Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 Excerpt:...--------Rome, in the age of Pliny, was rich in wheat, barley and rye, of high quality, and admirably calculated to evoke the utmost efforts of the age to render milling as perfectly adapted as possible to the production of the finest flour. It is quite true that as "Verrius V. Flaccus, who lived only a few years before Pliny states for three hundred years the Romans made use of no other meal than that of corn:" but that age of boiled grains, of porridge and frumity, had now quite passed away: and fine bread in almost innumerable variety not only graced the tables of patricians but also filled the boards of humble plebeians. The use of loose stones driven by hand naturally 3 and and had always led to the grinding away of the stones Flour, and the mixture of grit with the flour. Theoretically, of course, grinding stones should never actually touch each other nor wear one another away, but with mere loose handstones this perfection was an impossibility. The consequent mixture of sand with the flour had certainly not been relished in Egypt, where, according to the Talmud, it was specially because of the discovery of "stone grits in thePolano: bread of the King" that Pharoah's chief baker found himself in prison in company with Joseph. The excessively worn condition of the teeth of even royal Egyptian mummies (as of those of the Esquimaux of our own day) is attributed by Egyptologists to the consumption of bread thus mixed with grit from millstones. But centuries later the commonalty, unlike kings, seem to have been tolerably well used to sand in their flour. In this connection, however, a curious misunderstanding seems to have arisen as to the quality of Bostock: iv. 37. the Roman bread:--"It is surprising to find the IV. ROMAN PROCESSE...