taxes laid by Commodus on the ports,
harbours, and public roads, and gave up his privileges as emperor,
especially in all those points where they were prejudicial to the freedom
and extension of commerce. It may indeed be remarked, that the very few
good or tolerable princes who, at this period, filled the government of
Rome, displayed their wisdom as well as their goodness by encouraging
trade. Alexander Severus granted peculiar privileges and immunities to
foreign merchants who settled in Rome: he lowered the duties on
merchandises; and divided all who followed trade, either on a large or
small scale, into different companies, each of which seems to have
preserved the liberty of choosing their own governor, and over each of whom
persons were appointed, conversant in each particular branch of trade,
whose duty it was to settle all disputes that might arise.

Soon after this period the commerce of Rome in one particular direction,
and that a most important one, received a severe blow. The Goths, who had
emigrated from the north of Germany to the banks of the Euxine, were
allured to the "soft and wealthy provinces of Asia Minor, which produced
all that could attract, and nothing that could resist a barbarian
conqueror." It is on the occasion of this enterprise, that we first became
acquainted with the maritime usages and practices of the Goths; a branch of
whom, under the name of Scandinavians, we shall afterwards find contributed
so much to the extension of geography and commerce. In order to transport
their armies across the Euxine, they employed "slight flat-bottomed barks,
framed of timber only, without the least mixture of iron, and occasionally
covered with a shelving roof on the appearance of a tempest." Their first
object of importance was the reduction of Pityus, which was provided with a
commodious harbour, and was situated at the utmost limits of the Roman
provinces. After the reduction of this place, they sailed round the eastern
extremity of the Euxine, a distance of nearly three hundred miles, to the
important commercial city of Trebizond. This they also reduced; and in it
they found an immense booty, with which they filled a great fleet of ships,
that were lying in the port at the time of the capture. Their success
encouraged and stimulated them to further enterprises against such of the
commercial cities or rich coasts of the Roman empire, as lay within their
grasp. In their second expedition, having incre