Firstly, when the number of citizens is said to be 21,000 by Athenæus,​[76] men of full age are only understood. For (1) Herodotus says that Aristagoras, ambassador from the Ionians, found it harder to deceive one Spartan than 30,000 Athenians, meaning in a loose way the whole state, supposed to be met in one popular assembly, excluding the women and children. (2) Thucydides says that, making allowance for all the absentees in the fleet, army, garrisons, and for people employed in their private affairs, the Athenian Assembly never rose to five thousand. (3) The forces enumerated by the same historian,​[77] being all citizens, and amounting to 13,000 heavy-armed infantry, prove the {p148} same method of calculation, as also the whole tenor of the Greek historians, who always understand men of full age when they assign the number of citizens in any republic. Now, these being but the fourth of the inhabitants, the free Athenians were by this account 84,000, the strangers 40,000, and the slaves, calculating by the smaller number, and allowing that they married and propagated at the same rate with freemen, were 160,000, and the whole inhabitants 284,000—a large enough number surely. The other number, 1,720,000, makes Athens larger than London and Paris united.

Secondly, there were but 10,000 houses in Athens.

Thirdly, though the extent of the walls, as given us by Thucydides, be great (viz., eighteen miles, beside the sea-coast), yet Xenophon says there was much waste ground within the walls. They seemed indeed to have joined four distinct and separate cities.​[78]

Fourthly, no insurrection of the slaves, nor suspicion of insurrection, are ever mentioned by historians, except one commotion of the miners.

Fifthly, the Athenians’ treatment of their slaves is said by Xenophon, and Demosthenes, and Plautus to have been extremely gentle and indulgent, which could never have been the case had the disproportion been twenty to one. The disproportion is not so great in any of our colonies, and yet we are obliged to exercise a very rigorous military government over the negroes.

Sixthly, no man is ever esteemed rich for possessing what may be reckoned an equal distribution of property {p149} in any country, or even triple or quadruple that wealth. Thus, every person in England is computed by some to spend sixpence a day; yet is he estimated but poor who has five times that sum. Now, Timarchus is said by Æschines to have been left in easy circumstances, but he was master only of ten slaves employed in manufactures. Lysias and his brother, two strangers, were proscribed by the Thirty for their great riches, though they had but sixty apiece. Demosthenes was left very rich by his father, yet he had no more than fifty-two slaves. His workhouse, of twenty cabinet-makers, is said to have been a very considerable manufactory.

Seventhly, during the Decelian War, as the Greek historians call it, 20,000 slaves deserted and brought the Athenians to great distress, as we learn from Thucydides. This could not have happened had they been only the twentieth part. The best slaves would not desert.

Eighthly, Xenophon proposes a scheme for entertaining by the public 10,000 slaves. “And that so great a number may possibly be supported any one will be convinced,” says he, “who considers the numbers we possessed before the Decelian War”—a way of speaking altogether incompatible with the larger number of Athenæus.

Ninthly, the whole census of the state of Athens was less than 6000 talents; and though numbers in ancient manuscripts be often suspected by critics, yet this is unexceptionable, both because Demosthenes, who gives it, gives also the detail, which checks him, and because Polybius assigns the same number and reasons upon it. Now, the most vulgar slave could yield by his labour an obolus a day, over and above his maintenance, as we learn from Xenophon, who says that Nicias’s overseer paid his master so much for slaves, whom he employed in digging of mines. If you will take the pains to estimate an obolus a day and the slaves at 400,000, computing only at four years’ purchase, you will find the sum above 12,000 talents, even though allowance be made for the great number of holidays in Athens. Besides, many of the slaves would have a much {p150} greater value from their art. The lowest that Demosthenes estimates any of his father’s slaves is two minas a head; and upon this supposition it is a little difficult, I confess, to reconcile even the number of 40,000 slaves with the census of 6000 talents.

