18.3 Europe: a.d. 301 to 400  (Page 3/6)

Others were more concerned with the internal problems of Rome, itself. Throughout its history, the imperial frontiers were closely aligned with the borders of the wheat growing regions of the classical world and now much of this wheat growing area was otherwise occupied. Egyptian wheat now went to Constantinople; southern Italian agriculture was declining and losing out to African and Spanish competition, so that the west was caught in the spiral of dwindling revenue and increasing exactions. Inflation was a tremendous factor. Even in A.D. 302 Diocletian had inflicted the death penalty for any infringement of fixed prices which he had established in an attempt to present further inflation. (Ref. 213 ) Even so, a measure of wheat for which the Romans had paid six drachma in Egypt in the first century C.E. cost two million shortly after A.D. 344. This resulted in a subsequent drift back to a barter economy of a thousand years earlier and helped to ruin not only international trade but the western empire as well. About A.D. 350 there were 120,000 people who received six half-pound loaves of bread free, daily, from the government.

By this time Rome had 12 aqueducts, largely underground, feeding 352 fountains. One tunnel, taking water from Lake Fucino in the Apennines, was 3 1/2 miles long. As the empire fell, however, there were no longer slaves to care for this system and the fountains became dry. (Ref. 213 ) Perhaps scarcity of both food and water were very important in the decline of Rome' There is still another emphasis by Kenneth Clark (Ref. 33 ) - "So if one asks why the civilization of Greece and Rome collapsed, the real answer is that it was exhausted." "The late antique world was full of meaningless rituals, mystery religions that destroyed self confidence. And then exhaustion, the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity.”

Of course the Greek-speaking eastern realm survived to become the- Empire of Byzantium. Part of the success of this eastern part was due to its urbanization and the West's failure to urbanize had made that area less easy to tax and more expensive to administer. Failing to collect taxes, the military could not be paid. Furthermore, the government's price-fixing had made many professions profitless and its attempts to avoid the economic consequences of such by making the practice of such professions obligatory and liability hereditary must have created many white-collar outlaws. We have already mentioned that a sizeable portion of the masses were slaves