Talk:Grain supply to the city of Rome

Article needs subdividing and improving. Also links need to be made on the History of Rome page and the pages of corn producing provinces. Neddyseagoon 17:39, 22 February 2006 (UTC)neddyseagoon


 * Since this article doesn't really have anything to do with Roman cuisine, but is rather about Roman economic history, I removed the food category.
 * Peter Isotalo 13:26, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

There was no corn in pre Colombian Europe
The references to corn need to be removed from this entry. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mannsha (talk • contribs) 07:12, 10 December 2006 (UTC).

Agreed, I have changed the reference to wheat and grain. Not sure what to do about the link to the corn-dole article. The references I've run into on the web describe egyptian cereal agriculture as consisting of barley and emmer wheat during pharaonic times, and simply 'wheat' during the Ptolemies.

Tim Callahan 03:29, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I know I'm late, but just a clarification that probably explains the source of the confusion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_(disambiguation) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.111.5.228 (talk) 00:54, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Oh yes there was...
I just linked to this article while copy-editing gladiator. It took me some time. This article needs work - it has no inline citations for one thing. I'm surprised at the objection to the use of corn in this connection, and disagree with the change, which rides roughshod over a common and legitimate usage found in any half-decent English dictionary. Corn in British English has been - and still is - used as a generic and default term for any cereal plants and grains. It did so long before its application to maize in America, and forms the very usual "corn-dole" in referring to subsidised corn (yes) rations for the urban poor of Rome. The reference should have stayed as it was, with an explanatory note, if one was required, for those who thought corn meant only maize. Haploidavey (talk) 20:42, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

More to the point, the Annona disambiguation page contains an unlinked reference to "corn dole" and "statio annonae". Easy enough to fix that, but why not provide both these little red orphans a home in this article? Surely, it's where they belong. Haploidavey (talk) 00:36, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

A glaring omission
At the moment this article does an adequate job explaining where the grain for the population of Rome came from, & has some information about how it was transported (the grain ships used were some of the largest vessels of the pre-Industrial age), but not one word about how it was rationed out -- beyond a nod to the "bread & circuses" cliche. The annona was not a Classical version of modern welfare for the inhabitants of Rome: a person living in the city had no right to the annona, even if they could meet some qualifying test of residency & citizenship. IIRC, one Classics expert even wrote that the greater share did not go to the poor & idle, but to the rich who then presumably redistributed the grain to their clientes. (No surprise: the tickets entitling the holder to a regular ration of food is valuable, & items of value tend to find their way into the hands of the wealthy & powerful, a rule more obeyed in Roman times than now.) -- llywrch (talk) 20:47, 21 May 2015 (UTC)