Tenthly, Chios is said by Thucydides to contain more slaves than any Greek city except Sparta. Sparta then had more than Athens, in proportion to the number of citizens. The Spartans were 9000 in the town, 30,000 in the country. The male slaves, therefore, of full age, must have been more than 780,000; the whole more than 3,120,000—a number impossible to be maintained in a narrow barren country such as Laconia, which had no trade. Had the Helotes been so very numerous, the murder of 2000 mentioned by Thucydides would have irritated them without weakening them.

Besides, we are to consider that the number assigned by Athenæus,​[79] whatever it is, comprehends all the inhabitants of Attica as well as those of Athens. The Athenians affected much a country life, as we learn from Thucydides, and when they were all chased into town by the invasion of their territory during the Peloponnesian War, the city was not able to contain them, and they were obliged to lie in the porticoes, temples, and even streets, for want of lodging.

The same remark is to be extended to all the other Greek cities, and when the number of the citizens is assigned we must always understand it of the inhabitants of the neighbouring country as well as of the city. Yet, even with this allowance, it must be confessed that Greece was a populous country and exceeded what we could imagine of so narrow a territory, naturally not very fertile, and which drew no supplies of corn from other places; {p151} for, excepting Athens, which traded to Pontus for that commodity, the other cities seem to have subsisted chiefly from their neighbouring territory.​[80]

Rhodes is well known to have been a city of extensive commerce and of great fame and splendour, yet it contained only 6000 citizens able to bear arms when it was besieged by Demetrius.

Thebes was always one of the capital cities of Greece, but the number of its citizens exceeded not those of Rhodes.​[81] Phliasia is said to be a small city by Xenophon, {p152} yet we find that it contained 6000 citizens. I pretend not to reconcile these two facts. Perhaps Xenophon calls Phliasia a small town because it made but a small figure in Greece and maintained only a subordinate alliance with Sparta; or perhaps the country belonging to it was extensive, and most of the citizens were employed in the cultivation of it and dwelt in the neighbouring villages.

Mantinea was equal to any city in Arcadia, consequently it was equal to Megalopolis, which was fifty stadia, or sixty miles and a quarter in circumference. But Mantinea had only 3000 citizens. The Greek cities, therefore, contained often fields and gardens, together with the houses, and we cannot judge of them by the extent of their walls. Athens contained no more than 10,000 houses, yet its walls, with the sea-coast, were about twenty miles in extent. Syracuse was twenty-two miles in circumference, yet was scarcely ever spoken of by the ancients as more populous than Athens. Babylon was a square of fifteen miles, or sixty miles in circuit; but it contained large cultivated fields and enclosures, as we learn from Pliny. Though Aurelian’s wall was fifty miles in circumference, the circuit of all the thirteen divisions of Rome, taken apart, according to Publius Victor, was only about forty-three miles. When an enemy invaded the country all the inhabitants retired within the walls of the ancient cities, with their cattle and furniture and instruments of husbandry, and the great height to which the walls were raised enabled a small number to defend them with facility.

“Sparta,” says Xenophon,​[82] “is one of the cities of Greece that has the fewest inhabitants.” Yet Polybius says that it was forty-eight stadia in circumference, and was round.

All the Ætolians able to bear arms in Antipater’s time, deducting some few garrisons, were but ten thousand men.

Polybius tells us that the Achæan league might, without any inconvenience, march thirty or forty thousand men; and this account seems very probable, for that league {p153} comprehended the greatest part of Peloponnesus. Yet Pausanias, speaking of the same period, says that all the Achæans able to bear arms, even when several manumitted slaves were joined to them, did not amount to fifteen thousand.

The Thessalians, till their final conquest by the Romans, were in all ages turbulent, factious, seditious, disorderly. It is not, therefore, natural to suppose that that part of Greece abounded much in people.

We are told by Thucydides that the part of Peloponnesus adjoining to Pylos was desert and uncultivated. Herodotus says that Macedonia was full of lions and wild bulls, animals which can only inhabit vast unpeopled forests. These were the two extremities of Greece.

