monarchies, the equal division of property among the brothers in
private families must, by a necessary consequence, contribute to
unsettle and disturb the state. The universal preference given to the
elder by modern laws, though it increases the inequality of fortunes,
has, however, this good effect, that it accustoms men to the same idea
of public succession, and cuts off all claim and pretension of the
younger.
The new settled colony of Heraclea, falling immediately into factions,
applied to Sparta, who sent Heripidas with full authority to quiet
their dissensions. This man, not provoked by any opposition, not
inflamed by party rage, knew no better expedient than immediately
putting to death about 500 of the citizens. A strong proof how deeply
rooted these violent maxims of government were throughout all Greece.
If such was the disposition of men’s minds among that refined people,
what may be expected in the commonwealths of Italy, Africa, Spain, and
Gaul, which were denominated barbarous? Why otherwise did the Greeks
so much value themselves on their humanity, gentleness, and moderation
above all other nations? This reasoning seems very natural; but
unluckily the history of the Roman commonwealth in its earlier times,
if we give credit to the received accounts, stands against us. No blood
was ever shed in any sedition at Rome till the murder of the Gracchi.
Dionysius Halicarnassæus, observing the singular humanity of the Roman
people in this particular, makes use of it as an argument that they
were originally of Grecian extraction; whence we may conclude that the
factions and revolutions in the barbarous republics were usually more
violent than even those of Greece above mentioned.
If the Romans were so late in coming to blows, they made ample
compensation after they had once entered upon the bloody scene; and
Appian’s history of their civil wars contains the most frightful
picture of massacres, proscriptions, and forfeitures that ever was
presented to the world. What pleases most in that historian is that he
seems to feel a proper resentment of these barbarous proceedings, and
talks not with that provoking coolness and indifference which custom
had produced in many of the Greek historians.[67]
The maxims of ancient politics contain, in general, so little humanity
and moderation that it seems superfluous to give any particular reason
for the violences committed at any particular period; yet I cannot
forbear observing that the laws in the latter ages of the Roman
commonwealth were so absurdly contrived that they obliged the heads of
parties to have recourse to these extremities. All capital punishments
were abolished. However criminal, or, what is more, however dangerous
any citizen might be, he could not regularly be punished otherwise than
by banishment; and it became necessary in the revolutions of party to
draw the sword of private vengeance; nor was it easy, when laws were
once violated, to set bounds to these sanguinary proceedings. Had
Brutus himself prevailed over the Triumvirate, could he, in common
prudence, have allowed Octavius and Anthony to live, and have contented
himself with banishing them to Rhodes or Marseilles, where they might
still have plotted new commotions and rebellions? His executing C.
Antonius, brother to the Triumvir, shows evidently his sense of the
matter. Did not Cicero, with the approbation of all the wise and
virtuous of Rome, arbitrarily put to death Catiline’s associates
contrary to law and without any trial or form of process? And if he
moderated his executions, did it not proceed either from the clemency
of his temper or the conjunctures of the times? A wretched security in
a government which pretends to laws and liberty!
Thus, one extreme produces another. In the same manner as excessive
severity in the laws is apt to beget great relaxation in their
execution, so their excessive lenity naturally produces cruelty and
barbarity. It is dangerous to force us, in any case, to pass their
sacred boundaries.
One general cause of the disorders so frequent in all ancient
governments seems to have consisted in the great difficulty of
establishing any aristocracy in those ages, and the perpetual
discontents and seditions of the people whenever even the meanest
and most beggarly were excluded from the legislature and from public
offices. The very quality of freeman gave such a rank, being opposed
to that of slave, that it seemed to entitle the possessor to every
power and privilege of the commonwealth. Solon’s laws excluded no
freeman from votes or elections, but confined some magistracies to a
particular census; yet were the people never satisfied till those laws
were repealed. By the treaty with Antipater, no Athenian had a vote
whose census was less than 2000 drachmas (about £60 sterling). And
though such a government would to us appear sufficiently democratical,
it was so disagreeable to that people that above two-thirds of them
immediately left their country. Cassander reduced that census to the
half, yet still the government was considered as an oligarchical
tyranny and the effect of foreign violence.
Servius Tullius’s laws seem very equal and reasonable, by fixing the
power in proportion to the property, yet the Roman people could never
be brought quietly to submit to them.
In those days there was no medium between a severe, jealous
aristocracy, ruling over discontented subjects, and a turbulent,
factious, tyrannical democracy.
