ABSTRACT
As we have seen in the last two chapters, agricultural, pastoral, and industrial production had developed enormously in the first centuries of the Empire, but at the same time it had, at least in part, become specialized. The result was that in many regions the exploitation of the soil or the manufacture of goods did not meet the needs of the consumers, while other regions produced more of some particular commodity or merchandise, metallurgical, textile, or ceramic, than it consumed. So there arose an economic circulation, in addition to which there was the transport of raw materials from their place of origin to the various places where they were used, such as the ingots of lead which travelled across Gaul to the Mediterranean ports. 2