All the inhabitants of Epirus, of all ages, sexes, and conditions, who were sold by Paulus Æmilius, amounted only to 150,000. Yet Epirus might be double the extent of Yorkshire.

Justin tells us that when Philip of Macedon was declared head of the Greek confederacy he called a congress of all the states, except the Lacedemonians, who refused to concur; and he found the force of the whole, upon computation, to amount to 200,000 infantry and 15,000 cavalry. This must be understood to be all the citizens capable of bearing arms, for as the Greek republics maintained no mercenary forces, and had no militia distinct from the whole body of the citizens, it is not conceivable what other medium there could be of computation. That such an army could ever by Greece be brought into the field, and could be maintained there, is contrary to all history. Upon this supposition, therefore, we may thus reason. The free Greeks of all ages and sexes were 860,000. The slaves, estimating them by the number of Athenian slaves as above, who seldom married or had families, were double the male citizens of full age—viz., 430,000. And all the inhabitants of ancient Greece, excepting Laconia, were about 1,290,000—no mighty number, nor exceeding what may be found at present in Scotland, a country of nearly the same extent, and very indifferently peopled. {p154}

We may now consider the numbers of people in Rome and Italy, and collect all the lights afforded us by scattered passages in ancient authors. We shall find, upon the whole, a great difficulty in fixing any opinion on that head, and no reason to support those exaggerated calculations so much insisted on by modern writers.

Dionysius Halicarnassæus says that the ancient walls of Rome were nearly of the same compass with those of Athens, but that the suburbs ran out to a great extent, and it was difficult to tell where the town ended or the country began. In some places of Rome, it appears from the same author, from Juvenal, and from other ancient writers,​[83] that the houses were high, and families lived in separate storeys, one above another; but it is probable that these were only the poorer citizens, and only in some few streets. If we may judge from the younger Pliny’s​[84] account of his house, and from Bartoli’s plans of ancient buildings, the men of quality had very spacious palaces; and their buildings were like the Chinese houses at this day, where each apartment {p155} is separated from the rest, and rises no higher than a single storey. To which, if we add that the Roman nobility much affected porticoes, and even woods, in town, we may perhaps allow Vossius (though there is no manner of reason for it) to read the famous passage of the elder Pliny​[85] his own way, {p156} without admitting the extravagant consequences which he draws from it.

The number of citizens who received corn by the public {p157} distribution in Augustus’s time was 200,000. This one would esteem a pretty certain ground of calculation, yet it is attended with such circumstances as throw us back into doubt and uncertainty.

Did the poorer citizens only receive the distribution? It was calculated, to be sure, chiefly for their benefit; but it appears from a passage in Cicero that the rich might also take their portion, and that it was esteemed no reproach in them to apply for it.

To whom was the corn given—whether only to heads of families, or to every man, woman, and child? The portion every month was five modii to each (about five-sixths of a bushel). This was too little for a family, and too much for an individual. A very accurate antiquarian therefore infers that it was given to every man of full years, but he allows the matter to be uncertain.

Was it strictly inquired whether the claimant lived within the precincts of Rome, or was it sufficient that he presented himself at the monthly distribution? This last seems more probable.​[86]

Were there no false claimants? We are told that Cæsar struck off at once 170,000, who had crept in without a just title; and it is very little probable that he remedied all abuses.

But, lastly, what proportion of slaves must we assign to these citizens? This is the most material question, and the most uncertain. It is very doubtful whether Athens can be established as a rule for Rome. Perhaps the Athenians had more slaves, because they employed them in manufactures, for which a capital city like Rome seems not so proper. Perhaps, on the other hand, the Romans had more slaves, on account of their superior luxury and riches. {p158}

There were exact bills of mortality kept at Rome; but no ancient author has given us the number of burials, except Suetonius, who tells us that in one season there were 30,000 dead carried into the temple of Libetina; but this was during a plague, which can afford no certain foundation for any inference.

The public corn, though distributed only to 200,000 citizens, affected very considerably the whole agriculture of Italy, a fact no way reconcilable to some modern exaggerations with regard to the inhabitants of that country.

