[Illustration: FIGURE 106. FULLERS AT WORK]
REFERENCES: Marquardt, 264-268, 300-340, 414-465; Voigt, 327-329, 401-404; Göll, 311-454; Guhl and Koner, 747-759, 702-704; Friedländer, III, 29-56; Ramsay, 490-501; Pauly-Wissowa, _cena_, _comissatio_; Smith, Harper, Rich, _cena_, _comissatio_, _olea_ (_oliva_), _vinum_; Baumeister, 845, 2086; Lübker, 724 f.; Mau-Kelsey, 256-260, 267-270.
§272. Natural Conditions.--Italy is blessed above all the other countries of central Europe with the natural conditions that go to make an abundant and varied supply of food. The soil is rich and composed of different elements in different parts of the country. The rainfall is abundant, and rivers and smaller streams are numerous. The line of greatest length runs nearly north and south, but the climate depends little upon latitude, being modified by surrounding bodies of water, by mountain ranges, and by prevailing winds. These agencies in connection with the varying elevation of the land itself produce such widely different conditions that somewhere within the confines of Italy almost all the grains and fruits of the temperate and subtropic zones find the soil and climate most favorable to their growth.
§273. The early inhabitants of the peninsula, the Italian peoples, seem to have left for the Romans the task of developing and improving these means of subsistence. Wild fruits, nuts, and flesh have always been the support of uncivilized peoples, and must have been so for the shepherds who laid the foundations of Rome. The very word _pecunia_ (from _pecus_; cf. _peculium_, §162) shows that herds of domestic animals were the first source of Roman wealth. But other words show just as clearly that the cultivation of the soil was understood by the Romans in very early times: the names Fabius, Cicero, Piso, and Caepio are no less ancient than Porcius, Asinius, Vitellius, and Ovidius.[1] Cicero puts into the mouth of the elder Cato the statement that to the farmer the garden was a second meat supply, but long before Cato's time meat had ceased to be the chief article of food. Grain and grapes and olives furnished subsistence for all who did not live to eat. These gave the wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread that strengtheneth man's heart. On these three abundant products of the soil the mass of the people of Italy lived of old as they still live to-day. Something will be said of each below, after less important products have been considered.