There is very little ground, either from reason or experience, to conclude the universe eternal or incorruptible. The continual and rapid motion of matter, the violent revolutions with which every part is agitated, the changes remarked {p107} in the heavens, the plain traces as well as tradition of a universal deluge,—all these prove strongly the mortality of this fabric of the world, and its passage, by corruption or dissolution, from one state or order to another. It must therefore, as well as each individual form which it contains, have its infancy, youth, manhood, and old age; and it is probable that in all these variations man, equally with every animal and vegetable, will partake. In the flourishing age of the world it may be expected that the human species should possess greater vigour both of mind and body, more prosperous health, higher spirits, longer life, and a stronger inclination and power of generation. But if the general system of things, and human society of course, have any such gradual revolutions, they are too slow to be discernible in that short period which is comprehended by history and tradition. Stature and force of body, length of life, even courage and extent of genius, seem hitherto to have been naturally in all ages pretty much the same. The arts and sciences, indeed, have flourished in one period and have decayed in another; but we may observe that at the time when they rose to greatest perfection among one people they were perhaps totally unknown to all the neighbouring nations, and though they universally decayed in one age, yet in a succeeding generation they again revived and diffused themselves over the world. As far, therefore, as observation reaches there is no universal difference discernible in the human species, and though it {p108} were allowed that the universe, like an animal body, had a natural progress from infancy to old age; yet, as it must still be uncertain whether at present it be advancing to its point of perfection or declining from it, we cannot thence presuppose any decay in human nature.?[40] To prove, therefore, or account for the greater populousness of antiquity by the imaginary youth or vigour of the world will scarcely be admitted by any just reasoner; these general physical causes ought entirely to be excluded from that question.

There are indeed some more particular physical causes of great importance. Diseases are mentioned in antiquity which are almost unknown to modern medicine, and new diseases have arisen and propagated themselves of which there are no traces in ancient history. And in this particular we may observe, upon comparison, that the disadvantage is very much on the side of the moderns. Not to mention some others of less importance, the smallpox commits such ravages as would almost alone account for the great superiority ascribed to ancient times. The tenth or the twelfth part of mankind destroyed every generation should make a vast difference, it may be thought, in the numbers of the people; and when joined to venereal distempers, a new plague diffused everywhere, this disease is perhaps equivalent, by its constant operation, to the three great scourges of mankind—war, pestilence, and famine. Were it certain, therefore, that ancient times were more populous than the present, and could no moral causes be assigned for so great a change, these physical causes alone, in the opinion of many, would be sufficient to give us satisfaction on that head. {p109}

But is it certain that antiquity was so much more populous as is pretended? The extravagancies of Vossius with regard to this subject are well known; but an author of much greater genius and discernment has ventured to affirm that, according to the best computations which these subjects will admit of, there are not now on the face of the earth the fiftieth part of mankind which existed in the time of Julius CÆsar. It may easily be observed that the comparisons in this case must be very imperfect, even though we confine ourselves to the scene of ancient history—Europe and the nations about the Mediterranean. We know not exactly the numbers of any European kingdom, or even city, at present; how can we pretend to calculate those of ancient cities and states where historians have left us such imperfect traces? For my part, the matter appears to me so uncertain that, as I intend to throw together some reflections on that head, I shall intermingle the inquiry concerning causes with that concerning facts, which ought never to be admitted where the facts can be ascertained with any tolerable assurance. We shall first consider whether it be probable, from what we know of the situation of society in both periods, that antiquity must have been more populous; secondly, whether in reality it was so. If I can make it appear that the conclusion is not so certain as is pretended in favour of antiquity, it is all I aspire to.

In general we may observe that the question with regard to the comparative populousness of ages or kingdoms implies very important consequences, and commonly determines concerning the preference of their whole police, their manners, and the constitution of their government. For as there is in all men, both male and female, a desire and power of generation more active than is ever universally exerted, the restraints which they lie under must proceed from some difficulties in their situation, which it belongs to a wise legislature carefully to observe and remove. Almost every man who thinks he can maintain a family will have one, and the human species at this rate of propagation would more than double every generation. How fast do {p110} mankind multiply in every colony or new settlement, where it is an easy matter to provide for a family, and where men are nowise straightened or confined as in long established governments? History tells us frequently of plagues which have swept away the third or fourth part of a people; yet in a generation or two the destruction was not perceived, and the society had again acquired their former number. The lands which were cultivated, the houses built, the commodities raised, the riches acquired, enabled the people who escaped immediately to marry and to rear families, which supplied the place of those who had perished.?[41] And for a like reason every wise, just, and mild government, by rendering the condition of its subjects easy and secure, will always abound most in people, as well as in commodities and riches. A country, indeed, whose climate and soil are fitted for vines will naturally be more populous than one which is only fitted for pasturage; but if everything else be equal, it seems natural to expect that wherever there are most happiness and virtue and the wisest institutions, there will also be most people.

