landlord; upon this the proprietor exclaimed he could no longer pay
the taxes. At other times they abandoned the farmer, surrendered
him to the landlord, and strove to chain him to the soil; but the
unhappy cultivators perished or fled, _and the land became
deserted_. Even in the time of Augustus, efforts were made to
arrest the depopulation at the expense of morals, by encouraging
concubinage. Pertinax granted an immunity from taxes to those who
could _occupy the desert lands of Italy, to the cultivators of the
distant province and the allied kings_. Aurelian did the same.
Probus was obliged to transport from Germany men and oxen to
cultivate Gaul.[9] Maximian and Constantius transported the Franks
and Germans from Picardy and Hainault into Italy; but the
depopulation in the towns and the country alike continued. The
people surrendered themselves in the fields to despair, as a beast
of burden lies down beneath his load and refuses to rise. In vain
the emperor strove, by offers of immunities and exemptions, to
recall the cultivator to his deserted fields. Nothing, could do so.
_The desert extended daily._ At the commencement of the fifth
century there was, _in the Happy Campania, the most fertile
province of the empire, 520,000 jugera_ (320,000 acres) in a state
of nature."[10]

So general, indeed, was the depopulation of the empire in the time of
Justinian, that it suggested to many of the emperors the project of
repeopling those favoured districts by a fresh influx of inhabitants.
"Justinian II. had a great taste for these emigrations. He transported
half the population of Cyprus to a new city near Cyzicus, called
Justinianopolis after its founder. But it was all in vain. The
desolation and ruin of the provinces continued, and up to the very gates
of Constantinople, which was maintained entirely by grain _imported at a
low price from Egypt, and cattle from the Tauric Chersonesus_."[11]

As a natural consequence of this entire or principal dependence of Rome
on foreign or provincial raising of grain, there was, on any
interruption of these foreign supplies, the greatest scarcity and even
famine in the metropolis. All the vigilance of the emperors, which was
constantly directed to this object, could not prevent this from taking
place. Tacitus says, that in the scarcity under Claudius, there only
remained a supply o