e in the Italian plains under the Caesars, is thus
set forth by Gibbon:--

"Since the age of Tiberius, _the decay of agriculture had been felt
in Italy_; and it was a just subject of complaint that the life of
the Roman people depended on the accidents of the winds and the
waves. In the division and decline of the empire, the _tributary
harvests of Egypt and Africa_ were withdrawn; the numbers of the
inhabitants continually diminished with the means of subsistence;
and the country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war,
pestilence, and famine. Pope Gelasius was a subject of Odoacer, and
he affirms, with strong exaggeration, that in Emila, Tuscany, and
the adjacent provinces, the human species was almost
extirpated."[7]

Of the progress and extent of this decay, Gibbon gives the following
account in another part of his great work:--

"The agriculture of the Roman provinces was _insensibly ruined_;
and in the progress of despotism, which tends to disappoint its own
purpose, the emperors were obliged to derive some merit from the
forgiveness of debts, or the remission of tributes, which their
subjects were utterly incapable of paying. According to the new
division of Italy, the fertile and happy province of Campania, the
scene of the early victories and of the delicious retirements of
the citizens of Rome, extended between the sea and the Apennines,
from the Tiber to the Silarius. Within sixty years after the death
of Constantine, and on the evidence of an actual survey, an
exemption was granted in favour of 330,000 English acres _of desert
and uncultivated land, which amounted to one-eighth of the whole
surface of the province_. As the footsteps of the barbarians had
not yet been seen in Italy, the cause of this amazing desolation,
which is recorded in the laws, (Cod. Theod. lxi. t. 38, l. 2,) can
be ascribed only to the administration of the Roman emperors."[8]

Michelet observes, in his late profound and able History of France:--

"The Christian emperors could not remedy the growing depopulation
of the country, any more than their heathen predecessors. All their
efforts only showed the impotence of government to arrest that
dreadful evil. Sometimes, alarmed at the depopulation, they tried
to mitigate the lot of the farmer, to shield him against the