The Private Life of the Romans

t times the grain of wheat was not even ground, but merely pounded in a mortar, mixed with water, and cooked to the consistency of a thick pulp, called puls. The slaves who pounded the grain were pistdres, or pinsitores. Even after the superiority of baked bread had been discovered, the baking continued for a long time to be done at home, and was regarded as the special business of the house-mother, or of the chief cook, according to the rank and means of the family. The first public bakery of Eome was established in 171 B.c., after which time home-made bread went gradually out of use in cities, though it had still to be prepared on rural estates by slaves appointed for the purpose. Later it became one of the recognized functions of the general government (it had long been held such in times of scarcity) to regulate, year by year, the food supply of the nation; and to see that the mass of the people was provided with cheap and wholesomebread. The bread-makers of Eome were now organized into a college or guild, under the presidency of the Praefectus Annonae, and vast establishments, comprising both mills and bakeries, were built and let out to them by the State. The members of this guild enjoyed special privileges, and immunities, which were extended, after the general decline of agriculture, when grain had to be imported in vast quantities, to the ship-owner and seamen (navicularii and caudicaril), on whose enterprise the supply of bread stuffs largely depended...