“They can’t eat,” came the shout. It came from the outskirts of an angry crowd gathered in the piazza, but the words soon turned into a chant.
The Siracusans were talking about the Romans, and what was left out of the chant was the ending: “…without our grain.” The city, like most of their island, had been conquered and exploited by the Roman legions, but the citizens weren’t without leverage. They knew that Rome possessed little farmland and it coveted the wide grassy plains of the island which produced thousands of ships full of grain each year.
Rome had been expanding its territory for many years, mostly to supply natural resources through taxation. The people of Trinacrium, as Rome called the island, knew this and fought among themselves over whether they should accept the situation,
