CHAP. ix. OF BYZANTIUM. 



regular power which created any great anxiety 

 in the mind of Constantine; for the Goths, the 

 Vandals, the Alani, the Alemani, the Heruli, 

 the Suevi, and other of those denominated bar- 

 barous nations, were considered by him as too 

 insignificant to create much uneasiness, though 

 in a few centuries they grew sufficiently power- 

 ful to threaten and to occupy both Rome and 

 Constantinople, and to divide among them the 

 most extensive provinces of the magnificent but 

 declining empire. Though the founding of 

 Constantinople may have tended to draw the 

 gold and silver of the world to the eastern side 

 of Europe, and though it thereby weakened 

 the industry and productive power of Italy, 

 it left Gaul, Spain, arid the other countries of 

 western Europe less liable to that drain of 

 the precious metals, which the greater accessi- 

 bility of Rome had, as long as her unchecked 

 power continued, operated to their disadvantage. 

 This removal of the seat of empire, whatever 

 other effect it may have produced, does not ap- 

 pear to have had any on the increase or de- 

 crease of the precious metals. It neither 

 opened new mines in Africa or Asia, nor kept 

 those in operation which in Thrace and Illyria 

 ha-1 yielded copious supplies. Constantine, we 

 are informed by Gibbon \ but on authority which 



1 Decline and Fall, cap. xvii. p. 18. 



