Nor was the state of Egypt less prosperous in the last ages of the Roman empire; nor was its condition a less striking contrast to the miserable and languishing condition of the Italian and Grecian plains. It is thus described by Mr Finlay,[20] whose recent work has thrown so much light on the social condition of the inhabitants of the Roman empire in their later days:--"If the accounts of ancient historians can be relied on, the population of Egypt had suffered less from the vicious administration of the Roman empire, and from the Persian invasion, than any other part of their dominions; for at the time of its conquest by the Romans it contained seven millions and a half of inhabitants, exclusive of Alexandria; and in the last days of the empire it nourished almost as great a number. The Nile spread its fertilizing waters over the land; the canals were kept in a state sufficient for irrigation; and the vested capital of Egypt suffered little diminution, whilst war and oppression annihilated the accumulation of ages over the rest of the world. The immense wealth and importance of Alexandria, the only port which Egypt possessed for communicating with the empire, still made it _one of the first cities in the universe for riches and population_, though its strength had received a severe blow from the Persian conquest."[21] Sicily was another exception from the general decrepitude and ruin of the Roman empire in the latter reigns of the Cæsars. "In the island of Sicily, the great bulk of the population was Greek, and few portions of the Greek race _had succeeded so well in preserving their wealth and property uninjured_."[22] But in the other parts of the empire, to the north of the Mediterranean, the agricultural population was, in the time of Heraclius, _absolutely destroyed_. "The imperial armies," says Finlay, "which, in the time of Maurice, had waged an active war in Illyria and Thrace, and frequently invaded the territories of the Avars, had melted away during the disorders of the reign of Phocas. The loss was irreparable; for in Europe _no agricultural population remained to supply the means of forming a body of local militia, or even a body of irregular troops_."[23]