were not permitted, in such voyages, to carry any private merchandise; moreover, the owners of vessels engaged in certain trades were required to hold them at the disposal of the state. In spite, however, of all these laws, the encouragement proposed or provided by them came too late.
Neglect and decline of commerce, But while a new life was being gradually infused into the empire by the creation of Constantinople, overgrown wealth and luxury, with the evils following in their train, indolence, waste, and extravagance, were only too surely working out the downfall of old Rome. Capital, which ought to have been used as a provision for fresh channels of employment for an increasing population, was devoted to pleasure and folly; while no middle class arose to create fresh capital by its industry and to supply the place of the annual waste. In no age or country have the extremes of wealth and poverty been so great; even the provincial merchants came not to the capital to increase its wealth, but rather to waste their own substance. They sought to rival, in display, the ancient noblesse; they rented their palaces to enjoy their society, and were ready to spend fortunes derived from commerce to win a ready entrance into their salons.
So early as the Augustan age, Livy and Pliny have alluded to the then enormous accumulation of wealth in Rome; the former describing the mass of treasure accumulated there as something fabulous;[1] the latter stating that there were side-boards in his time groaning under more solid silver than
- ↑ Livy, xxx. 45. Plin. xxxiii. 50. Gibbon, ch. xxxi., quoting from Ammianus Marcellinus.