The best ground of conjecture I can find concerning the greatness of ancient Rome is this: We are told by Herodian that Antioch and Alexandria were very little inferior to Rome. It appears from Diodorus Siculus that one straight street of Alexandria, reaching from port to port, was five miles long; and as Alexandria was much more extended in length than breadth, it seems to have been a city nearly of the bulk of Paris,​[87] and Rome might be about the size of London. {p159}

There lived in Alexandria, in Diodorus Siculus’s time, 300,000 free people, comprehending, I suppose, women and children.​[88] But what number of slaves? Had we any just ground to fix these at an equal number with the free inhabitants, it would favour the foregoing calculation.

There is a passage in Herodian which is a little surprising. He says positively that the palace of the emperor was as large as all the rest of the city. This was Nero’s golden house, which is indeed represented by Suetonius and Pliny​[89] as of an enormous extent, but no power of imagination can make us conceive it to bear any proportion to such a city as London.

We may observe that, had the historian been relating Nero’s extravagance, and had he made use of such an expression, it would have had much less weight, these rhetorical exaggerations being so apt to creep into an author’s style even when the most chaste and correct; but it is mentioned by Herodian only by the by, in relating the quarrels between Geta and Caracalla. {p160}

It appears from the same historian that there was then much land uncultivated and put to no manner of use, and he ascribes it as a great praise to Pertinax that he allowed every one to take such land either in Italy or elsewhere and cultivate it as he pleased, without paying any taxes. Lands uncultivated and put to no manner of use! This is not heard of in any part of Christendom, except perhaps in some remote parts of Hungary, as I have been informed. And it surely corresponds very ill with that idea of the extreme populousness of antiquity so much insisted on.

We learn from Vopiscus that there was in Etruria much fertile land uncultivated, which the Emperor Aurelian intended to convert into vineyards, in order to furnish the Roman people with a gratuitous distribution of wine: a very proper expedient to dispeople still further that capital and all the neighbouring territories.

It may not be amiss to take notice of the account which Polybius gives of the great herds of swine to be met with in Tuscany and Lombardy, as well as in Greece, and of the method of feeding them which was then practised. “There are great herds of swine,” says he, “throughout all Italy, particularly in former times, through Etruria and Cisalpine Gaul. And a herd frequently contains a thousand or more swine. When one of these herds in feeding meets with another they mix together, and the swineherds have no other expedient to separate them than to go to different quarters, where they sound their horn, and these animals, being accustomed to that signal, run immediately each to the horn of his own keeper. Whereas in Greece, if the herds of swine happen to mix in the forests, he who has the greatest flock takes cunningly the opportunity of driving all away. And thieves are very apt to purloin the straggling hogs which have wandered to a great distance from their keeper in search of food.”

May we not infer from this account that the North of Italy was then much less peopled and worse cultivated than at present? How could these vast herds be fed in a country so thick of enclosures, so improved by agriculture, so divided {p161} by farms, so planted with vines and corn intermingled together? I must confess that Polybius’s relation has more the air of that economy which is to be met with in our American colonies than the management of a European country.

We meet with a reflection in Aristotle’s​[90] Ethics which seems to me unaccountable on any supposition, and by proving too much in favour of our present reasoning, may be thought really to prove nothing. That philosopher, treating of friendship, and observing that that relation ought neither to be contracted to the very few nor extended over a great multitude, illustrates his opinion by the following argument. “In like manner,” says he, “as a city cannot subsist if it either have so few inhabitants as ten, or so many as a hundred thousand, so is there a mediocrity required in the number of friends, and you destroy the essence of friendship by running into either extreme.” What! impossible that a city can contain a hundred thousand inhabitants! Had Aristotle never seen nor heard of a city which was near so populous? This, I must own, passes my comprehension.