The question, therefore, concerning the populousness of ancient and modern times being allowed of great importance, it will be requisite, if we would bring it to some determination, to compare both the domestic and political situation of these two periods, in order to judge of the facts by their moral causes, which is the first view in which we proposed to consider them.

The chief difference between the domestic economy of the ancients and that of the moderns consists in the practice of slavery which prevailed among the former, and which has been abolished for some centuries throughout the greater part of Europe. Some passionate admirers of {p111} the ancients and zealous partisans of civil liberty (for these sentiments, as they are both of them in the main extremely just, are found to be almost inseparable) cannot forbear regretting the loss of this institution; and whilst they brand all submission to the government of a single person with the harsh denomination of slavery, they would gladly reduce the greatest part of mankind to real slavery and subjection. But to one who considers coolly on the subject it will appear that human nature in general really enjoys more liberty at present, in the most arbitrary governments of Europe, than it ever did during the most flourishing period of ancient times. As much as submission to a petty prince, whose dominions extend not beyond a single city, is more grievous than obedience to a great monarch, so much is domestic slavery more cruel and oppressive than any civil subjection whatsoever. The more the master is removed from us in place and rank the greater liberty we enjoy, the less are our actions inspected and controlled, and the fainter that cruel comparison becomes between our own subjection and the freedom and even dominion of another. The remains that are found of slavery in the American colonies and among some European nations would never surely create a desire of rendering it more universal. The little humanity commonly observed in persons accustomed from their infancy to exercise so great authority over their fellow-creatures and to trample upon human nature were sufficient alone to disgust us with that authority. Nor can a more probable reason be given for the severe, I might say barbarous manners of ancient times, than the practice of domestic slavery, by which every man of rank was rendered a petty tyrant and educated amidst the flattery, submission, and low debasement of his slaves.

According to the ancient practice, all checks were on the inferior, to restrain him to the duty of submission; none on the superior, to engage him to the reciprocal duties of gentleness and humanity. In modern times a bad servant finds not easily a good master, nor a bad master a good servant, and the checks are mutual, {p112} suitable to the inviolable and eternal laws of reason and equity.

The custom of exposing old, useless, or sick slaves in an island of the Tiber, there to starve, seems to have been pretty common in Rome, and whoever recovered after having been so exposed had his liberty given him by an edict of the Emperor Claudius, where it was likewise forbid to kill any slave merely for old age or sickness. But supposing that this edict was strictly obeyed, would it better the domestic treatment of slaves or render their lives much more comfortable? We may imagine what others would practise when it was the professed maxim of the elder Cato to sell his superannuated slaves for any price rather than maintain what he esteemed a useless burden.

The ergastula, or dungeons, where slaves in chains were forced to work, were very common all over Italy. Columella advises that they be always built under ground, and recommends it as the duty of a careful overseer to call over every day the names of these slaves, like the mustering of a regiment or ship’s company, in order to know presently when any of them had deserted. A proof of the frequency of these ergastula and of the great number of slaves usually confined in them.

A chained slave for a porter was usual in Rome, as appears from Ovid and other authors. Had not these people shaken off all sense of compassion towards that unhappy part of their species, would they have presented all their friends at the first entrance with such an image of the severity of the master and misery of the slave?

