ABSTRACT
THE first Emperors made it their concern to improve the old ports and to create new ones. The very increase of sea-borne trade called for action on their part; it must not be forgotten that although trade in minerals or in heavy iron and steel wares was little developed, that in wheat was essential and, through its close connexion with the life of the capital, controlled a great part of the economic life of the day. This wheat, furnished by Egypt, Africa and Sicily, could only arrive by sea. It was essential that it should be unloaded in safe harbours, sheltered from storms, for the loss of a cargo would have been much more serious at that time than in our days and have fallen little short of a social calamity. Such is the fundamental explanation of the public works which were undertaken in Italy; but, at the same time and along the whole coast of the Roman world where the necessities of trade were making themselves felt and a more highly developed civilization was leading to habits of ease and luxury, navigation interests—above all, those of the coasting trade—were leading to the construction of docks, quays and warehouses and the epoch of the Antonines had almost closed before these undertakings grew less, in harmony with the general slackening of human effort.
