Such extraordinary privileges conferred on the seafaring population of the empire—privileges unknown in any other country or in any other age—were probably enacted in order to revive the nautical spirit which had been so long practically treated with contempt. No doubt, special bounties were needed to ensure the import of corn and the construction of vessels adapted to this purpose. Indeed, the necessity of a constant and steady supply of food sufficient to meet the wants of the people, and to prevent the tumults which too frequently arose whenever there was a prospect of a scarcity of corn, sufficiently accounts for the encouragement afforded to this particular trade. But in the later days it was found necessary to create laws to raise further in the social scale the seafaring classes. Indeed this seems the only reason why the emperors Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius should have issued ordinances to prevent persons adopting the sea as a profession who had previously exercised any mean and disgraceful employment;[339] endeavouring thus, so far as laws could do so, to counteract the deep-rooted prejudice against seafaring pursuits. By the decrees of Constantine and Julian, sailors were even raised to the dignity of knighthood; while Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian enjoined that persons filling the functions of mariners should be admitted into the society of men of the most honourable and aristocratic parentage, and even into the senate. [Sidenote: Produce of certain lands applied to the sea service.] But while the Roman laws enacted at the new capital conceded so many privileges to persons who adopted the sea as a profession, the state also required the possessors of certain lands (making this, indeed, the condition of the grant) to perform the functions of public mariners; but this arrangement was so contrived that actual personal service was not enforced, although the expense of substitutes was charged on the lands. The nature of this scheme is fully explained in the Theodosian Code,[340] where the rights of the state and of the parties are defined. When these lands were sold, the law enforced the same obligations upon the purchasers; and the emperors Valentinian and Valens enacted, that if they passed into the hands of strangers, they should revert to “mariners,” on conditions regulated by the experience and practice of the previous fifty years. On the other hand, those persons who were employed in the service of the state were not permitted, in such voyages, to carry any private merchandise; moreover, the owners of vessels engaged in certain trades were required to hold them at the disposal of the state. In spite, however, of all these laws, the encouragement proposed or provided by them came too late.