M. Jules Toutain, the eminent French scholar, has written
a lucid and attractive volume on The Economic Life of the Ancient. World, translated by Mr. M. R. Dobie, for Messrs. Kegan Paul's remarkable series on "The History of Civilization" (16s.). He is mainly concerned with Greece and Rome, but in a section on " The Western Mediterranean" he sketches the beginnings of trade in primitive society, the history of Carthage and the dawn of commerce in prehistoric Italy as well as the development of Etruria. Those who imagine that capitatis a modern phenomenon may be commended to M. Toutain's chapter on capitalism in Republican Rome from the Punic wars onward, and on the influence of the great companies of " publicans " that farmed the new proVinces. M. Toutain deals very briefly with the much debated question of the decline of the Roman Empire, but attributes it mainly to excessive centralization and arbitrary despotism—a warning for more than one modern State.
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