SUPPLYING THE ROMAN EMPIRE 123supply of wheat procured and assembled for its market, and then the
other cities may also receive provisions in plenty. If, as we pray, the Nile
provides us with a fl ood of the customary level, and a bountiful harvest
of wheat is produced among the Egyptians, then you will be among the
fi rst after the homeland.^30It is specifi cally implied that in a normal year there was plenty of grain to go
around, once Rome’s needs had been satisfi ed.
Secondly, Egypt under the Principate had more grain to export, in
comparison with the last phase of independence, when the country
experienced considerable disruption and unrest. Improvements in
distribution are likely to have been achieved already under the fi rst emperor,
perhaps too a better agricultural performance.
Thirdly, the eastern Mediterranean had been the theatre of regular and
destructive civil and foreign wars in the last century of the Republic. Many
communities had suffered not only war damage, but also recurrent
requisitions and direct punitive action. The region gained more, it might be
suggested, from the cessation of these wars than it lost through the
annexation of Egypt.
Fourthly, there was some shift in population East to West in the early
empire, and therefore a reduction in the number of consumers in the East.
The population of the city of Rome picked up signifi cantly under Augustus,
making up the losses of the previous two decades, and possibly rising above
the levels of the 60s and 50s. Under the Republic, Rome’s gain in manpower
had been Italy’s loss, if the conventional picture is accepted, though the
slaves who poured into the city were for the most part provincial in origin.
Under the Principate, mortality rates and conditions of life in the capital
necessitated a continuous high level of immigration simply to maintain the
population of Rome at its Augustan levels.^31 It is arguable that under
Augustus and his successors proportionately more provincials came to
Rome and fewer Italians than under the Republic. The capital city now
attracted more ‘betterment’ than ‘subsistence’ immigrants. In other words,
by comparison with the period of accelerated demographic expansion, fewer
free men were driven into the city by economic necessity, and more migrated
more or less freely from a relatively prosperous background in search of
self- enrichment. To the extent that the East, specifi cally eastern cities,
contributed to that demographic movement, and their contribution was
probably signifi cant, then there was a fall in the aggregate demand for staple
foodstuffs in the East.
Fifthly, it had happened before. Over an extended period of time, Rome
had conquered and absorbed one by one the most fertile and productive
areas in the Mediterranean region. The annexation of Campania, Sicily,
north Africa or Egypt are punctuations and turning- points, ushering in short
periods of accelerated change. Each advance caused perturbations in the
region immediately concerned and in economically linked areas. States were