System of collecting the taxes.
A.D. 211.
Value of the trade with Alexandria.
- owners to make voyages during the winter, when
they usually laid up their vessels, and besides confirming to them the allowances sanctioned by Tiberius, with relief from municipal taxation, took on himself all losses, at the same time securing the importers a certain rate of profit.
Of the several impositions introduced by Augustus the five per cent. on legacies and inheritances was the most fruitful as well as the most comprehensive. Farmed like nearly all other taxes (for in every age the best and wisest of the Roman governors adhered to this pernicious method of collecting the principal customs), the burden was increased by the insolence and cupidity of the collectors; hence, when two centuries afterwards Caracalla doubled the already heavy impost, this act of oppression nearly cost him his throne and his life.[1] Yet, in spite of the extravagant luxury of the wealthier classes, the enormous value of the imperial commerce, together with the extent and wealth of the provinces, enabled the government to maintain for a long time an expenditure which, under other circumstances, could not have been endured; and much, indeed, of this wealth was really due to the possession of Egypt, apart altogether from the large commercial profits derived from Alexandria. Besides corn, Egypt supplied the imperial city with flax and linen of various qualities, cotton goods, costly ointments, marble, alabaster, fine alum, salt, gums, and the papyrus, from which paper was manufactured at Rome. Three hundred thousand
- ↑ Gibbon, c. vi., has relied on a passage in Dion., lxxvii., which the best commentators doubt. The edict seems to have been made by M. Antoninus, and was perhaps fathered on Caracalla from his general unpopularity.
