rica was reduced into a province. [91]

[Footnote 841: See Rationarium imperii. Compare besides Tacitus, Suet.
Aug. c. ult. Dion, p. 832. Other emperors kept and published similar
registers. See a dissertation of Dr. Wolle, de Rationario imperii Rom.
Leipsig, 1773. The last book of Appian also contained the statistics of
the Roman empire, but it is lost.--W.]

[Footnote 85: Tacit. in Annal. i. ll. It seems to have existed in the
time of Appian.]

[Footnote 86: Plutarch, in Pompeio, p. 642.]

[Footnote 861: Wenck contests the accuracy of Gibbon's version of Plutarch,
and supposes that Pompey only raised the revenue from 50,000,000 to
85,000,000 of drachms; but the text of Plutarch seems clearly to mean
that his conquests added 85,000,000 to the ordinary revenue. Wenck adds,
"Plutarch says in another part, that Antony made Asia pay, at one time,
200,000 talents, that is to say, 38,875,000 L. sterling." But Appian
explains this by saying that it was the revenue of ten years, which
brings the annual revenue, at the time of Antony, to 3,875,000 L.
sterling.--M.]

[Footnote 87: Strabo, l. xvii. p. 798.]

[Footnote 88: Velleius Paterculus, l. ii. c. 39. He seems to give the
preference to the revenue of Gaul.]

[Footnote 89: The Euboic, the Phoenician, and the Alexandrian talents
were double in weight to the Attic. See Hooper on ancient weights and
measures, p. iv. c. 5. It is very probable that the same talent was
carried from Tyre to Carthage.]

[Footnote 90: Polyb. l. xv. c. 2.]

[Footnote 91: Appian in Punicis, p. 84.]

Spain, by a very singular fatality, was the Peru and Mexico of the old
world. The discovery of the rich western continent by the Phoenicians,
and the oppression of the simple natives, who were compelled to labor in
their own mines for the benefit of strangers, form an exact type of
the more recent history of Spanish America. [92] The Phoenicians were
acquainted only with the sea-coast of Spain; avarice, as well as
ambition, carried the arms of Rome and Carthage into the heart of the
country, and almost every part of the soil was found pregnant with
copper, silver, and gold. [921] Mention is made of a mine near Carthagena
which yielded every day twenty-five thousand drachmns of silver, or
about three hundred thousand pounds a year. [93] Twenty thousand pound
weight of gold was annually received from the provinces of Asturia,
Gallicia, and Lusitania. [94]

[Footnote 92: Diodorus Siculus, l. 5. Oa