instance Egypt played an important part in the history of imperial Rome. After the grain-cultivation in Italy itself had decayed and Rome had become the greatest city of the world, it needed constant supplies of moderately-priced transmarine grain; and the principate strengthened itself above all by the solution of the far from easy economic problem how to make the supply of the capital financially possible and to render it secure. This solution depended on the possession of Egypt, and, in as much as here the emperor bore exclusive sway, he kept Italy with its dependencies in check through Egypt. When Vespasian seized the dominion he sent his troops to Italy, but he went in person to Egypt and possessed himself of Rome through the corn-fleet. Wherever a Roman ruler had, or is alleged to have had, the idea of transferring the seat of government to the East, as is told us of Caesar, Antonius, Nero, Geta, there the thoughts were directed, as if spontaneously, not to Antioch, although this was at that time the regular court-residence of the East, but towards the birthplace and the stronghold of the principate--to Alexandria. For that reason, accordingly, the Roman government applied itself more zealously to the elevation of agriculture in Egypt than anywhere else. As it is dependent on the inundation of the Nile, it was possible to extend considerably the surface fitted for cultivation by systematically executed water-works, artificial canals, dykes, and reservoirs. In the good times of Egypt, the native land of the measuring-chain and of artificial building, much was done for it, but these beneficent structures fell, under the last wretched and financially oppressed governments, into sad decay. Thus the Roman occupation introduced itself worthily by Augustus subjecting the canals of the Nile to a thorough purifying and renewal by means of the troops stationed in Egypt. If at the time of the Romans taking possession a full harvest required a state of the river of fourteen cubits, and at eight cubits failure of the harvest occurred, at a later period, after the canals were put into order, twelve cubits were enough for a full harvest, and even eight cubits yielded a sufficient produce. Centuries later the emperor Probus not merely liberated Egypt from the Ethiopians but also restored the water-works on the Nile. It may be assumed, generally, that the better successors of Augustus administered in a similar sense, and that especially with the internal peace and security hardly interrupted for centuries, Egyptian agriculture stood in a permanently flourishing state under the Roman principate. What reflex effect this state of things had on the Egyptians themselves we are not able to follow out more exactly. To a great extent the revenues from Egypt rested on the possession of the imperial domains, which in Roman as in earlier times formed a considerable part of the whole area;[227] here, especially considering the small cost of cultivation,