ABSTRACT
COMMERCIAL activity, which was intense at the beginning of the Empire, declined enormously in the final phase. The fruitful relations which the large centres of the interior had established with one another and with the barbarian countries beyond the territory of Rome—even to the Far East—were broken down by the invasions and seditions, whilst the rigorous measures of taxation which were imposed by the sovereigns added to the discouragement of all who took part in this trade. For two hundred years, commerce on a large scale had been practised between Rome—which remained the supreme market of the civilized world—and the entrepôts which were dotted over the provinces as far as the frontiers. Regular convoys brought in at huge expense the costly foodstuffs on which the luxury-ridden aristocracy lavished its wealth. Numerous and well-provisioned relays received the caravans which travelled for thousands of miles in order to bring rare essences, gems and fine tissues to the fashionable men and women of the Peninsula. Then the roads became unsafe and deteriorated; public fortune—and with it the wealth of the ruling class—declined in every generation, and the countries into which, for centuries, Italian and Greek merchants had penetrated were closed to the envoys of Rome. The creation of Constantinople, which attempted to rival the city of the Tiber in sumptuousness, did not succeed in reviving trade or in restoring the great currents which had come into existence long before the time of Augustus, and had gathered strength under Nero and Vespasian. The financial demands of the State, which multiplied both direct and indirect taxes, and continuously increased the chrysargyron and the portoria, together with the prohibitions and regulations which the Government introduced, contributed to put an end to commercial transactions. They fell automatically to a minimum, the professional classes which had hitherto lived by them being crushed under the weight of a terrible tyranny.
