JDG said:
Additionally, if my memory serves me correctly, Egypt went on to
become
one of the most important and productive provinces in the Roman
Empire.
Thus, it hardly seems to have been "depleted."
In fact, Egypt was so productive that there were people who argued
against its annexation as it was so much richer than the existing
provinces that whoever controlled it would necessarily dominate the
Roman state. This in fact turned out to be true. Octavian - later the
emperor Augustus - took control of Egypt not as a new Roman province
but as his own personal property, and this was an important part of
his stabilisation of the turmoil of the collapsing Republic.
Throughout the early Principate it remained an anomalous province
controlled more or less directly by the emperor. Its importance was
shown again a century later during the civil wars after the death of
Nero, the key event of which was Vespasian gaining control of the
Egyptian corn supply, which fed the city of Rome. The economic
decline of Egypt only started almost a century after that, with
Marcus Aurelius' suppression of an Egyptian revolt and the
detrimental effects on the Egyptian economy of several years of warfare.
I'm not sure why the solution of dividing Egypt into a number of
smaller provinces took so long to occur to the Romans.
Rich
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