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the victories of the republic added less to the wealth than to the power of Rome. The states of Italy paid their tribute in military service only, and the vast force, buth by sea and land, which was exerted in the Punic wars, was maintained at the expense of the Romans themselves. That high-spirited people (such is often the generous enthusiasm of freedom) cheerfully submitted to the most excessive but voluntary burdens, in the just confidence that they should speedily enjoy the rich harvest of their labours. Their expectations were not disappointed. In the course of a few years, the riches of Syracuse, of Carthage, of Mace donia, and of Asia, were brought in triumph to Rome. The treasures of Perseus alone amounted to near 2,000,000Z. sterling, and the Roman people, the sovereign of so many nations, was for ever delivered from the weight of taxes. The increasing revenue of the provinces was found sufficient to defray the ordinary establishment of war and government, and the superfiuous mass of gold and silver was deposited in the temple of Saturn, and reserved for any unforeseen emergency of the state.t

History has never perhaps suffered a greater or more irreparable injury, than in the loss of the curious register bequeathed by Augustus to the senate, in which that experienced prince so accurately balanced the revenues and expenses of the Roman empire. Deprived of this clear and comprehensive estimate, we are reduced to collect a few imperfect hints from such of the ancients as have accidentally turned aside from the splendid to the more useful parts of history. We are informed that, by the conquests of Pompey, the tributes of Asia were raised from fifty to one hundred and thirty-five millions of drachms, or about 4,500,000l. sterling.§ Under the last and most indolent

census, property, power, and taxation, were commensurate with each other. Plin. Hist. Natur. l. 33, c. 3. Cicero de Offic. 2, 22. Plutarch, in P. Emil. p. 275. + See a fine description of this accumu lated wealth of ages in Lucan's Phars. 1. 3, v. 155, &c. Tacit, in Annal. 1, 11. It seems to have existed in the time of Appian. [For the Rationarium Imperii, see, besides Tacitus, Suetonius (in Aug. c. ult.) and Dion Cassius (p. 832). Other emperors kept and published similar registers. See Dr. Wolle's academical treatise, De Rationario imperii Romani, Leipzig, 1773. The last book of Appian contained also some statistics of the Roman empire, now lost.-WENCK.]

§ Plutarch. in Pompeio, p. 642. [This calculation is not correct.

of the Ptolemies, the revenue of Egypt is said to have amounted to twelve thousand five hundred talents; a sum equivalent to more than 2,500,000l. of our money, but which was afterward considerably improved by the more exact economy of the Romans, and the increase of the trade of Ethiopia and India. Gaul was enriched by rapine, as Egypt was by commerce; and the tributes of those two great provinces have been compared as nearly equal to each other in value. The ten thousand Euboic or PhoeniAccording to Plutarch, the annual revenue of Roman Asia, before the time of Pompey, amounted to fifty millions of drachms, and was increased by him to eighty-five millions, or about 2,744,7917. sterling. We find also in Plutarch, that Antony exacted from Asia, in one payment, the enormous sum of 100,000 talents, or about 38,750,000 sterling. Appian's explanation is, that this was the aggregate revenue of ten years, which would make that of a single year only a tenth part of that amount.-WENCK.] * Strabo, 1. 17, p. 798. [According to Arbuthnot on Ancient Coins (p. 192) 12,500 talents amount to 2,421,8751. sterling. This sum is taken by Strabo from one of Cicero's orations; and he added to it the observation, which our author has copied, that it must have been greatly increased by the Romans. Josephus (De Bell. Jud. 1. 2, c. 16, p. 190, edit. Havercamp) makes King Agrippa tell the Jews, that they did not raise so much tribute in a whole year, as the Alexandrians alone paid in a single month. Cassius, when governor of Syria, after Caesar's death, received from Judea (Josephi Ant. Jud. 1. 11, c. 11) 700 talents, or 135,625. sterling. Twelve times this sum amounts to 1,637,5001. sterling. The revenue from Alexandria must have been very considerable, for it was the emporium of eastern wares, on which high duties were levied. In the palmy days of Egypt, under the first Ptolemys, the royal accounts, to which Appian, who was a native of Alexandria, refers (in Præfat.) as still extant in his time, showed that there had been sometimes in the treasury 74 myriads of talents, or above 143,875,000l. sterling.WENCK.] + Velleius Paterculus, 1, 2, c. 39. He seems to give the preference to the revenue of Gaul. [Cæsar drew from Gaul "quadringenties" (Sueton. in Jul. c. 25. Eutrop. 1. 6, c. 17), which is about 1,927,000 crowns, or 322,900l. sterling. This appearing too small a sum, Lipsius reads it "quatermillies," or ten times the above amount. The author's meaning is very obscure, when he says, that "Gaul was enriched by rapine." Perhaps he referred to the Gallic colonies, sent out in earlier times, some of which enriched themselves; as, for instance, that in Asia. But such remote transactions had no connection with the period here under consideration, nor was Gaul itself benefited by that wealth, for those who acquired it never came back again. The trifling sea-piracies of the Gallic Venetians and others, cannot have brought in much. On the whole, it seems to have been the general lot of Gaul or France, less to plunder than to be plundered, whether of old by the Romans and Germans, or by modern farmers of the