Pliny tells us that Seleucia, the seat of the Greek empire in the East, was reported to contain 600,000 people. Carthage is said by Strabo to have contained 700,000. The inhabitants of Pekin are not much more numerous. London, Paris, and Constantinople may admit of nearly the same computation; at least, the two latter cities do not exceed it. Rome, Alexandria, Antioch we have already spoke of. From the experience of past and present ages one might conjecture that there is a kind of impossibility that any city could ever rise much beyond this proportion. Whether the grandeur of a city be founded on commerce or on empire, there seems to be invincible obstacles which prevent its further progress. The seats of vast monarchies, by introducing extravagant luxury, irregular expense, idleness, dependence, and false ideas of rank and superiority, are {p162} improper for commerce. Extensive commerce checks itself by raising the price of all labour and commodities. When a great court engages the attendance of a numerous nobility possessed of overgrown fortunes, the middling gentry remain in their provincial towns, where they can make a figure on a moderate income. And if the dominions of a state arrive at an enormous size, there necessarily arise many capitals in the remoter provinces, whither all the inhabitants except a few courtiers repair for education, fortune, and amusement.​[91] London, by uniting extensive commerce and middling empire, has perhaps arrived at a greatness which no city will ever be able to exceed.

Choose Dover or Calais for a centre: draw a circle of two hundred miles radius; you comprehend London, Paris, the Netherlands, the United Provinces, and some of the best cultivated counties of France and England. It may safely, I think, be affirmed that no spot of ground can be found in antiquity, of equal extent, which contained near so many great and populous cities, and was so stocked with riches and inhabitants. To balance, in both periods, the states which possessed most art, knowledge, civility, and the best police seems the truest method of comparison.

It is an observation of L’Abbé du Bos that Italy is warmer at present than it was in ancient times. “The annals of Rome tell us,” says he, “that in the year 480 A.U.C. the winter was so severe that it destroyed the trees. The Tiber froze in Rome, and the ground was covered with snow for forty days. When Juvenal describes a superstitious woman, he represents her as breaking the ice of the Tiber that she might perform her ablutions.

“He speaks of that river’s freezing as a common event. Many passages of Horace suppose the streets of Rome full of snow and ice. We should have more certainty with regard to this point had the ancients known the use of thermometers; but their writers, without intending it, give us information sufficient to convince us that the winters are now much more temperate at Rome than formerly. At present the Tiber no more freezes at Rome than the Nile at Cairo. The Romans esteem the winter very rigorous if the snow lies two days, and if one sees for eight-and-forty hours a few icicles hang from a fountain that has a north exposition.”

The observation of this ingenious critic may be extended to other European climates. Who could discover the mild climate of France in Diodorus Siculus’s description of that of Gaul? “As it is a northern climate,” says he, “it is infested with cold to an extreme degree. In cloudy weather, instead of rain, there fall great snows, and in clear weather it there freezes so excessive hard that the rivers acquire bridges of their own substance, over which not only single travellers may pass, but large armies, accompanied with all their baggage and loaded waggons. And there being many rivers in Gaul—the Rhone, the Rhine, etc.—almost all of them are frozen over, and it is usual, in order to prevent falling, to cover the ice with chaff and straw at the places where the road passes.” “Colder than a Gallic winter” is used by Petronius as a proverbial expression.

“North of the Cevennes,” says Strabo, “Gaul produces not figs and olives, and the vines which have been planted bear not grapes that will ripen.”

Ovid positively maintains, with all the serious affirmation of prose, that the Euxine Sea was frozen over every winter in his time, and he appeals to Roman governors, whom he names, for the truth of his assertion. This seldom or never happens at present in the latitude of Tomi, whither Ovid was banished. All the complaints of the same poet seem to mark a rigour of the seasons which is scarce experienced at present in Petersburg or Stockholm.

Tournefort, a Provençal, who had travelled into the same {p164} countries, observes that there is not a finer climate in the world; and he asserts that nothing but Ovid’s melancholy could have given him such dismal ideas of it.

But the facts mentioned by that poet are too circumstantial to bear any such interpretation.

Polybius says that the climate in Arcadia was very cold, and the air moist.

