increased opportunities for trading stimulated the development of
manufacturing, for not only could raw materials be more easily procured
but towns favorably situated for the manufacture of particular types of
goods could find a wider market for their products. However, industrial
organization never attained a high degree of development. In the
production of certain wares, such as articles of bronze, silver, glass,
and, especially, pottery and bricks, the factory system seems to have been
employed, with a division of labor among specialized artisans. In general,
however, this was not the case and each manufactured article was the
product of one man's labor. In Italy, and probably throughout the western
provinces, the bulk of the work of this sort was done by slaves and
freedmen.

At the same time the art of agriculture had been developed to a very high
degree, and Columella, an agricultural writer of the time of Nero, shows a
good knowledge of the principles of fertilization and rotation of crops.

However, this material prosperity, which attained its height early in the
second century of our era, declined from reasons which have already been
described until the whole empire reached a state of economic bankruptcy in
the course of the third century. The progressive bankruptcy of the
government is shown by the steady deterioration of the coinage. Under Nero
the denarius, the standard silver coin, was first debased. This debasement
continued until under Septimius Severus it became one half copper.
Caracalla issued a new silver coin, the Antoninianus, one and a half times
the weight of the denarius of the day. Both these coins rapidly
deteriorated in quality until they became mere copper coins with a wash of
silver. Aurelian made the first attempt to correct this evil by issuing
only the Antoninianus and giving this a standard value.

To pass a moral judgment upon society under the principate is a difficult
task. The society depicted in the satires of Juvenal and in Martial, in
the court gossip of Suetonius, or in the polemics of the Christian writers
seems hopelessly corrupt and vicious. But their picture is not complete.
The letters of Pliny reveal an entirely different world with a high
standard of human conduct, whose ideals are expressed in the philosophic
doctrines of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. And the funerary inscriptions
from the municipalities, where life was more wholesome and simple than in
the large cities,