LATE ROMAN SOCIETY AND ECONOMYand bread doles for the purpose.^52 The grain came largely though not only, from
North Africa and Sicily, where in each case its provision had a major impact
on the local economies.^53 In the case of Rome, the loss of North Africa to the
Vandals caused severe disruption, but the distributions went on and were even-
tually taken over by the church. In the east, the grain and oil annona, as it was
called, accounted for a high proportion of long-distance transportation between
Alexandria and Constantinople, and can be traced in the pottery evidence.^54
Egypt continued to supply Constantinople, but the link was abruptly broken by
the Persian invasion of Egypt in the early seventh century.^55 There were other
problems: the tickets on which the actual distributions were made had come to
be passed on by sale or inheritance; the government tried at times to regulate
these practices too, but as time went on, as with other late Roman taxes, the
match between those theoretically qualifi ed and those actually receiving the dole
had already become less and less close. Nevertheless the movement of goods
in connection with tax requirements was a central factor in the continuance of
long-distance exchange across the Mediterranean and an important contributor
to the maintenance of Mediterranean unity.
The army was also a powerful factor affecting the circulation of coin and
could act as an economic stimulus as well as a drain for the state. By the be-
ginning of our period, payment in kind was beginning to be commuted into
gold, especially in the west, at varying rates of commutation which at times
had to be regulated by the government, and in the sixth century payment in
gold (pounds or solidi) was the norm. Gold raised in taxes from the central
provinces made its way to where army units were located, and soldiers spent
their pay locally. State spending also followed the development of imperial
residences and provincial centres such as Milan and Ravenna in the west and
Antioch in the east. Maintenance of the cursus publicus was another example
where state spending acted as a local stimulus.^56 However, the development of
Constantinople as the eastern capital and its own massive needs deprived the
west of eastern resources; it was no longer possible to maintain a paid army
along the Rhine and upper Danube in the fi fth century or the lower Danube
in the sixth. Britain too was left to its own devices and the army withdrawn
in 410. The establishment of rule from Constantinople in North Africa after
Belisarius’s victory over the Vandals in 534 required major investment, as
did the Justinianic wars in Italy and against the Persians. The presence of the
army in a particular area, with all that it required for its maintenance – not just
the pay and supplies of the troops, but also a good road system and transport
and local support systems – could be a powerful economic stimulus and was
no doubt one of the factors behind the undoubted prosperity and density of
settlement in the fi fth century in the south-eastern frontier areas, even in bar-
ren and diffi cult places such as the Hauran and the Negev, where there were
many small military settlements in addition to the major fortresses. But by the
sixth century much of the defence of the south-eastern part of the frontier
area from Transjordan to Arabia had been left to Arab allies (Chapter 8), and
barbarians were frequently used in the regular armies.