“Italy,” says Varro, “is the most temperate climate in Europe. The inland parts” (Gaul, Germany, and Pannonia, no doubt) “have almost perpetual winter.”

The northern parts of Spain, according to Strabo, are but ill inhabited because of the great cold.

Allowing, therefore, this remark to be just, that Europe is become warmer than formerly, how can we account for it? Plainly by no other method than by supposing that the land is at present much better cultivated, and that the woods are cleared which formerly threw a shade upon the earth and kept the rays of the sun from penetrating to it. Our northern colonies in America become more temperate in proportion as the woods are felled,​[92] but in general, every one may remark that cold still makes itself more severely felt both in North and South America, than in places under the same latitude in Europe.

Saserna, quoted by Columella, affirmed that the disposition of the heavens was altered before his time, and that the air had become much milder and warmer. “As appears hence,” says he, “that many places now abound with vineyards and olive plantations which formerly, by reason of the rigour of the climate, could raise none of these productions.” Such a change, if real, will be allowed an evident sign of the better cultivation and peopling of countries before the age of Saserna;​[93] and if it be continued to the present times, is a {p165} proof that these advantages have been continually increasing throughout this part of the world.

Let us now cast our eye over all the countries which were the scene of ancient and modern history, and compare their past and present situation. We shall not, perhaps, find such foundation for the complaint of the present emptiness and depopulation of the world. Egypt is represented by Maillet, to whom we owe the best account of it, as extremely populous, though he esteems the number of its inhabitants to be diminished. Syria, and the Lesser Asia, as well as the coast of Barbary, I can really own to be very desert in comparison of their ancient condition. The depopulation of Greece is also very obvious. But whether the country now called Turkey in Europe may not, in general, contain as many inhabitants as during the flourishing period of Greece may be a little doubtful. The Thracians seem then to have lived like the Tartars at present, by pillage and plunder; the Getes were still more uncivilized, and the Illyrians were no better. These occupy nine-tenths of that country, and though the government of the Turks be not very favourable to industry and propagation, yet it preserves at least peace and order among the inhabitants, and is preferable to that barbarous, unsettled condition in which they anciently lived.

Poland and Muscovy in Europe are not populous, but are certainly much more so than the ancient Sarmatia and Scythia, where no husbandry or tillage was ever heard of, and pasturage was the sole art by which the people were maintained. The like observation may be extended to Denmark and Sweden. No one ought to esteem the immense swarms of people which formerly came from the North, and overran all Europe, to be any objection to this opinion. Where a whole nation, or even half of it, remove their seat, it is easy to imagine what a prodigious multitude they must form, with what desperate valour they must make their attacks, and how the terror they strike into the invaded nations will make these magnify, in their imagination, both the courage and multitude of the invaders. Scotland is neither extensive nor populous, but were the half of its {p166} inhabitants to seek new seats they would form a colony as large as the Teutons and Cimbri, and would shake all Europe, supposing it in no better condition for defence than formerly.

Germany has surely at present twenty times more inhabitants than in ancient times, when they cultivated no ground, and each tribe valued itself on the extensive desolation which it spread around, as we learn from Cæsar, and Tacitus, and Strabo. A proof that the division into small republics will not alone render a nation populous, unless attended with the spirit of peace, order, and industry.

The barbarous condition of Britain in former times is well known, and the thinness of its inhabitants may easily be conjectured, both from their barbarity and from a circumstance mentioned by Herodian, that all Britain was marshy, even in Severus’s time, after the Romans had been fully settled in it above a whole century.

It is not easily imagined that the Gauls were anciently much more advanced in the arts of life than their northern neighbours, since they travelled to this island for their education in the mysteries of the religion and philosophy of the Druids.​[94] I cannot therefore think that Gaul was then near so populous as France is at present.

