ollect the supply of
grain for Constantinople and to see it put on board the ships; and as
for the supply which was promised to the Alexandrians, the magistrates
were to collect it at their own risk, and by means of their own cohort.
The grain for Constantinople was required to be in that city before the
end of August, or within four months after the harvest, and the supply
for Alexandria not more than a month later. The prefect was made
answerable for the full collection, and whatever was wanting of that
quantity was to be levied on his property and his heirs, at the rate
of one solidus for three artabo of grain, or about three dollars for
fifteen bushels; while in order to help the collection, the export of
grain from Egypt was forbidden from every port but Alexandria, except in
small quantities. The grain required for Alexandria and Constantinople,
to be distributed as a free gift among the idle citizens, was eight
hundred thousand artabo, or four millions of bushels, and the cost
of collecting it was fixed at eighty thousand solidi, or about three
hundred thousand dollars. The prefect was ordered to assist the
collectors at the head of his cohort, and if he gave credit for the
taxes which he was to collect he was to bear the loss himself. If the
archbishop interfered, to give credit and screen an unhappy Egyptian,
then he was to bear the loss, and if his property was not enough the
property of the Church was to make it good; but if any other bishop gave
credit, not only was his property to bear the loss, but he was himself
to be deposed from his bishopric; and lastly, if any riot or rebellion
should arise to cause the loss of the Egyptian tribute, the tribunes
of the Augustalian Cohort were to be punished with forfeiture of all
property, and the cohort was to be removed to a station beyond the
Danube.

Such was the new law which Justinian, the great Roman lawgiver, proposed
for the future government of Egypt. The Egyptians were treated as
slaves, whose duty was to raise grain for the use of their masters at
Constantinople, and their taskmasters at Alexandria. They did not even
receive from the government the usual benefit of protection from their
enemies, and they felt bound to the emperor by no tie either of love
or interest. The imperial orders wrere very little obeyed beyond those
places where the troops were encamped; the Arabs were each year pressing
closer upon the valley of the Nile, and helping the sands of