Nothing so common in all trials, even of civil causes, as to call for the evidence of slaves, which was always extorted by the most exquisite torments. Demosthenes says that where it was possible to produce for the same fact either freemen or slaves as witnesses, the judges always preferred the torturing of slaves as a more certain and infallible evidence.?[42] {p113}

Seneca draws a picture of that disorderly luxury which changes day into night and night into day, and inverts every stated hour of every office in life. Among other circumstances, such as displacing the meals and times of bathing, he mentions that regularly about the third hour of the night the neighbours of one who indulges this false refinement hear the noise of whips and lashes, and upon inquiry find that he is then taking an account of the conduct of his servants and giving them due correction and discipline. This is not remarked as an instance of cruelty, but only of disorder, which, even in actions the most usual and methodical, changes the fixed hours that an established custom had assigned them.?[43]

But our present business is only to consider the influence of slavery on the populousness of a state. It is pretended that in this particular the ancient practice had infinitely the advantage, and was the chief cause of that extreme populousness which is supposed in those times. At present all masters discourage the marrying of their male servants, and admit not by any means the marriage of the female, who are then supposed altogether incapacitated for their service; but where the property of the servants is lodged in the master, their marriage and fertility form his riches, and bring him a succession of slaves that supply the {p114} place of those whom age and infirmity have disabled. He encourages, therefore, their propagation as much as that of his cattle, rears the young with the same care, and educates them to some art or calling, which may render them more useful or valuable to him. The opulent are, by this policy, interested in the being at least, though not the well-being of the poor; and enrich themselves by increasing the number and industry of those who are subjected to them. Each man, being a sovereign in his own family, has the same interest with regard to it as the prince with regard to the state; and has not, like the prince, any opposite motive of ambition or vainglory which may lead him to depopulate his little sovereignty. All of it is, at all times, under his eye, and he has leisure to inspect the most minute detail of the marriage and education of his subjects.?[44]

Such are the consequences of domestic slavery, according to the first aspect and appearance of things; but if we enter more deeply into the subject, we shall perhaps find reason to retract our hasty determinations. The comparison is shocking between the management of human creatures and that of cattle; but being extremely just when applied to the present subject, it may be proper to trace the consequences of it. At the capital, near all great cities, in all populous, rich, industrious provinces, few cattle are bred. Provisions, lodging, attendance, labour are there dear, and men find better their account in buying the cattle, after they come to a certain age, from the remoter and cheaper countries. These are consequently the only breeding countries for cattle; and by a parity of reason, for men too, when the latter are put on the same footing with the {p115} former. To rear a child in London till he could be serviceable would cost much dearer than to buy one of the same age from Scotland or Ireland, where he had been raised in a cottage, covered with rags, and fed on oatmeal or potatoes. Those who had slaves, therefore, in all the richer or more populous countries would discourage the pregnancy of the females, and either prevent or destroy the birth. The human species would perish in those places where it ought to increase the fastest, and a perpetual recruit be needed from all the poorer and more desert provinces. Such a continued drain would tend mightily to depopulate the state, and render great cities ten times more destructive than with us, where every man is master of himself, and provides for his children from the powerful instinct of nature—not the calculations of sordid interest. If London at present, without increasing, needs a yearly recruit from the country of 5000 people, as is commonly computed, what must it require if the greatest part of the tradesmen and common people were slaves, and were hindered from breeding by their avaricious masters?

All ancient authors tell us that there was a perpetual flux of slaves to Italy from the remoter provinces, particularly Syria, Cilicia,?[45] Cappadocia, and the Lesser Asia, Thrace, and Egypt; yet the number of people did not increase in Italy, and writers complain of the continual decay of industry and agriculture. Where then is that extreme fertility of the Roman slaves which is commonly supposed? So far from multiplying, they could not, it seems, so much as keep up the stock without immense recruits. And though great numbers were continually manumitted and converted into Roman citizens, the numbers even of these did not increase till the freedom of the city was communicated to foreign provinces.

The term for a slave born and bred in the family was {p116} verna;?[46] and these slaves seem to have been entitled by custom to privileges and indulgences beyond others—a sufficient reason why the masters would not be fond of rearing many of that kind.?[47] Whoever is acquainted with the maxims of our planters will acknowledge the justness of this observation.?[48] {p117}

Atticus is much praised by his historian for the care which he took in recruiting his family from the slaves born in it.?[49] May we not thence infer that that practice was not then very common?

The names of slaves in the Greek comedies—Syrus, Mysus, Geta, Thrax, Davus, Lydus, Phyrx, etc., afford a presumption that at Athens, at least, most of the slaves were imported from foreign nations. The Athenians, says Strabo, gave to their slaves either the names of the nations whence they were bought, as Lydus, Syrus; or the names that were most common among those nations, as Manes or Midas to a Phrygian, Tibias to a Paphlagonian.

