Melania

I found this online book:
Ancient Economic Thought (volume 1) edited by B. B. Price; first published 1997.

http://philosociology.com/UPLOADS/_PHILOSOCIOLOGY.ir_Ancient%20Economic%20Thought-Routledge%20Studies%20in%20the%20History%20of%20Economics%20.pdf

It covers Indian, Hebraic, Greek, and Roman economic thought. with two or more essays on each.

Didn't look through it much yet, but I did find this, from "Assumptions, Economics, and the Origins of Europe", an essay by Alan E. Samuel:

The kind of wealth assembled in land in the Late Empire is near-legendary. A few examples make the point.

The Melania who retired from the world in 404 had, with her husband, estates in Britain, Spain, Italy and North Africa which brought an income amounting annually to some 1,600 Roman pounds in gold, a figure which, even allowing for the possible exaggeration by her admiring biographers, must be compared with figures ranging between 700 and 6,667 Ib for the gold obtained from all of Egypt by forced sale at the beginning, of the fourth century. Melania and Petronius’ Trimalchio are often cited in discussions of private wealth in the Empire...

The phrase "retired from the world in 404" jogged my memory. I read about this Melania years ago -- my notes were last modified in 2004 -- in Michael Wood's Domesday book. Never made the name-connection to Melania Trump until I read the Alan Samuel essay.

From Domesday: A Search for the Roots of England:

The long-term effect of Roman government, then, may well have been to concentrate land in the hands of the governing aristocracy at the expense of the mass of the population at large.

Concrete evidence survives which gives a clear picture of this accretion of power and land by a British landowner at this very time. It consists of a Latin life of a Roman lady from the great family of the Valerii; she became a Christian, and the Church recorded her disposal of many estates to charity. In AD 404 Melania freed 8000 slaves out of a total of 24,000 on sixty farms, villas or hamlets which she owned in the vicinity of Rome. Her other landholdings included estates elsewhere in Italy and Sicily, Africa, Spain and Britain.... her rentals show her income to have been on a scale comparable to the imperial revenues.

Melania had income comparable to the imperial revenues. That, I remember. Her name I remembered only when I read Alan Samuel's essay. During the Trump years, nothing. 

I should have my memory bronzed, like baby shoes.