Were we to believe, indeed, and join together the testimony of Appian and that of Diodorus Siculus, we must admit an incredible populousness in Gaul. The former historian says that there were 400 nations in that country; the latter affirms that the largest of the Gallic nations consisted of 200,000 men, besides women and children, and the least of 50,000. Calculating therefore at a medium, we must admit of near 200,000,000 of people in a country which we esteem populous at present, though supposed to contain little more than twenty.​[95] Such {p167} calculations therefore by their extravagance lose all manner of authority. We may observe that that equality of property, to which the populousness of antiquity may be ascribed, had no place among the Gauls. Their intestine wars also, before Cæsar’s time, were almost perpetual. And Strabo observes that though all Gaul was cultivated, yet it was not cultivated with any skill or care, the genius of the inhabitants leading them less to arts than arms, till their slavery to Rome produced peace among themselves.

Cæsar enumerates very particularly the great forces which were levied at Belgium to oppose his conquests, and makes them amount to 208,000. These were not the whole people able to bear arms in Belgium; for the same historian tells us that the Bellovaci could have brought a hundred thousand men into the field, though they engaged only for sixty. Taking the whole, therefore, in this proportion of ten to six, the sum of fighting men in all the states of Belgium was about 350,000; all the inhabitants a million and a half. And Belgium being about the fourth of Gaul, that country might contain six millions, which is not the third of its present inhabitants.​[96] We are informed by Cæsar that the Gauls had no fixed property in land; but that the chieftains, when any death happened in a family, made a new division of all the lands among the several members of the family. This is the custom of Tanistry, which so long prevailed in {p168} Ireland, and which retained that country in a state of misery, barbarism, and desolation.

The ancient Helvetia was 250 miles in length and 180 in breadth, according to the same author, yet contained only 360,000 inhabitants. The Canton of Berne alone has at present as many people.

After this computation of Appian and Diodorus Siculus, I know not whether I dare affirm that the modern Dutch are more numerous than the ancient Batavi.

Spain is decayed from what it was three centuries ago; but if we step backward two thousand years and consider the restless, turbulent, unsettled condition of its inhabitants, we may probably be inclined to think that it is now much more populous. Many Spaniards killed themselves when deprived of their arms by the Romans. It appears from Plutarch that robbery and plunder were esteemed honourable among the Spaniards. Hirtius represents in the same light the situation of that country in Cæsar’s time, and he says that every man was obliged to live in castles and walled towns for his security. It was not till its final conquest under Augustus that these disorders were repressed. The account which Strabo and Justin give of Spain corresponds exactly with those above mentioned. How much therefore must it diminish from our idea of the populousness of antiquity when we find that Cicero, comparing Italy, Africa, Gaul, Greece, and Spain, mentions the great number of inhabitants as the peculiar circumstance which rendered this latter country formidable.​[97]

Italy, it is probable however, has decayed; but how many great cities does it still contain? Venice, Genoa, Pavia, Turin, Milan, Naples, Florence, Leghorn, which either {p169} subsisted not in ancient times, or were then very inconsiderable. If we reflect on this, we shall not be apt to carry matters to so great an extreme as is usual with regard to this subject.

When the Roman authors complain that Italy, which formerly exported corn, became dependent on all the provinces for its daily bread, they never ascribe this alteration to the increase of its inhabitants, but to the neglect of tillage and agriculture. A natural effect of that pernicious practice of importing corn in order to distribute it gratis among the Roman citizens, and a very bad means of multiplying the inhabitants of any country.​[98] The sportula, so much talked of by Martial and Juvenal, being presents regularly made by the great lords to their smaller clients, must have had a like tendency to produce idleness, debauchery, and a continual decay among the people. The parish-rates have at present the same bad consequences in England.

Were I to assign a period when I imagine this part of the world might possibly contain more inhabitants than at present, I should pitch upon the age of Trajan and the Antonines, the great extent of the Roman Empire being then civilized and cultivated, settled almost in a profound peace both foreign and domestic, and living under the same regular police and government.​[99] But we are told that all {p170} extensive governments, especially absolute monarchies, are destructive to population, and contain a secret vice and poison, which destroy the effect of all these promising appearances. To confirm this, there is a passage cited from Plutarch, which being somewhat singular, we shall here examine it.

