage, early Rome, were self sufficient and did not need to import it. Athens became dependent on imported grain early on and the creation of an Athenian Empire was largely explained as a need to control grain at its source. No imported grain, famine. Sparta won its great Peloponnesian War when it closed the port of Piraeus and shut off Athens from its suppliers of grain. For Rome grain meant &quot;Bread and Circus&quot;, and order in the streets of Rome. No grain, riots in the streets, and maybe a new emperor. Vespasian understood that when in 69 AD he made his bid for the throne by initially going, not to Rome, but rather to Alexandria to gain control of much of Rome&#039;s imported grain. When you have them by kernels of grain, their hearts and minds will follow. Rome even had an official, the &quot;Praefectus Annonae&quot;, whose main job was to make sure that grain got to the granaries and the bakers and that emperors could sleep well at night.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for the grain itself, wheat was the preferred grain by most Mediterranean peoples. It made the finest bread. In some areas where wheat was marginal, barley was grown but it made what was considered an inferior bread, though Egyptians were long brewing it for beer. Roman soldiers were sometimes put on a ration of barley bread as a mild punishment for some infractions. Normally their supply of barley went to the pack animals, cavalry and auxiliary troops (&quot;bucellarii&quot;, biscuit eaters). The name, Frumentarius came to mean not just the officials who checked up on the grain supply and in the market place but by extension came to mean the emperors&#039; secret police who started checking up on everything else while they were at it. The production of grain was not always a rewarding one. A typical return on a field of grain was often as low as a four to one ratio of return from a seed (in drought, maybe only two to one). Varro puts the normal return in a decent year at ten to one, fifteen to one in Etruria. Cicero writes of a norm of eight to one, presumably on his estate in the vicinity of Rome itself. A&nbsp; modern wheat ratio is something like 30 to 40 to one.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now for the coins. Ceres, the goddess of the grain harvest (as in cereals), is frequently found on Roman coins (New Jersey has her image on its state flag today, referencing its agricultural heritage). The first coin is a tetradrachma of Leontini, a Greek Colony on Sicily, which, for a while, was a major producer of grain for Rome. Notice the ears of grain around the lion&#039;s head. I think they may be barley corns (a measure of length in&nbsp; Merry olde England, one third of an inch). The second is a stater of Metapontum with a very large stalk of grain, wheat I think, and certainly an advertisement of the importance of grain for that city-state. That&#039;s Demeter on the other side (Sear 416). The third coin is a denarius of Republican Rome, 63 BC, with Ceres on the obverse. She is wearing a crown made of stalks of grain and behind her head is a clear stalk of probably wheat and in front of her a single grain of what looks like a barley corn. The last coin is one of the Roman Emperor, Vespasian (my favorite. My Confirmation name is Flavian), the emperor who knew the value of those kernels of grain in securing power. On the reverse is a modius (a peck, eight quarts) of grain stalks, a reminder of the emperor bringing home the biscuits. By the way this is one of the unusual coins of Vespasian,[ATTACH=full]1251743[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1251744[/ATTACH] facing to the left. It is Sear 2293.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now it&#039;s the reader&#039;s turn to show us some of their ancient coins with some reference to the staff of life or our daily bread.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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