In addition to this, the mines which supplied the Roman world failed to a considerable extent under the emperors. "The poverty of Greece, as of the whole empire," says Finlay, "was further increased _by the gradual rise in the value of the precious metals_; an evil which began to be generally felt about the time of Nero, and affected Greece with great severity, from the altered distribution of wealth in the country with which it was attended. Greece had once been rich in mines, which had been a source of wealth and prosperity to Siphnos and Atticus, and had laid the foundation of the power of Philip of Macedon. The fiscal measures of the Romans soon rendered it a _ruinous speculation for individuals to attempt working mines of the precious metals_; and, in the hands of the state, they soon proved unprofitable. Many mines were exhausted; and even _though the value of the precious metals was enhanced_, some mines beyond the sphere of the Roman power _were abandoned_ from those causes which, after the second century of the Christian era, produced a sensible diminution in the commercial transactions of the Old Hemisphere.[62] Greece shared in the general decay: her commerce and manufactures, being confined to supplying the consumption of a diminished and impoverished population, sunk into insignificancy. _An accumulation of debts became general throughout the country_, and formed an extensive evil, as already observed, in the time of Plutarch."[63] As this great diminution on the supply, and drain upon the treasures of the precious metals in the time of the emperors, lowered the value of every species of produce, so it proportionally augmented debts, and swelled the already overgrown fortunes of the capitalists. What Finlay says of Greece was true of the whole European provinces of the empire:--"_The property of the Grecian debtors was at last transferred to a very great extent to the Roman creditors._"[64] The gradual diminution in the supply of, or abstraction of the precious metals, by contracting the currency, lowered prices, and thus diminished the returns of industry; while it proportionally augmented debts, and added to the fortunes of the great capitalists and landholders. This again produced another effect upon the manners of the inhabitants of the great cities, which had an equally powerful effect in increasing the drain upon that portion of the precious metals which was employed in the public currency. The rich patricians of Rome, Antioch, and Constantinople, possessed of colossal fortunes to which nothing in modern times will bear a comparison, and nursed in habits of luxury and expense beyond any thing we can even conceive, daily augmented the amount of their immense incomes, which was devoted to the purposes of extravagance. "The historians of the second and third centuries," says Finlay, "are filled with lamentations on this subject."[65] It is not surprising that it was so. Men possessed, in private stations, of as