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 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 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; 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, 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 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.
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 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, without admitting
the extravagant consequences which he draws from it.
The number of citizens who received corn by the public 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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
“‘Hybernum fracta glacie descendet in amnem,
Ter matutino Tyberi mergetur.’
“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
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 proof that
these advantages have been continually increasing throughout this part
of the world.