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cian talents, about 4,000,000l. sterling, which vanquished Carthage was condemned to pay within the term of fifty years, were a slight acknowledgment of the superiority of Rome,t and cannot bear the least proportion with the taxes afterwards raised both on the lands and on the purses of the inhabitants, when the fertile coast of Africa was reduced into a province.‡

Spain, by a very singular fatality, was the Peru and Mexico of the old world. The discovery of the rich western continent by the Phoenicians, and the oppression of the simple natives, who were compelled to labour in their own mines for the benefit of strangers, forms an exact type of the more recent history of Spanish America.§ The Phoenicians were acquainted only with the sea-coast of Spain; avarice, as well as ambition, carried the arms of Rome and Carthage into the heart of the country, and almost every part of the soil was found pregnant with copper, silver, and gold. Mention is made of a mine near Carthagena, which yielded every day twenty-five thousand drachms of silver, or about 300,000l. a-year.¶ Twenty thousand pounds weight of gold was annually reeeived from the provinces of Asturia, Gallicia, and Lusitania.**

We want both leisure and materials to pursue this

revenue and English ships of war.-WENCK.] [M. Wenck's conjecture, as to the drift of this by no means intelligible passage, is probably correct, for these supposed emigrations from Gaul will be found again mentioned. Gibbon's course of inquiry did not lead him to investigate these fables, or he would have discerned the truth, that the alleged marauding expeditions from Gaul, were in fact operations of Gallic (Galatic or Celtic) tribes, left in more easterly positions, while the great family itself gradually retired westward before the advancing Goths.-Ed.]

* The Euboic, the Phoenician, and the Alexandrian talents were double in weight to the Attic. See Hooper on Ancient Weights and Measures, p. 4, c. 5. It is very probable that the same talent was carried from Tyre to Carthage. † Polyb. l. 15, c. 2. [By the treaty of peace at the close of the second Punic war, the Carthaginians were bound to pay these ten thousand talents in fifty equal annual portions, so that for each year the payment was only two hundred talents. WENCK.] Appian in Punicis, p. 84. § Diodorus Siculus, 1. 5. Cadiz was built by the Phoenicians, a little more than a thousand Strabo, 1. 3, p. 148. years before Christ. See Vell. Paterc. 1. 2. [There were several of these mines. Like examples are given, from other provinces, by Burmann, Vectigalia Pop. Rom., 4to. Leyden, 1734, pp. 77-93.-WENCK.] ** Plin. Hist. Natur. 1. 33, c. 3. likewise a silver mine in Dalmatia, that yielded every day fifty pounds

He mentions

curious inquiry through the many potent states that were annihilated in the Roman empire. Some notion, however, may be formed of the revenue of the provinces where considerable wealth had been deposited by nature, or collected by man, if we observe the severe attention that was directed to the abodes of solitude and sterility. Augustus once received a petition from the inhabitants of Gyarus, humbly praying that they might be relieved from one-third of their excessive impositions. The whole tax amounted indeed to no more than one hundred and fifty drachms, or about five pounds; but Gyarus was a little island, or rather a rock of the Egean sea, destitute of fresh water and every necessary of life, and inhabited only by a few wretched fishermen.*

