that end; and though Caius Gracchus did in his time of power employ a large amount of free labour on public works, one such effort counted for nothing against the normal attitude of the patriciate. In order to fight the Senate he had to conciliate the _publicani_ and money-lenders as well as the populace, and the reforms of the two brothers came to nothing.[186] There is no record that in the contracts between the treasury and the companies of _publicani_ any stipulation was ever made as to their employing free labour, or in any way considering the special needs of the populations among whom they acted.[187] Thus a mere cheapening of bread could do nothing to aid free labour as against capitalism using slaves. On the contrary, such aids would tend irresistibly to multiply the host of idlers and broken men who flocked to Rome from all its provinces, on the trail of the plunder. Industrial life in Rome was for most of them impossible, even were they that way inclined;[188] and the unceasing inward flow would have been a constant source of public danger had the multitude not been somehow pacified. The method of free or subsidised distribution of grain,[189] however, was so easy a way of keeping Rome quiet, in the period of rapidly spreading conquest and mounting tribute, that in spite of the resistance of the moneyed classes[190] it was adhered to. Sulla naturally checked the practice, but still it was revived; and Cæsar, after his triumph in Africa, found the incredible number of 320,000 citizens in receipt of regular doles of cheapened or gratis corn. He in turn, though he had been concerned in extending it,[191] took strong measures to check the corrosion, reducing the roll to 150,000;[192] but even that was in effect a confession that the problem was past solution by the policy, so energetically followed by him, of re-colonising in Italy, Corinth, Carthage, Spain, and Gaul. And if Cæsar sought to limit the gifts of bread, he seems to have outgone his predecessors in his provision of the other element in the popular ideal--the circus; his shows being bloodier as well as vaster than those of earlier days.[193] A public thus treated to sport must needs have cheap food as well.