Development Tardy

Cue (NZERS), 1 June 1944, Page 5

Development Tardy

Republican Rome depended for its armies on the Latin small farmer and the free citizen. Its economics were, still those of the 1 city-state, a condition which ruled throughout the classical world. Economic development was tardy, and while the Greek cities had introduced coinage as early as the 7th Century, it required the campaign in Magna Graecia to persuade the Romans of the utility, of- minted money.

Greece and Carthage divided . the maritime trade of the Mediterranean, to which the sole Roman contribution before the 3rd Century was the semi-official, protection of the native Volsian pirates of Anzio. The fall of the Greek cities stimulated the architecture of Rome which before this date was poor in public. buildings of beauty,. though its Forum already possessed such statues as the Wolf and The Twinsthe one you see to-day is an Etruscan wolf but the twins are a Renaissance addition. •L, • . . :