Edgar Degas Woman Combing Her Hair painting

Edgar Degas Woman Combing Her Hair paintingFrederic Edwin Church Autumn paintingTitian Sacred and Profane Love [detail] painting
distress that winter, the more so because Rome was overcrowded-its population had doubled in the last twenty years; and Ostia, the port, was unsafe for shipping in the winter, so that grain-convoys from the East were unable to discharge their cargoes for weeks on end. Augustus did what he could to limit the famine. He half-starved looters from the workers' quarters. Augustus organized a brigade of night-watchmen, in seven divisions, to prevent this sort of thing: this brigade proved so useful that it has never since been disbanded. But enormous temporarily banished all but householders and their families to country districts not nearer than a hundred miles from the City, appointed a rationing-board composed of ex-Consuls, and prohibited public banquets, even on his own birthday. Much of the grain he imported at his own expense and distributed free to the needy. As usual, famine brought rioting, and rioting brought arson: whole streets of shops were set on Ere at night by