Demosthenes, after having mentioned a law which forbid any man to strike the slave of another, praises the humanity of this law, and adds that if the barbarians from whom slaves were bought had information that their countrymen met with such gentle treatment, they would entertain a great esteem for the Athenians. Isocrates, too, insinuates that the slaves of the Greeks were generally or very commonly barbarians. Aristotle, in his Politics, plainly supposes that a slave is always a foreigner. The ancient comic writers represented the slaves as speaking a barbarous language. This was an imitation of nature.

It is well known that Demosthenes, in his nonage, had been defrauded of a large fortune by his tutors, and that afterwards he recovered, by a prosecution of law, the value of his patrimony. His orations on that occasion still remain, and contain a very exact detail of the whole substance left by his father, in money, merchandise, houses, and slaves, together with the value of each particular. Among the rest were 52 slaves, handicraftsmen—viz., 32 sword-cutlers and 20 cabinet-makers,?[50] all males; not a word of any wives, children, or family, which they {p118} certainly would have had had it been a common custom at Athens to breed from the slaves; and the value of the whole must have depended very much on that circumstance. No female slaves are even so much as mentioned, except some housemaids who belonged to his mother. This argument has great force, if it be not altogether decisive.

Consider this passage of Plutarch, speaking of the elder Cato:—“He had a great number of slaves, whom he took care to buy at the sales of prisoners of war; and he chose them young, that they might easily be accustomed to any diet or manner of life, and be instructed in any business or labour, as men teach anything to young dogs or horses. And esteeming love the chief source of all disorders, he allowed the male slaves to have a commerce with the female in his family, upon paying a certain sum for this privilege; but he strictly forbade all intrigues out of his family.” Are there any symptoms in this narration of that care which is supposed in the ancients, of the marriage and propagation of their slaves? If that was a common practice, founded on general interest, it would surely have been embraced by Cato, who was a great economist, and lived in times when the ancient frugality and simplicity of manners were still in credit and reputation.

It is expressly remarked by the writers of the Roman law that scarce any ever purchase slaves with a view of breeding from them.?[51] {p119}

Our lackeys and housemaids, I own, do not serve much to multiply their species; but the ancients, besides those who attended on their person, had all their labour performed by slaves, who lived, many of them, in their family; and some great men possessed to the number of 10,000. If there be any suspicion, therefore, that this institution was unfavourable to propagation (and the same reason, at least in part, holds with regard to ancient slaves as well as modern servants), how destructive must slavery have proved!

History mentions a Roman nobleman who had 400 slaves under the same roof with him; and having been assassinated at home by the furious revenge of one of them, the law was executed with rigour, and all without exception were put to death. Many other Roman noblemen had families equally, or more numerous, and I believe every one will allow that this would scarcely be practicable were we to suppose all the slaves married and the females to be breeders.?[52]

So early as the poet Hesiod married slaves, whether male or female, were esteemed very inconvenient. How much more where families had increased to such an enormous size, as in Rome, and where simplicity of manners was banished from all ranks of people?

Xenophon in his Economics, where he gives directions for the management of a farm, recommends a strict care {p120} and attention of laying the male and the female slaves at a distance from each other. He seems not to suppose that they are ever married. The only slaves among the Greeks that appear to have continued their own breed were the Helotes, who had houses apart, and were more the slaves of the public than of individuals.

The same author tells us that Nicias’s overseer, by an agreement with his master, was obliged to pay him an obolus a day for each slave, besides maintaining them and keeping up the number. Had the ancient slaves been all breeders, this last circumstance of the contract had been superfluous.

The ancients talk so frequently of a fixed, stated portion of provisions assigned to each slave, that we are naturally led to conclude that slaves lived almost all single, and received that portion as a kind of board-wages.

The practice, indeed, of marrying the slaves seems not to have been very common even among the country-labourers, where it is more naturally to be expected. Cato, enumerating the slaves requisite to labour a vineyard of a hundred acres, makes them to amount to fifteen—the overseer and his wife (villicus and villica) and thirteen male slaves; for an olive plantation of 240 acres, the overseer and his wife and eleven male slaves; and so in proportion to a greater or less plantation or vineyard.

Varro, citing this passage of Cato, allows his computation to be just in every respect except the last. “For as it is requisite,” says he, “to have an overseer and his wife, whether the vineyard or plantation be great or small, this must alter the exactness of the proportion.” Had Cato’s computation been erroneous in any other respect it had certainly been corrected by Varro, who seems fond of discovering so trivial an inaccuracy.

