Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/94

74 THE DECLINE AND FALL ing of mulberry trees and regulate the duties on raw silk.- The northern climates are less propitious to the education of the silk-worm ; but the industry of France and England -^ is supplied and enriched by the productions of Italy and China. Revenue of I must repeat the complaint that the vacrue and scanty me- the Greek ± l o •/ empire morials of the times will not afford any just estimate of the taxeSj the revenue, and the resources of the Greek empire. From every province of Europe and Asia the rivulets of gold and silver discharged into the Imperial reservoir a copious and perennial stream.-^ The separation of the branches from the trunk increased the relative magnitude of Constantinople ; and the maxims of despotism contracted the state to the capital, the capital to the palace, and the palace to the royal person. A Jewish traveller, who visited the East in the twelfth century, is lost in his admiration of the Byzantine riches. " It is here," says Benjamin of Tudela, " in the queen of cities, that the tributes of the Greek empire are annually deposited, and the lofty towers are filled with precious magazines of silk, purple and gold. It is said that Constantinople pays each day to her sovereign twenty thousand pieces of gold ; which are levied on the shops, taverns, and markets, on the merchants of Persia and Egypt, of Russia and Hungary, of Italy and Spain, who frequent the capital by sea and land." -^ In all pecuniary matters, the authority of a Jew is doubtless respectable ; but, as the three hundred and sixty-five days would produce a yearly income exceeding seven millions sterling, I am tempted to retrench at least the numerous festivals of the Greek cal- endai*. The mass of treasure that was saved by Theodora and Basil the Second will suggest a splendid though indefinite idea of their supplies and resources. The mother of Michael, before she retired to a cloister, attempted to check or expose the prodigality of her ungrateful son by a free and feithful 26 From the Ms. statutes, as they are quoted by Muratori in his Itahan An- tiquities (torn. ii. dissert, xxx. p. 46-48). 2' The broad silk manufacture was established in England in the year 1620 (.Anderson's Chronological Deduction, vol. ii. p. 4) ; but it is to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes that vc owe the Spitalfields colony. "■^ [And from the reign of Leo the Great in the 5th, to the capture of Constanti- nople at the beginning of the 13th, the gold coinage was never depreciated.] 29 Voyage de Benjamin de Tudele, torn. i. c. 5, p. 44-52. The Hebrew te.xt has been translated into French by that marvellous child Baratier, who has added a volume of crude learning. The errors and fictions of the Jewish rabbi are not a sufficient ground to deny the reality of his travels. [Benjamin's Itinerary has been ediicd and translnted by A. .slier, 2 vols., 1840. Foi' his statements concerning Greece, cp. CJregoroviu.s, Gcsch. iler Stadt .Vlhen im Mitlclaller, i. p. 200.]