But, thirdly, there are many other circumstances in which ancient
nations seem inferior to the modern, both for the happiness and
increase of mankind. Trade, manufactures, industry were nowhere in
former ages so flourishing as they are at present in Europe. The only
garb of the ancients, both for males and females, seems to have been
a kind of flannel which they wore commonly white or gray, and which
they scoured as often as it grew dirty. Tyre, which carried on, after
Carthage, the greatest commerce of any city in the Mediterranean
before it was destroyed by Alexander, was no mighty city, if we credit
Arrian’s account of its inhabitants.[68] Athens is commonly
supposed to have been a trading city; but it was as populous before the
Median War as at any time after it, according to Herodotus,[69] and
yet its commerce at that time was so inconsiderable that, as the same
historian observes, even the neighbouring coasts of Asia were as little
frequented by the Greeks as the Pillars of Hercules—for beyond these he
conceived nothing.
Great interest of money and great profits of trade are an infallible
indication that industry and commerce are but in their infancy. We
read in Lysias of 100 per cent. profit made of a cargo of two talents,
sent to no greater distance than from Athens to the Adriatic. Nor is
this mentioned as an instance of exorbitant profit. Antidorus, says
Demosthenes, paid three talents and a half for a house which he let at
a talent a year; and the orator blames his own tutors for not employing
his money to like advantage. “My fortune,” says he, “in eleven years
minority ought to have been tripled.” The value of twenty of the slaves
left by his father he computes at 40 minas, and the yearly profit of
their labour at 12. The most moderate interest at Athens (for there
was higher often paid) was 12 per cent., and that paid monthly. Not to
insist upon the exorbitant interest of 34 per cent. to which the vast
sums distributed in elections had raised money at Rome, we find that
Verres, before that factious period, stated 24 per cent. for money,
which he left in the publicans’ hands. And though Cicero declaims
against this article, it is not on account of the extravagant usury,
but because it had never been customary to state any interest on such
occasions. Interest, indeed, sunk at Rome after the settlement of the
empire; but it never remained any considerable time so low as
in the commercial states of modern ages.
Among the other inconveniences which the Athenians felt from the
fortifying Decelia by the Lacedemonians, it is represented by
Thucydides as one of the most considerable that they could not bring
over their corn from Eubea by land, passing by Oropus; but were
obliged to embark it and to sail about the promontory of Sunium—a
surprising instance of the imperfection of ancient navigation, for the
water-carriage is not here above double the land.
I do not remember any passage in any ancient author where the growth
of any city is ascribed to the establishment of a manufacture. The
commerce which is said to flourish is chiefly the exchange of those
commodities for which different soils and climates were suited. The
sale of wine and oil into Africa, according to Diodorus Siculus, was
the foundation of the riches of Agrigentum. The situation of the city
of Sybaris, according to the same author, was the cause of its immense
populousness, being built near the two rivers, Crathys and Sybaris. But
these two rivers, we may observe, are not navigable, and could only
produce some fertile valleys for agriculture and husbandry—an advantage
so inconsiderable that a modern writer would scarcely have taken notice
of it.
The barbarity of the ancient tyrants, together with the extreme
love of liberty which animated those ages, must have banished every
merchant and manufacturer, and have quite depopulated the state, had it
subsisted upon industry and commerce. While the cruel and suspicious
Dionysius was carrying on his butcheries, who that was not detained
by his landed property, and could have carried with him any art or
skill to procure a subsistence in other countries, would have remained
exposed to such implacable barbarity? The persecutions of Philip II.
and Louis XIV. filled all Europe with the manufacturers of Flanders and
of France.
I grant that agriculture is the species of industry which is chiefly
requisite to the subsistence of multitudes, and it is possible that
this industry may flourish even where manufactures and other
arts are unknown and neglected. Switzerland is at present a very
remarkable instance, where we find at once the most skilful husbandmen
and the most bungling tradesmen that are to be met with in all Europe.
That agriculture flourished in Greece and Italy, at least in some parts
of them, and at some periods, we have reason to presume; and whether
the mechanical arts had reached the same degree of perfection may not
be esteemed so material, especially if we consider the great equality
in the ancient republics, where each family was obliged to cultivate
with the greatest care and industry its own little field in order to
its subsistence.
But is it just reasoning, because agriculture may in some instances
flourish without trade or manufactures, to conclude that, in any great
extent of country and for any great tract of time, it would subsist
alone? The most natural way surely of encouraging husbandry is first to
excite other kinds of industry, and thereby afford the labourer a ready
market for his commodities and a return of such goods as may contribute
to his pleasure and enjoyment. This method is infallible and universal,
and as it prevails more in modern government than in the ancient, it
affords a presumption of the superior populousness of the former.