The same author, as well as Columella, recommends it as requisite to give a wife to the overseer in order to attach him the more strongly to his master’s service. This was therefore a peculiar indulgence granted to a slave in whom so great a confidence was reposed. {p121}

In the same place Varro mentions it as a useful precaution not to buy too many slaves from the same nations, lest they beget factions and seditions in the family; a presumption that in Italy the greatest part, even of the country-labouring slaves—for he speaks of no other—were bought from the remoter provinces. All the world knows that the family-slaves in Rome, who were instruments of show and luxury, were commonly imported from the east. “Hoc profecere,” says Pliny, speaking of the jealous care of masters, “mancipiorum legiones, et in domo turba externa ac servorum quoque causa nomenclator adhibendus.”

It is indeed recommended by Varro to propagate young shepherds in the family from the old ones; for as grazing farms were commonly in remote and cheap places, and each shepherd lived in a cottage apart, his marriage and increase were not liable to the same inconveniences as in dearer places and where many servants lived in a family, which was universally the case in such of the Roman farms as produced wine or corn. If we consider this exception with regard to the shepherds, and weigh the reasons of it, it will serve for a strong confirmation of all our foregoing suspicions.

Columella, I own, advises the master to give a reward, and even liberty to a female slave that had reared him above three children, a proof that sometimes the ancients propagated from their slaves, which, indeed, cannot be denied. Were it otherwise the practice of slavery, being so common in antiquity, must have been destructive to a degree which no expedient could repair. All I pretend to infer from these reasonings is that slavery is in general disadvantageous both to the happiness and populousness of mankind, and that its place is much better supplied by the practice of hired servants.

The laws, or, as some writers call them, the seditions of the Gracchi, were occasioned by their observing the increase of slaves all over Italy, and the diminution of free citizens. Appian ascribes this increase to the propagation of the slaves; Plutarch to the purchasing of {p122} barbarians, who were chained and imprisoned, a?a???a des?t???a. It is to be presumed that both causes concurred.

Sicily, says Florus, was full of ergastula, and was cultivated by labourers in chains. Eunus and Athenio excited the servile war by breaking up these monstrous prisons and giving liberty to 60,000 slaves. The younger Pompey augmented his army in Spain by the same expedient. If the country-labourers throughout the Roman Empire were so generally in this situation, and if it was difficult or impossible to find separate lodgings for the families of the city-servants, how unfavourable to propagation, as well as to humanity, must the institution of domestic slavery be esteemed.

Constantinople at present requires the same recruits of slaves from all the provinces which Rome did of old, and these provinces are of consequence far from being populous.

Egypt, according to Monsieur Maillet, sends continual colonies of black slaves to the other parts of the Turkish Empire, and receives annually an equal return of white; the one brought from the inland parts of Africa, the other from Mingrella, Circassia, and Tartary.

Our modern convents are no doubt very bad institutions, but there is reason to suspect that anciently every great family in Italy, and probably in other parts of the world, was a species of convent. And though we have reason to detest all those popish institutions as nurseries of the most abject superstition, burdensome to the public and oppressive to the poor prisoners, male as well as female, yet may it be questioned whether they be so destructive to the populousness of a state as is commonly imagined. Were the land which belongs to a convent bestowed on a nobleman, he would spend its revenue on dogs, horses, grooms, footmen, cooks, and housemaids, and his family would not furnish many more citizens than the convent.

The common reason why parents thrust their daughters into nunneries is that they may not be overburdened with {p123} too numerous a family; but the ancients had a method almost as innocent and more effectual to that purpose—viz., the exposing their children in the earliest infancy. This practice was very common, and is not mentioned by any author of those times with the horror it deserves, or scarce?[53] even with disapprobation. Plutarch—the humane, good-natured Plutarch?[54]—recommends it as a virtue in Attalus, King of Pergamus, that he murdered, or, if you will, exposed all his own children in order to leave his crown to the son of his brother, Eumenes, signalising in this manner his gratitude and affection to Eumenes, who had left him his heir preferable to that son. It was Solon, the most celebrated of the sages of Greece, who gave parents permission by law to kill their children.

