The cost of maintaining her fleet and her armies taxed the financial resources of Rome to the utmost. The government had to make use of a reserve fund which had been accumulating in the treasury for thirty years from the returns of the 5% tax on the value of manumitted slaves, and the armies in Spain could only be kept in the field by the generosity and patriotism of several companies of contractors who furnished supplies at their own expense until the end of the war. An additional burden was the increased cost of the necessities of life and the danger of a grain famine, caused by the disturbed conditions in Italy and Sicily and the withdrawal of so many men from agricultural occupations. In 210 the situation was only relieved by an urgent appeal to Ptolemy Philopator of Egypt, from whom grain had to be purchased at three times the usual price. However, this crisis passed with the pacification of Sicily in the next year. Furthermore, a heavy tribute had been levied upon the man power of the Roman state. The census list of citizens eligible for military service fell from about 280,000 at the beginning of the war to 237,000 in 209; and the federate allies must have suffered at least as heavily. The greatest losses fell upon the southern part of the peninsula. There, year after year, the fields had been laid waste and the villages devastated by the opposing armies, until the rural population had almost entirely disappeared, the land had become a wilderness, and the more prosperous cities had fallen into decay. From the effects of these ravages southern Italy never recovered. CHAPTER IX ROMAN DOMINATION IN THE MEDITERRANEAN THE SECOND PHASE: ROME AND THE GREEK EAST, 200–167 B. C. I. THE SECOND MACEDONIAN WAR: 200–196 B. C.