Its fertility is not easy to describe. It produces such an abundance of corn, that often in my time the price of wheat was four obols per Sicilian medimnus<note place="end" resp="tr" id="note2"><emph rend="bold">medimnus:</emph>About 5 Roman modii or 10 gallons. The metretes of wine was about 9 gallons.</note>and that of barley two obols, a metretes of wine costing the same as the medimnus of barley.
Panic and millet are produced in enormous quantities, while the amount of acorns grown in the woods dispersed over the plain can be estimated from the fact that,
while the number of swine slaughtered in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Italy&groupId=656&placeId=1199">Italy</a> for private consumption as well as to feed the army is very large, almost the whole of them are supplied by this plain.
The cheapness and abundance of all articles of food will be most clearly understood from the following fact.
Travellers in this country who put up in inns, do not bargain for each separate article they require, but ask what is the charge per diem for one person.
The innkeepers, as a rule, agree to receive guests, providing them with enough of all they require for half an as per diem, i.e. the fourth part of an obol, the charge being very seldom higher.
As for the numbers of the inhabitants, their stature and beauty and their courage in war, the facts of their history will speak.
The hilly ground with sufficient soil on both slopes of the <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Alps&groupId=313&placeId=609">Alps</a>, that on the north towards the <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhone&groupId=933&placeId=1667">Rhone</a> and that towards the plain I have been describing, is inhabited in the former case by the Transalpine Gauls and in the latter by the Taurisci, Agones and several other barbarous tribes.
Transalpine is not a national name but a local one, trans meaning "beyond," and those beyond the <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Alps&groupId=313&placeId=609">Alps</a> being so called.
The summits of the <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Alps&groupId=313&placeId=609">Alps</a> are quite uninhabitable owing to their ruggedness and the quantity of snow which always covers them.
Walbank Commentary