Question

Doctor Galen on how Roman Cities Treated the Countryside:

The famine prevalent for many successive years in many provinces has clearly displayed

for men of any understanding the effect of malnutrition in generating illness. The city-

dwellers, as it was their custom to collect and store enough grain for the whole of the next

year immediately after the harvest, carried off all the wheat, barley, beans and lentils, and

left to the peasants various kinds of pulse- after taking quite a large proportion of these to

the city. After consuming what was left in the course of the winter, the country people had

to resort to unhealthy foods in the spring; they ate twigs and shoots of trees and bushes

and bulbs and roots of inedible plants

Questions:

(i) What did the city dwellers do?(2)

(ii) What does the given passage depict?(1)

(iii) How was ancient Roman society divided?(1)​

Answer 1

Answer:

a It was the custom of all the city dwellers to collect and store enough food grains for the whole of the next year immediately after the harvest carried off all the wheat barley beans and lentils and left to the peasants various kinds of pulse- after taking a quite a larger proportion to the city. b The country people had to resort to unhealthy foods in the spring; they ate twigs and shoots of trees and bushes and bulbs and roots of inedible plants. c The passage reveals the selfishness of the citydwellers as they thought about themselves only. They stored enough food grains for the whole of the next year while the country people had to resort to unhealthy foods in the spring.