It May Indeed Be Remarked, That The Very Few Good Or Tolerable Princes Who, At This Period, Filled The Government Of Rome, Displayed Their Wisdom As Well As Their Goodness By Encouraging Trade.

Alexander Severus granted peculiar privileges and immunities to foreign merchants who settled in Rome:

He lowered the duties on merchandises; and divided all who followed trade, either on a large or small scale, into different companies, each of which seems to have preserved the liberty of choosing their own governor, and over each of whom persons were appointed, conversant in each particular branch of trade, whose duty it was to settle all disputes that might arise.

Soon after this period the commerce of Rome in one particular direction, and that a most important one, received a severe blow. The Goths, who had emigrated from the north of Germany to the banks of the Euxine, were allured to the "soft and wealthy provinces of Asia Minor, which produced all that could attract, and nothing that could resist a barbarian conqueror." It is on the occasion of this enterprise, that we first became acquainted with the maritime usages and practices of the Goths; a branch of whom, under the name of Scandinavians, we shall afterwards find contributed so much to the extension of geography and commerce. In order to transport their armies across the Euxine, they employed "slight flat-bottomed barks, framed of timber only, without the least mixture of iron, and occasionally covered with a shelving roof on the appearance of a tempest." Their first object of importance was the reduction of Pityus, which was provided with a commodious harbour, and was situated at the utmost limits of the Roman provinces. After the reduction of this place, they sailed round the eastern extremity of the Euxine, a distance of nearly three hundred miles, to the important commercial city of Trebizond. This they also reduced; and in it they found an immense booty, with which they filled a great fleet of ships, that were lying in the port at the time of the capture. Their success encouraged and stimulated them to further enterprises against such of the commercial cities or rich coasts of the Roman empire, as lay within their grasp. In their second expedition, having increased their fleet by the capture of a number of fishing vessels, near the mouths of the Borysthenes, the Niester, and the Danube, they plundered the cities of Bithynia. And in a third expedition, in which their force consisted of five hundred sail of ships, each of which might contain from twenty-five to thirty men, they passed the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, and ravaged Greece, and threatened Italy itself.

The extent to which some branches of trade were carried by the Romans about this time, may be deduced from what is related of Firmus, whose ruin was occasioned by endeavouring to exchange the security of a prosperous merchant for the imminent dangers of a Roman emperor. The commerce of Firmus seems principally to have been directed to the east; and for carrying on this commerce, he settled himself at Alexandria in Egypt. Boasting that he could maintain an army with the produce of paper and glue, both of which articles he manufactured very extensively, he persuaded the people of Egypt that he was able to deliver them from the Roman yoke, and actually had influence sufficient to prevent the usual supplies of corn from being shipped from Alexandria to Rome.

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