Thus ever since Rome had been a city of any size it had been the duty of the plebeian aediles to see that it was adequately supplied with corn, and in times of dearth or other difficulty these magistrates had to take special measures to procure it. With a population steadily rising since the war with Hannibal, and after the acquisition of two corn-growing provinces, to which Africa was added in 146 B.C., it was natural that they should turn their attention more closely to the resources of these; and now the provincial governors had to see that the necessary amount of corn was furnished from these provinces at a fixed price, and that a low one.[58] In 123 B.C. Gaius Gracchus took the matter in hand, and made it a part of his whole far-reaching political scheme. The plebs urbana had become a very awkward element in the calculations of a statesman, and to have it in a state of starvation, or even fearing such a state, was dangerous in the extreme, as every Roman statesman had to learn in the course of the two following centuries. The aediles, we may guess, were quite unequal to the work demanded of them; and at times victorious provincial governors would bring home great quantities of corn and give it away gratis for their private purposes, with bad results both economic and moral. Gracchus saw that the work of supply needed thorough organisation in regard to production, transport, warehousing, and finance, and set about it with a delight in hard work such as no Roman statesman had shown before, believing that if the people could be fed cheaply and regularly, they would cease to be "a troublesome neighbour."[59] We do not know the details of his scheme of organisation except in one particular, the price at which the corn was to be sold per _modius_ (peck): this was to be six and one-third _asses_, or rather less than half the normal market-price of the day, so far as it can be made out. Whether he believed that the cost of production could be brought down to this level by regularity of demand and transport we cannot tell; it seems at any rate probable that he had gone carefully into the financial aspect of the business.[60] But there can hardly be a doubt that he miscalculated, and that the result of the law by which he sought to effect his object was a yearly loss to the treasury, so that after his time, and until his law was repealed by Sulla, the people were really being fed largely at the expense of the State, and thus lapsing into a state of semipauperism, with bad ethical consequences.