From the faint glimmerings of such doubtful and scattered lights we should be inclined to believe, 1st, That (with every fair allowance for the difference of times and circumstances) the general income of the Roman provinces could seldom amount to less than 15,000,000l. or 20,000,0001. of our money;† and, 2ndly, That so ample a revenue must to the state. * Strabo, 1. 10, p. 485. Tacit. Annal. 3, 69, and 4, 30. See in Tournefort, (Voyages au Levant, lettre 8), a very lively picture of the actual misery of Gyarus. Lipsius (de Magnitudine Romanâ, 1. 2, c. 3,) computes the revenue at one hundred and fifty millions of gold crowns; but his whole book, though learned and ingenious, betrays a very heated imagination. [If the revenue of the Roman empire was exaggerated by Justus Lipsius, it was, on the other hand, placed too low by Gibbon. Even with the aid of the best information, it is difficult to calculate, with any degree of exactness, the income of a great empire. In the present case it is doubly so, through want of trustworthy information. The following observations may however afford some light-1. Gibbon reckons it at about fifteen or twenty millions of pounds sterling. The taxes, levied only on the provinces named by him, must have produced, on a moderate computation, this sum, especially after Augustus had increased those on Egypt, Gaul, and Spain. ("Opus novum et inadsuetum Gallis," are the words attributed to the Emperor Claudius. Lips. Excurs. k. ad Tac. Ann. 1). But to these must then be added Italy, Rhotia, Noricum, Pannonia, Dalmatia, Dacia, Moesia, Macedonia, Thrace, Greece, Britain, Sicily, Cyprus, Crete, and the long train of other islands. 2. At the present time, France pays to its king a hundred millions of crowns yearly, and other former Roman provinces in the same proportion, to their rulers. Can it be credited that the whole Roman empire raised no more than one of its provinces now yields? Its imposts, no doubt, varied under different emperors; but it is wonderful to see how high and manifold they were; most rigid too was the severity used in collecting them, for

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have been fully adequate to all the expenses of the moderate government instituted by Augustus, whose court was the blishment was calculated for the defence of the frontiers, modest family of a private senator, and whose military estawithout any aspiring views of conquest, or any serious apprehension of a foreign invasion.

gathering tribe.

Notwithstanding the seeming probability of both these conclusions, the latter of them at least is positively disnever yet did the virtue of mercy generally characterize the tax. 3. Every attentive reader of Roman history traces on each successive page of its writers, circumstances that prove the large revenues of antiquity. Then consider the enormous expen one extremity of diture on long lines of road, stretching from the empire to the other, and on public buildings and establish ments, such as no other state has yet rivalled, besides other traordinary disbursements. Augustus often distributed, among the citizens, sums (congiaria) which at a moderate estimate amounted to twenty millions of crowns or more; his successors did the same; and even the frugal Severus once gave five thousand myriads of drachmæ, or more than a million of crowns. The worst emperors were the largest bestowers of donations on the troops, and indulged most freely in all other expenses. The sums lavished, for instance, within a Vespasian, short space of time, by Nero and Vitellius, were immense. who succeeded them, said that he required “quadringenties millies (Sueton. Vesp. 16, though some, but without documentary authority, read "quadragies") or more than 1,937 millions of crowns, to bring the finances into proper order; and it is well known that he did restore them. Yet, notwithstanding all this expenditure, many emperors at their death left large accumulated treasures, as, for example, Tiberius, "vicies ac septies millies," (nearly 131 millions of crowns, or 22,000,000l. Gibbon regarded only the sterling), and Antoninus Pius the same. last ages of the republic, while Justus Lipsius, whom he condemned, looked at the imperial times. If a larger revenue had not been derived from the provinces especially, as subsequently augmented, it cannot possibly have sufficed to meet so enormous an expenditure. The writers of the Universal History (part 12, p. 86) fix forty millions sterling as the probable amount of the public income during the last years of the Roman Republic.-WENCK.] [This long note is founded on a strange misapprehension of Gibbon's meaning. He expressly estimates "the general income of the Roman provinces" at the sum which M. Wenck represents him as stating to be "the revenue of the Roman empire." The whole remaining portion of this chapter is also devoted to show how, to this amount of provincial tribute, was added all that accrued from the customs, excise, and tax on inhe ritances, which the "Roman citizens" paid; how, by the extension of this franchise, extravagant emperors raised additional sums to sup port their prodigality; and how, when it was made universal by Cars

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