Every man, says Xenophon, may be a farmer; no art or skill is
requisite: all consists in the industry and attention to the execution.
A strong proof, as Columella hints, that agriculture was but little
known in the age of Xenophon.
All our later improvements and refinements, have they operated
nothing towards the easy subsistence of men, and consequently towards
their propagation and increase? Our superior skill in mechanics, the
discovery of new worlds, by which commerce has been so much enlarged,
the establishment of posts, and the use of bills of exchange: these
seem all extremely useful to the encouragement of art, industry, and
populousness. Were we to strike off these, what a check should we give
to every kind of business and labour, and what multitudes of families
would immediately perish from want and hunger! And it seems not
probable that we could supply the place of these new inventions
by any other regulation or institution.
Have we reason to think that the police of ancient states was any wise
comparable to that of modern, or that men had then equal security
either at home or in their journeys by land or water? I question not
but every impartial examiner would give us the preference in this
particular.
Thus, upon comparing the whole, it seems impossible to assign any just
reason why the world should have been more populous in ancient than in
modern times. The equality of property among the ancients, liberty,
and the small divisions of their states, were indeed favourable to
the propagation of mankind; but their wars were more bloody and
destructive, their governments more factious and unsettled, commerce
and manufactures more feeble and languishing, and the general police
more loose and irregular. These latter disadvantages seem to form a
sufficient counterbalance to the former advantages, and rather favour
the opposite opinion to that which commonly prevails with regard to
this subject.
But there is no reasoning, it may be said, against matter of fact. If
it appear that the world was then more populous than at present, we may
be assured that our conjectures are false, and that we have overlooked
some material circumstance in the comparison. This I readily own: all
our preceding reasonings I acknowledge to be mere trifling, or, at
least, small skirmishes and frivolous rencounters which decide nothing.
But unluckily the main combat, where we compare facts, cannot be
rendered much more decisive. The facts delivered by ancient authors are
either so uncertain or so imperfect as to afford us nothing positive
in this matter. How indeed could it be otherwise? The very facts which
we must oppose to them in computing the greatness of modern states are
far from being either certain or complete. Many grounds of calculation
proceeded on by celebrated writers are little better than those of the
Emperor Heliogabalus, who formed an estimate of the immense greatness
of Rome from ten thousand pound weight of cobwebs which had been found
in that city.
It is to be remarked that all kinds of numbers are uncertain in ancient
manuscripts, and have been subject to much greater corruptions than
any other part of the text, and that for a very obvious reason. Any
alteration in other places commonly affects the sense or grammar, and
is more readily perceived by the reader and transcriber.
Few enumerations of inhabitants have been made of any tract of country
by any ancient author of good authority so as to afford us a large
enough view for comparison.
It is probable that there was formerly a good foundation for the number
of citizens assigned to any free city, because they entered for a share
of the government, and there were exact registers kept of them. But as
the number of slaves is seldom mentioned, this leaves us in as great
uncertainty as ever with regard to the populousness even of single
cities.
The first page of Thucydides is, in my opinion, the commencement of
real history. All preceding narrations are so intermixed with fable
that philosophers ought to abandon them, in a great measure, to the
embellishment of poets and orators.[70]
With regard to remote times, the numbers of people assigned are often
ridiculous, and lose all credit and authority. The free citizens of
Sybaris, able to bear arms and actually drawn out in battle, were
300,000. They encountered at Siagra with 100,000 citizens of Crotona,
another Greek city contiguous to them, and were defeated. This is
Diodorus Siculus’s account, and is very seriously insisted on by
that historian. Strabo also mentions the same number of Sybarites.
Diodorus Siculus, enumerating the inhabitants of Agrigentum, when it
was destroyed by the Carthaginians, says that they amounted to 20,000
citizens, 200,000 strangers, besides slaves, who, in so opulent a
city as he represents it, would probably be at least as numerous. We
must remark that the women and the children are not included, and
that therefore, upon the whole, the city must have contained near two
millions of inhabitants.[71] And what was the reason of so immense an
increase! They were very industrious in cultivating the neighbouring
fields, not exceeding a small English county; and they traded with
their wine and oil to Africa, which, at that time, had none of these
commodities.
Ptolemy, says Theocritus, commanded 33,339 cities. I suppose the
singularity of the number was the reason of assigning it. Diodorus
Siculus assigns three millions of inhabitants to Egypt, a very small
number; but then he makes the number of their cities amount to
18,000—an evident contradiction.
He says the people were formerly seven millions. Thus remote times are
always most envied and admired.
