revenue of the provinces was found sufficient to defray the ordinary establishment of war and government, and the superfluous mass of gold and silver was deposited in the temple of Saturn, and reserved for any unforeseen emergency of the state. 84 81 (return) [ According to the more accurate Dionysius, the city itself was only a hundred stadia, or twelve miles and a half, from Rome, though some out-posts might be advanced farther on the side of Etruria. Nardini, in a professed treatise, has combated the popular opinion and the authority of two popes, and has removed Veii from Civita Castellana, to a little spot called Isola, in the midway between Rome and the Lake Bracianno. * Note: See the interesting account of the site and ruins of Veii in Sir W Gell’s topography of Rome and its Vicinity. v. ii. p. 303.—M.] 82 (return) [ See the 4th and 5th books of Livy. In the Roman census, property, power, and taxation were commensurate with each other.] 83 (return) [ Plin. Hist. Natur. l. xxxiii. c. 3. Cicero de Offic. ii. 22. Plutarch, P. Æmil. p. 275.] 84 (return) [ See a fine description of this accumulated wealth of ages in Phars. l. iii. v. 155, &c.] History has never, perhaps, suffered a greater or more irreparable injury than in the loss of the curious register 841 bequeathed by Augustus to the senate, in which that experienced prince so accurately balanced the revenues and expenses of the Roman empire. 85 Deprived of this clear and comprehensive estimate, we are reduced to collect a few imperfect hints from such of the ancients as have accidentally turned aside from the splendid to the more useful parts of history. We are informed that, by the conquests of Pompey, the tributes of Asia were raised from fifty to one hundred and thirty-five millions of drachms; or about four millions and a half sterling. 86 861 Under the last and most indolent of the Ptolemies, the revenue of Egypt is said to have amounted to twelve thousand five hundred talents; a sum equivalent to more than two millions and a half of our money, but which was afterwards considerably improved by the more exact economy of the Romans, and the increase of the trade of Æthiopia and India. 87 Gaul was enriched by rapine, as Egypt was by commerce, and the tributes of those two great provinces have been compared as nearly equal to each other in value. 88 The ten thousand Euboic or Phœnician talents, about four millions sterling, 89 which vanquished Carthage was condemned to pay within the term of fifty years, were a slight acknowledgment of the superiority of Rome, 90 and cannot bear the least proportion with the taxes afterwards raised both on the lands and on the