ate Dionysius, the city itself
was only a hundred stadia, or twelve miles and a half, from Rome,
though some out-posts might be advanced farther on the side of Etruria.
Nardini, in a professed treatise, has combated the popular opinion and
the authority of two popes, and has removed Veii from Civita Castellana,
to a little spot called Isola, in the midway between Rome and the Lake
Bracianno. * Note: See the interesting account of the site and ruins of
Veii in Sir W Gell's topography of Rome and its Vicinity. v. ii. p.
303.--M.]

[Footnote 82: See the 4th and 5th books of Livy. In the Roman census,
property, power, and taxation were commensurate with each other.]

[Footnote 83: Plin. Hist. Natur. l. xxxiii. c. 3. Cicero de Offic. ii.
22. Plutarch, P. Aemil. p. 275.]

[Footnote 84: See a fine description of this accumulated wealth of ages
in Phars. l. iii. v. 155, &c.]

History has never, perhaps, suffered a greater or more irreparable
injury than in the loss of the curious register [841] bequeathed by
Augustus to the senate, in which that experienced prince so accurately
balanced the revenues and expenses of the Roman empire. [85] Deprived of
this clear and comprehensive estimate, we are reduced to collect a few
imperfect hints from such of the ancients as have accidentally turned
aside from the splendid to the more useful parts of history. We are
informed that, by the conquests of Pompey, the tributes of Asia were
raised from fifty to one hundred and thirty-five millions of drachms; or
about four millions and a half sterling. [86] [861] Under the last and most
indolent of the Ptolemies, the revenue of Egypt is said to have amounted
to twelve thousand five hundred talents; a sum equivalent to more
than two millions and a half of our money, but which was afterwards
considerably improved by the more exact economy of the Romans, and the
increase of the trade of Aethiopia and India. [87] Gaul was enriched by
rapine, as Egypt was by commerce, and the tributes of those two great
provinces have been compared as nearly equal to each other in value.
[88] The ten thousand Euboic or Phoenician talents, about four millions
sterling, [89] which vanquished Carthage was condemned to pay within the
term of fifty years, were a slight acknowledgment of the superiority of
Rome, [90] and cannot bear the least proportion with the taxes afterwards
raised both on the lands and on the persons of the inhabitants, when the
fertile coast of Af