Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/224

 *owners of Rome, a lasting aversion prevailed against seafaring men. In the time of Cicero, the advantages of foreign commerce were only beginning to be felt at Rome, for previously her traders had been simply retailers of corn and provisions. But when the empire of the seas fell indisputably into the hands of the Romans, there arose merchants and large owners of sea-going ships, who in their operations with distant countries realised colossal fortunes, and were thus deemed by Cicero and his class worthy of being distinguished from the mere retailers; and thus, too, in Rome, as has befallen elsewhere, wealth at length supplied the place of birth and genius, Roman merchants entering at last into friendly relations with even its proudest landowners and citizens, and Rome itself becoming the depôt for numberless articles produced abroad. "The most remote countries of the ancient world," remarks Gibbon, "were ransacked, to supply the pomp and delicacy of Rome. The forests of Scythia afforded some valuable furs. Amber was brought overland from the shores of the Baltic to the Danube, and the barbarians were astonished at the price which they received in exchange for so useless a commodity. There was a considerable demand for Babylonian carpets, and other manufactures of the East; but the most important and unpopular branch of trade was carried on with Arabia and India."

No event, however, proved more advantageous to her merchants than the reduction of Egypt to a Roman province, which was finally effected by Octavianus after the battle of Actium. The Romans thus not merely recovered the regular supply