ABSTRACT
Trade between Rome and the various parts of her territory, as well as with the countries which the armies had not yet subjected, did not cease to grow in the latter centuries of the Republic, as it was to grow again in the first centuries of the Empire. There was, after the wars of Syria and Macedonia and above all after the defeat of Mithridates, both a domestic and a foreign trade which, although their extent was by no means remarkable, were nevertheless measurable in the equivalent of millions of pounds sterling. Naturally no statistics are available of the movement of goods from one province to another, for the records of the customs or portoria, which would have been invaluable to us and would have furnished at least some basis for comparison, were nowhere preserved: nevertheless, to judge by the quantity and quality of the products which the great families of Rome received from the remotest districts and by the character of the goods which accumulated in the principal warehouses of the Mediterranean, we may say that this trade, at the time when Octavius crushed Antonius and seized supreme power, was of dimensions unprecedented in history.
