listen to part of a lecture in a history class as we continue our study of the ancient Roman Empire. Let\'s talk a little about the opening up of trade between Rome and the Middle East and Asia. This happened in the second century BCE, when the Romans began importing a lot of exotic spices. This spice trade certainly affected the Roman economy. In fact, it\'s often argued that it led to a chronic trade imbalance causing severe economic problems that ultimately led to the fall of the Roman Empire. But let\'s explore that question, starting with how the spice trade began, as we established last class, there were many grains in the Roman diet, foods like bread and boiled barley. Boiling was common for many foods actually, vegetables were often boiled. Even fresh meat was soaked in water for long periods to soften the fibers and then boiled. This diet of grain based and boiled Foods was pretty bland. Now, the Romans did have some flavorings. They used mild tasting locally grown plants to add some flavor. But as the empire expanded to the east, the Romans came into contact for the first time with powerful spices. Pepper especially, became highly desired, and so Rome began importing spices at great expense from the Middle East and Asia. Traders were more than happy to sell their spices to Rome, but these sellers tended to be secretive about what kind of plant the spice came from. They\'d also invent stories of how difficult and often how dangerous it was to obtain the spices in order to keep prices high. All this further increased the value that Rome placed on spices, and the government spent huge amounts of money to safely store them. Now the question is, did the trade of these valuable spices really have a negative impact on the Roman economy? Some scholars speak of a trade imbalance. In other words, that Rome paid more to those Eastern countries than those countries paid to Rome for their goods. You see, initially, other countries were not willing to exchange their spices for Roman goods, even luxury goods like jewelry or bronze items. And historically, that\'s not uncommon. A country establishing trade with any new partner starts out paying money for foreign goods before a demand for its own goods develops. Indeed, in some areas east of Rome, people didn\'t have coins or the kinds of precious metals that Rome had, so Rome\'s trading partners preferred getting money for their spices anyway. So as Rome imported more goods, more gold began flowing out of Rome to the east. Documents from that time indicate that some Romans were concerned about a trade imbalance to try to counter that, Roman coins were repeatedly devalued. That is, their gold content was reduced by 337 CE, the gold content of coins was cut by almost half. This seems to support the idea that Romans were concerned about the amount of gold that had been flowing out of Rome through trade, but claims that this trade imbalance caused the economic collapse of the Roman Empire. Well, those claims seemed to be much exaggerated. You see, even though Rome was using lots of gold to buy spices, records indicate it was getting more gold from new mines within its territory. And this information about the gold mines, it comes to us from the writings of a man who worked in the Roman treasury so we know he had direct access to the actual figures. What\'s more, Rome\'s trade deficit was offset by customs dues, money that both importers and exporters had to pay to the Roman government for the right to transport goods through Egypt. Egypt was the main center through which imported spices passed, and Rome had control of it for much of this time. In fact, it appears that the overall effect of the spice trade was positive, both to Rome and to its trading partners. There\'s no real evidence that Rome\'s economy was weakened. There\'s actually more evidence that political instability and ineffective leadership led to the fall of Rome, and we\'ll look at those factors in more detail next time.