curred of capital being lent even to urban communities
at four per cent per month. It was no unusual thing for an energetic
and influential man of business to get either the title
of envoy(81) given to him by the senate or that of officer
by the governor, and, if possible, to have men put at his service
for the better prosecution of his affairs; a case is narrated
on credible authority, where one of these honourable martial bankers
on account of a claim against the town of Salamis in Cyprus
kept its municipal council blockaded in the town-house,
until five of the members had died of hunger.

Robberies and Damage by War

To these two modes of oppression, each of which by itself
was intolerable and which were always becoming better arranged to work
into each other's hands, were added the general calamities, for which
the Roman government was also in great part, at least indirectly,
responsible. In the various wars a large amount of capital
was dragged away from the country and a larger amount destroyed
sometimes by the barbarians, sometimes by the Roman armies.
Owing to the worthlessness of the Roman land and maritime police,
brigands and pirates swarmed every where. In Sardinia and the interior
of Asia Minor brigandage was endemic; in Africa and Further Spain
it became necessary to fortify all buildings constructed
outside of the city-enclosures with walls and towers. The fearful evil
of piracy has been already described in another connection.(82)
The panaceas of the prohibitive system, with which the Roman governor
was wont to interpose when scarcity of money or dearth occurred,
as under such circumstances they could not fail to do--
the prohibition of the export of gold or grain from the province--
did not mend the matter. The communal affairs were almost everywhere
embarrassed, in addition to the general distress, by local disorders
and frauds of the public officials.

The Conditions of the Provinces Generally

Where such grievances afflicted communities and individuals
not temporarily but for generations with an inevitable, steady,
and yearly-increasing oppression, the best regulated public
or private economy could not but succumb to them, and the most
unspeakable misery could not but extend over all the nations
from the Tagus to the Euphrates. "All the communities," it is said
in a treatise published as early as 684, "are ruined"; the same truth
is specially attested as regards Spain and Narbonese Gaul,