[marktwain]

Rome paid for these imports with Roman money and keeping peaceful trade possible.

Most Mediterranean trade was abandoned with the rise of Muslim pirate raiders. Coasts became fortified. Agricultural production plummeted to levels not seen in a thousand years. The coastal population fell to 10% of previous levels in former Roman Christian cities such as Antioch. The word Slave derived from the Slavs, because Muslims took so many slaves from the Slavic areas.

This was probably exacerbated by a lowering of temperatures from the Roman Climate Optimum which lasted from about 250 BC to 400 AD.

https://www.devsustainability.com/p/roman-climate-optimum-and-energy-system-resiliency

[Verginius Rufus]

"Robbers of the world...if their enemy have wealth, they have greed; if he be poor, they are ambitious; neither east nor west has satiated them; alone of mankind they covet with the same passion poverty as well as wealth. To plunder, butcher, steal, they call with false names empire. They make a desolation and call it peace."

From the speech of Calgacus in Tacitus' Agricola.