496
THE DECLINE OF THE WEST
immense outflow of gold into the farther East after Hadrian's reign, which has hitherto been unaccountable. And as economic life in forms of gold-streams was extinguished in the upheaval of a young Culture, so also the slave ceased to be money, and the ebb of the gold was paralleled by that mass-emancipation of the slaves which numerous Imperial laws, from Augustus's reign onwards, tried in vain to check — till under Diocletian, in whose famous maximum tariff[1] money-economy was no longer the standpoint, the type of the Classical slave had ceased to exist.
- ↑ See the article "Diocletian, Edict of," Ency. Brit., XI ed. — Tr.