That author, endeavouring to account for the silence of many of the oracles, says that it may be ascribed to the present desolation of the world, proceeding from former wars and factions, which common calamity, he adds, has fallen heavier upon Greece than on any other country; insomuch that the whole could scarce at present furnish three thousand warriors, a number which, in the time of the Median War, were supplied by the single city of Megara. The gods, therefore, who affect works of dignity and importance, have suppressed many of their oracles, and deign not to use so many interpreters of their will to so diminutive a people. {p171}

I must confess that this passage contains so many difficulties that I know not what to make of it. You may observe that Plutarch assigns for a cause of the decay of mankind not the extensive dominion of the Romans, but the former wars and factions of the several nations, all which were quieted by the Roman arms. Plutarch’s reasoning, therefore, is directly contrary to the inference which is drawn from the fact he advances.

Polybius supposes that Greece had become more prosperous and flourishing after the establishment of the Roman yoke;​[100] and though that historian wrote before these {p172} conquerors had degenerated from being the patrons to be the plunderers of mankind, yet as we find from Tacitus that the severity of the emperors afterwards checked the licence of the governors, we have no reason to think that extensive monarchy so destructive as it is so often represented.

We learn from Strabo that the Romans, from their regard to the Greeks, maintained, to his time, most of the privileges and liberties of that celebrated nation, and Nero afterwards rather increased them. How therefore can we imagine that the Roman yoke was so burdensome over that part of the world? The oppression of the proconsuls was restrained, and the magistracies in Greece being all bestowed in the several cities by the free votes of the people, there was no great necessity for the competitors to attend the emperor’s court. If great numbers went to seek their fortunes in Rome, and advance themselves by learning or eloquence, the commodities of their native country, many of them would return with the fortunes which they had acquired, and thereby enrich the Grecian commonwealths.

But Plutarch says that the general depopulation had been more sensibly felt in Greece than in any other country. How is this reconcilable to its superior privileges and advantages?

Besides, this passage by proving too much really proves nothing. Only three thousand men able to bear arms in all Greece! Who can admit so strange a proposition, especially if we consider the great number of Greek cities whose names still remain in history, and which are mentioned by writers long after the age of Plutarch? There are there surely ten times more people at present, when there scarce remains a city in all the bounds of ancient Greece. That country is still tolerably cultivated, and furnishes a sure supply of corn in case of any scarcity in Spain, Italy, or the South of France.

We may observe that the ancient frugality of the Greeks, and their equality of property, still subsisted during the age of Plutarch, as appears from Lucian. Nor is there any {p173} ground to imagine that that country was possessed by a few masters and a great number of slaves.

It is probable, indeed, that military discipline, being entirely useless, was extremely neglected in Greece after the establishment of the Roman Empire; and if these commonwealths, formerly so warlike and ambitious, maintained each of them a small city-guard to prevent mobbish disorders, it is all they had occasion for; and these, perhaps, did not amount to three thousand men throughout all Greece. I own that if Plutarch had this fact in his eye, he is here guilty of a very gross paralogism, and assigns causes nowise proportioned to the effects. But is it so great a prodigy that an author should fall into a mistake of this nature?​[101] {p174}

But whatever force may remain in this passage of Plutarch, we shall endeavour to counterbalance it by as remarkable a passage in Diodorus Siculus, where the historian, after mentioning Ninus’s army of 1,700,000 foot and 200,000 horse, endeavours to support the credibility of this account by some posterior facts; and adds that we must not form a notion of the ancient populousness of mankind from the present emptiness and depopulation which is spread over the world. Thus an author, who lived at that very period of antiquity which is represented as most populous,​[102] complains of the desolation which then prevailed, gives the preference to former times, and has recourse to ancient fables as a foundation for his opinion. The humour of blaming the present and admiring the past is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an influence even on persons endued with the most profound judgment and most extensive learning.