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Since the days of the Gracchi, when the state first assumed the responsibility of providing cheap food for the city's poor, the maintenance of an adequate supply of grain was a political and commercial problem of grave importance: each month about 1,200,000 modii of wheat (over 300,000 bushels) were distributed to those on the dole. The government officials in charge of the annona had also to keep on hand a sufficient amount at a fair purchase price for the remainder of the urban population and for the 100,000 citizens of Ostia. To meet such needs Egypt sent to the capital an annual shipment of about 20,000,000 modii and Africa, of 40,000,000 modii: in all, about 15,000,000 bushels each year. If the ordinary merchant vessel of 75-80 tons (10,00011,000 modii) was used for this transport service, then each summer some 6,000 boats carrying Egyptian and African grain put in at Ostia; and to this number must be added the vessels of merchants from nearby.

At Ostia the members of the barge owners' guild (they numbered 258 in the second century) were engaged in bringing this grain the 16 miles up the river. To the size of this river traffic in the first century Tacitus ( Annales, 15, 18) gives valuable testimony in his account of the destruction of 300 barges in the summer of 62 A. D. At Rome a vast system of stevedores, grain measurers, and warehouse guards, under the control of a thoroughly organized government bureau, received and stored the city's food. The numerous inscriptions of these workers' guilds offer the best commentary on the size of the import trade.

Although African and Egyptian wheat to a large extent met the capital's needs, shipments were sent from other provinces and from parts of Italy. On the mosaics in the Piazzale delle Corporazioni at Ostia are mentioned not only shippers from eight African towns, but also from Gaul and Sardinia. To these sources of supply, moreover, Pliny 63 and 66) adds Sicily, Boeotia, Syria, Thrace, and the Chersonese. Along with these foreign vessels there put in at Ostia ships bearing the fine Campanian wheat, designated by Cicero as solatium annonae (Leges Agrariae, 2, 84) and praised both by Strabo (5, 4, 3) and by Pliny (18, 109). Campania was also an exporting centre for other grains such as millet and spelt. From Clusium in Etruria, moreover, a great amount of spelt was brought to the city on Tiber barges, and from other sections of Italy came quantities of rye and fodder for the very considerable number of horses and animals in the capital.

For the early empire there is no evidence that the state imposed any control on the independent merchants who carried this grain, 18 though at times inducements were offered to attract shippers from the more alluring profits to be gained in the Eastern spice and rug trade. The citizens of Egypt, owners of the vessels in which state grain was brought to Rome each spring, had early formed a fleet, which, sailing from Alexandria as a unit, was convoyed by a detachment of the Roman navy. Though as late as Nero's day this fleet sometimes put in first at Puteoli, after the completion of the Claudian harbor with its extensive system of quays and warehouses, grain ships came directly to Ostia. This building program of Claudius, dictated by a growing concern for the safety of Rome's food supply (it was said that on one occasion there was only enough grain for 15 days on hand: Tac., Ann., 12, 43), was but part of that emperor's plans to ensure the delivery of the annona. To owners of vessels of 10,000 modii or over (about 75 tons) who worked on call for the state during a period of 6 years the state offered indemnity for any losses incurred while carrying out government contracts, and, in addition, special exemptions and privileges of citizenship. Even to the small Italian merchants who carried grain from nearby and sold it on the open market the government, in times of scarcity, had always offered special bonuses to induce them to sell their grain at Rome instead of in the smaller Italian towns. References to such negotiatores occur frequently in-the historians, and for one, T. Caesius Primus of Praeneste, there is inscriptional evidence ( C. I. L., XIV, 2852: 139 A. D.) for the source of his import and its destination.