The Evolution of States. J. M. Robertson
Dio Cassius, xliii, 24.
[194] It must have been the relative dearness of land transport that kept the price of corn so low in Cisalpine Gaul in the time of Polybius, who describes a remarkable abundance (ii, 15).
[195] Suetonius, Aug. cc. 40, 41.
[196] Hist. Nat. xviii, 7 (6).
[197] Cp. his Economicus, chs. 5, 9, 11, 20, etc.
[198] Meyer, Gesch. des Alterthums, iii, 682 (§ 379).
[199] Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, c. 8.
[200] E.g., in the provinces of Africa (Gibbon, Bohn ed. iii, 445) and Sicily (Pelham, Outlines, p. 121).
[201] Cp. Pliny, as last cited.
[202] The Italians consumed large quantities of pork, mainly raised in the north (Polybius ii, 15; xii. fr. 1). Aurelian began a pork as well as a wine and oil ration for the Romans (Vopiscus, Aurelianus, 35, 47); and under Valentinian III the annual consumption in the city of Rome was 3,628,000 lbs., there being then a free distribution to the poor during five months of the year. Gibbon calculates that it sold at less than 2d. per lb. (Bohn ed. iii, 417–18.)
[203] Cp. Spalding, Italy and the Italian Islands, i, 372–75, 392, 398; Merivale, History, c. 32; ed. 1873, iv, 42; M'Culloch, as cited, pp. 286–92; Finlay, History of Greece, i, 43; Gibbon, Bohn ed. iii, 418; Dill, Roman Society in the Last Years of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed. p. 122 and refs.; and Blanqui, Histoire de l'économie politique, 2e éd. i, 123, as to the progression of the policy of feeding the populace. Cp. also Suetonius, in Aug. c. 42.
[204] There is, however, reason to surmise that the murder of Pertinax was planned, not by the prætorians who did the deed, but by the official and moneyed class who detested his reforms. See them specified by Gibbon, ch. iv, end.
[205] It is noteworthy that in the United States the New England region, producing neither coal nor iron, neither cotton nor (latterly) wheat, continues to retain a manufacturing primacy as against the South, in virtue of the (in part climatic) industry and skill of its population.
[206] Mommsen, History of Rome, Eng. tr. large ed. v, 5 (Provinces, vol. i); Gibbon, ch. iii, near end (Bohn ed. i, 104); cp. Mahaffy, The Greek World under Roman Sway, p. 397; Milman, History of Christianity, Bk. I, ch. vi; Renan, Les Apôtres, ed. 1866, p. 312; and Hegewisch, as cited by Finlay (i, 80, note), who protests that the favourable view cannot be taken of the state of Greece and Egypt. Mr. Balfour (Decadence, 1908, p. 18) chimes in with Mommsen and the rest.
[207] Cp. Pelham, Outlines, p. 473.
[208] Gibbon, ch. xvii; Bohn ed. ii, 194, and notes.
[209] Symmachus speaks of a famine about the time of the confiscation of the temple revenues. Ep. x, 54.
[210] Valentinian had resumed those temple revenues which had been restored by Julian, but went no further, though he vetoed the acquisition of legacies by his own church. That Gratian's step was rather financial than fanatical is proved by his having at the same time endowed the pagan rhetors and grammarians as a small religious quid pro quo. Beugnot, Hist. de la destr. du paganisme en occident, 1835, i, 478.
[211] There was a fresh relapse after Theodoric, in the ruinous wars between Justinian and the Goths and Franks. Revival began in the north under the Lombards, and was stimulated in the south after the revolt of Gregory II against Leo the Iconoclast, which made an end of the payment of Italian tribute to Byzantium. (Gibbon, Bohn ed. v, 127, 372, 377.)
[212] Cp. Dureau de la Malle, Écon. polit. des Romains, ii, 24 sq.
[213] Hist. Nat. iii, ix, 16.
[214] Id. ib. 6.
[215] Livy, vii, 38.
[216] Mommsen, i, 36. Mommsen does not deny the deterioration.
[217] Sueton. Julius, c. 20.
[218] E.g. Jacob, Hist. Inq. into the Prod. and Consump. of the Precious Metals, 1831, i, 221 sq.
[219] Cp. Pliny, Hist. Nat. xii, 18 (41).
[220] Cp. Del Mar, History of the Precious Metals, 1880, pref. p. vi; Money and Civilisation, 1886, introd. p. ix.
[221] Cp. Polybius, cited by Strabo, iii, ii, § 10; Jacob, Hist. of the Precious Metals, i, 176.
[222] Cp. Dureau de la Malle, Econ. pol. des Romains, ii, 441; Merivale, History, iv, 44.
[223] Jacob, as cited, i, 179.
[224] Gibbon, ch. xvii, Bohn ed. ii, 237. Cp. Prof. Bury's note in his ed., and Dureau de la Malle, Econ. polit. des Romains, i, 301 sq.
[225] On this form of oppression cp. Guizot, Essais sur l'histoire de France, i; his note on Gibbon, Bohn ed. ii, 234; Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, B. iii, ch. 2; and Cunningham, Western Civilisation, pp. 188, 189.
[226] Spalding, Italy, i, 398, following Symmachus.