Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/357

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. SS3 were compelled to acknowledge their weakness, by CHAP. surrounding the hostile and independent spot with a ^' strong chain of fortifications'", which often proved in- sufficient to restrain the incursions of these domestic foes. The Isaurians, gradually extending their ter- ritory to the sea coast, subdued the western and moun- tainous part of Cilicia, formerly the nest of those dar- ing pirates, against whom the republic had once been obliged to exert its utmost force, under the conduct of the great Pompey^ Our habits of thinking so fondly connect the order Famine and of the universe with the fate of man, that this gloomy P^*^' ®"^®* period of history has been decorated with inundations, earthquakes, uncommon meteors, preternatural dark- ness, and a crowd of prodigies fictitious or exaggerat- ed*. But a long and general famine was a calamity of a more serious kind. It was the inevitable consequence of rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present, and the hope of future harvests. Fa- mine is almost always followed by epidemical diseases, the effect of scanty and unwholesome food. Other causes must however have contributed to the furious plague which, from the year 250, to the year 265, raged without interruption in every province, every city, and almost every family of the Roman empire. During some time five thousand persons died daily in Rome ; and many towns, that had escaped the hands of the barbarians, were entirely depopulated". We have the knowledge of a very curious circum- Diminution stance, of some use perhaps in the melancholy calcu- ^^"jl^^ ^"' lation of human calamities. An exact register was cies. kept at Alexandria of all the citizens entitled to re- ceive the distribution of corn. It was found, that the ancient number of those comprised between the ages ' Hist. August, p. 197. • See Cellarius, Geog. Antiq. tom. ii. p. 137, upon the limits df Isauria. » Hist. August, p. 177. " Hist. August, p. 177; Zosimus, 1. i. p. 24 ; Zonaras, 1. xii. p. 623; Euseb. Ciironicon. ; Victor in Epitom. ; Victor in Caesar.; Eutropius, ix. 5 ; Orosius, vii. 21.