§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 _pecūnia_ (from _pecus_; cf. _pecūlium_, §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. [Footnote 1: The words are connected respectively with _faba_, a bean, _cicer_, a chick-pea, _pīstor_, a miller, _caepe_, an onion, _porcus_, a pig, _asinus_, an ass, _vitellus_, a calf, and _ovis_, a sheep.] §274. Fruits.--Besides the olive and the grape, the apple, pear, plum, and quince were either native to Italy or were introduced in prehistoric times. Careful attention had long been given to their cultivation, and by Cicero's time Italy was covered with orchards and all these fruits were abundant and cheap in their seasons, used by all sorts and conditions of men. By this time, too, had begun the introduction of new fruits from foreign lands and the improvement of native varieties. Great statesmen and generals gave their names to new and better sorts of apples and pears, and vied with each other in producing fruits out of season by hothouse culture (§145). Every fresh extension of Roman territory brought new fruits and nuts into Italy. Among the last were the walnut, hazelnut, filbert, almond, and pistachio; the almond after Cato's time and the pistachio not until that of Tiberius. Among the fruits were the peach (_mālum Persicum_), the apricot (_mālum Armeniacum_), the pomegranate (_mālum Pūnicum_ or _grānātum_), the cherry (_cerasus_), brought by Lucullus from the town Cerasus in Pontus, and the lemon (_citrus_), not grown in Italy until the third century of our era. And besides the introduction of fruits for culture large quantities were imported for food, either dried or otherwise preserved. The orange, however, strange as it seems to us, was not grown by the Romans.