That Xerxes’s army was extremely numerous I can readily believe, both
from the great extent of his empire and from the foolish practice
of the Eastern nations of encumbering their camp with a superfluous
multitude; but will any rational man cite Herodotus’s wonderful
narrations as an authority? There is something very rational, I own,
in Lysias’s argument upon this subject. Had not Xerxes’ army been
incredibly numerous, says he, he had never built a bridge over the
Hellespont: it had been much easier to have transported his men over so
short a passage, with the numerous shipping of which he was master.
Polybius says that the Romans, between the first and second Punic Wars,
being threatened with an invasion from the Gauls, mustered all
their own forces and those of their allies, and found them amount to
seven hundred thousand men able to bear arms. A great number surely,
and which, when joined to the slaves, is probably not less, if not
rather more than that extent of country affords at present.[72] The
enumeration too seems to have been made with some exactness, and
Polybius gives us the detail of the particulars; but might not the
number be imagined in order to encourage the people?
Diodorus Siculus makes the same enumeration amount to near a million.
These variations are suspicious. He plainly, too, supposes that Italy
in his time was not so populous, another very suspicious circumstance;
for who can believe that the inhabitants of that country diminished
from the time of the first Punic War to that of the Triumvirates?
Julius Cæsar, according to Appian, encountered four millions of Gauls,
killed one million, and took another million prisoners.[73] Supposing
the number of the enemy’s army and of the killed could be exactly
assigned, which never is possible, how could it be known how often the
same man returned into the armies, or how distinguish the new from the
old levied soldiers? No attention ought ever to be given to such loose,
exaggerated calculations; especially where the author tells us not the
mediums upon which the calculations were founded.
Paterculus makes the number killed by Cæsar amount only to 400,000: a
much more probable account, and more easily reconciled to the history
of these wars given by that conqueror himself in his _Commentaries_.
One would imagine that every circumstance of the life and actions of
Dionysius the elder might be regarded as authentic and free from all
fabulous exaggeration, both because he lived at a time when
letters flourished most in Greece and because his chief historian was
Philistus, a man allowed to be of great genius, and who was a courtier
and minister of that prince. But can we admit that he had a standing
army of 100,000 foot, 10,000 horse, and a fleet of 400 galleys? These,
we may observe, were mercenary forces, and subsisted upon their pay,
like our armies in Europe. For the citizens were all disarmed; and
when Dion afterwards invaded Sicily and called on his countrymen to
vindicate their liberty, he was obliged to bring arms along with him,
which he distributed among those who joined him. In a state where
agriculture alone flourishes there may be many inhabitants, and if
these be all armed and disciplined, a great force may be called out
upon occasion; but great numbers of mercenary troops can never be
maintained without either trade and manufactures, or very extensive
dominions. The United Provinces never were masters of such a force by
sea and land as that which is said to belong to Dionysius; yet they
possess as large a territory, perfectly well cultivated, and have
infinitely more resources from their commerce and industry. Diodorus
Siculus allows that, even in his time, the army of Dionysius appeared
incredible; that is, as I interpret it, it was entirely a fiction, and
the opinion arose from the exaggerated flattery of the courtiers, and
perhaps from the vanity and policy of the tyrant himself.
It is a very usual fallacy to consider all the ages of antiquity
as one period, and to compute the numbers contained in the great
cities mentioned by ancient authors as if these cities had been all
contemporary. The Greek colonies flourished extremely in Sicily during
the age of Alexander; but in Augustus’s time they were so decayed that
almost all the product of that fertile island was consumed in Italy.
Let us now examine the numbers of inhabitants assigned to particular
cities in antiquity, and omitting the numbers of Nineveh, Babylon,
and the Egyptian Thebes, let us confine ourselves to the sphere of
real history, to the Grecian and Roman states. I must own, the
more I consider this subject the more am I inclined to scepticism with
regard to the great populousness ascribed to ancient times.
Athens is said by Plato to be a very great city; and it was surely
the greatest of all the Greek[74] cities, except Syracuse, which
was nearly about the same size in Thucydides’ time, and afterwards
increased beyond it; for Cicero[75] mentions it as the greatest of
all the Greek cities in his time, not comprehending, I suppose, either
Antioch or Alexandria under that denomination. Athenæus says that, by
the enumeration of Demetrius Phalereus, there were in Athens 21,000
citizens, 10,000 strangers, and 400,000 slaves. This number is very
much insisted on by those whose opinion I call in question, and is
esteemed a fundamental fact to their purpose; but, in my opinion, there
is no point of criticism more certain than that Athenæus and Ctesicles,
whom he cites, are here mistaken, and that the number of slaves is
augmented by a whole cypher, and ought not to be regarded as more than
40,000.
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 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.