§282. Cereals.--The word _frumentum_[2] was a general term applied to any of the many sorts of grain that were grown for food. Of those now in use barley, oats, rye, and wheat were known to the Romans, though rye was not cultivated and oats served only as feed for cattle. Barley was not much used, for it was thought to lack nutriment, and therefore to be unfit for laborers. In very ancient times another grain, spelt (_far_), had been grown extensively, but it had gradually gone out of use except for the sacrificial cake that had given its name to the confarreate ceremony of marriage (§82). In classical times wheat was the staple grain grown for food, not differing much from that which we use to-day. It was usually planted in the fall, though on some soils it would mature as a spring wheat. After the farming land of Italy was diverted to other purposes (parks, pleasure grounds, game preserves: see §§145, 146), wheat had to be imported from the provinces, first from Sicily, then from Africa and Egypt, the home supply being inadequate to the needs of the teeming population.
[Footnote 2: The word _frumentum_ occurs fifty-five times in the "Gallic War," meaning any kind of grain that happened to be grown for food in the country in which Caesar was campaigning at the time. The word "corn" used to translate it in our school editions is the worst possible, because to the schoolboy the word "corn" means a particular kind of grain, and a kind at that which was unknown to the Romans. The general word "grain" is much better for translation purposes.]
[Illustration: FIGURE 107. POUNDING GRAIN]
§283. Preparation of the Grain.--In the earliest times the grain (_far_) had not been ground, but merely pounded in a mortar (Fig. 107). The meal was then mixed with water and made into a sort of porridge (_puls_, whence our word "poultice"), which long remained the national dish, something like the oatmeal of Scotland. Plautus (died 184 B.C.) jestingly refers to his countrymen as "pulse-eaters." The persons who crushed the grain were called _pinsitores_ or _pistores_, whence the cognomen Piso (§273) is said to be derived, and in later times the bakers were also called _pistores_, because they ground the grain as well as baked the bread. In the ruins of bakeries we find mills as regularly as ovens. See the illustration in §285.