s."[13]

The city of Rome was not a desirable place for medical practice, for the
lower classes were degraded and thriftless, and the relatively small
upper classes were tyrannical, debauched, superstitious, selfish and
cruel. The younger Pliny, who was one of the best type of Romans, tried
to investigate the purity of the lives of the Christians, and did not
hesitate to put to torture two women, deaconesses, who belonged to the
new religion, but he "could discover only an obstinate kind of
superstition carried to great excess." His conduct and his opinion speak
eloquently of the nature of a Roman gentleman of the Empire. As for the
state of the poor under Augustus, 200,000 persons in Rome received
outdoor relief. Although the rich had every luxury that desire could
suggest and wealth afford, the great need of the common people was food.
The city had to rely mainly on imported corn, and the price of this at
times became prohibitive owing to scarcity--sometimes the result of
piracy and the dangers of the sea, but often caused by artificial means
owing to the merchants "cornering" the supply--and it was necessary for
the State, through the Emperor, to intervene to make regulations and to
distribute the grain free or below its market value. It has been
computed that about 50,000 strangers lived in Rome, many of whom were
adventurers.

The imperial city was the happy hunting-ground of quacks, who gave
themselves high-sounding names and wore gorgeous raiment. They went
about followed by a retinue of pupils and grateful patients. In some
cases the patients were compelled to promise, in the event of being
cured, that they would serve their doctor ever afterwards. The retinue
of students, no doubt, was rather disturbing to a nervous patient, and
Martial wrote:--

"Faint was I only, Symmachus, till thou
Backed by an hundred students, throng'dst my bed;
An hundred icy fingers chilled my brow:
I had no fever; now I'm nearly dead."[14]

Besides quack doctors there were drug sellers (_pharmacopola_), who sold
their medicines in booths or hawked them in the city and the country. In
the time of the Empire the medicines of the regular practitioners were
sold with a label which specified the name of the drug and of the
inventor, the ingredients, the disease it was to be used for, and the
method of taking it. Drug sellers dispensed cosmetics as well as
medicines, and some of the itinerant dealers sold poison. The