Shall we then allow these two circumstances to compensate each other—viz., monastic vows and the exposing of children, and to be unfavourable in equal degrees to the propagation of mankind? I doubt the advantage is here on the side of antiquity. Perhaps, by an odd connection of causes, the barbarous practice of the ancients might rather render those times more populous. By removing the terrors of too numerous a family it would engage many people in marriage, and such is the force of natural affection that very few in comparison would have resolution enough to carry into execution their former intentions.

China, the only country where this cruel practice of exposing children prevails at present, is the most populous country we know, and every man is married before he is twenty. Such early marriages could scarcely be general had not men the prospect of so easy a method of getting rid of their children. I own that Plutarch speaks of it as a very universal maxim of the poor to expose their children, and as the rich were then averse to marriage on account of the courtship they met with from those who expected legacies {p124} from them, the public must have been in a bad situation between them.?[55]

Of all sciences there is none where first appearances are more deceitful than in politics. Hospitals for foundlings seem favourable to the increase of numbers, and perhaps may be so when kept under proper restrictions; but when they open the door to every one, without distinction, they have probably a contrary effect, and are pernicious to the state. It is computed that every ninth child born at Paris is sent to the hospital, though it seems certain, according to the common course of human affairs, that it is not a hundredth part whose parents are altogether incapacitated to rear and educate them. The infinite difference, for health, industry, and morals, between an education in an hospital and that in a private family should induce us not to make the entrance into an hospital too easy and engaging. To kill one’s own child is shocking to nature, and must therefore be pretty unusual; but to turn over the care of him upon others is very tempting to the natural indolence of mankind.

Having considered the domestic life and manners of the ancients compared to those of the moderns, where in the main we seem rather superior so far as the present question is concerned, we shall now examine the political customs and institutions of both ages, and weigh their influence in retarding or forwarding the propagation of mankind.

Before the increase of the Roman power, or rather till its full establishment, almost all the nations which are the scene of ancient history were divided into small territories or petty {p125} commonwealths, where of course a great equality of fortune prevailed, and the centre of the government was always very near its frontiers.

This was the situation of affairs not only in Greece and Italy, but also in Spain, Gaul, Germany, Africa, and a great part of the Lesser Asia. And it must be owned that no institution could be more favourable to the propagation of mankind; for though a man of an overgrown fortune, not being able to consume more than another, must share it with those who serve and attend him, yet their possession being precarious, they have not the same encouragement to marriage as if each had a small fortune secure and independent. Enormous cities are, besides, destructive to society, beget vice and disorder of all kinds, starve the remoter provinces, and even starve themselves by the prices to which they raise all provisions. Where each man had his little house and field to himself, and each county had its capital, free and independent, what a happy situation of mankind! How favourable to industry and agriculture, to marriage and propagation! The prolific virtue of men, were it to act in its full extent, without that restraint which poverty and necessity imposes on it, would double the number every generation; and nothing surely can give it more liberty than such small commonwealths, and such an equality of fortune among the citizens. All small states naturally produce equality of fortune because they afford no opportunities of great increase, but small commonwealths much more by that division of power and authority which is essential to them.

When Xenophon returned after the famous expedition with Cyrus, he hired himself and 6000 of the Greeks into the service of Seuthes, a prince of Thrace; and the articles of his agreement were that each soldier should receive a daric a month, each captain two darics, and he himself, as general, four; a regulation of pay which would not a little surprise our modern officers.

Demosthenes and Æschines, with eight more, were sent ambassadors to Philip of Macedon, and their appointments {p126} for above four months were a thousand drachmas, which is less than a drachma a day for each ambassador. But a drachma a day—nay, sometimes two, was the pay of a common foot-soldier.

A centurion among the Romans had only double pay to a private man in Polybius’s time, and we accordingly find the gratuities after a triumph regulated by that proportion. But Mark Anthony and the triumvirate gave the centurions five times the reward of the other; so much had the increase of the commonwealth increased the inequality among the citizens.?[56]

It must be owned that the situation of affairs in modern times with regard to civil liberty, as well as equality of fortune, is not near so favourable either to the propagation or happiness of mankind. Europe is shared out mostly into great monarchies, and such parts of it as are divided into small territories are commonly governed by absolute princes, who ruin their people by a mimicry of the greater monarchs in the splendour of their court and number of their forces. Switzerland alone and Holland resemble the ancient republics, and though the former is far from possessing any advantage either of soil, climate, or commerce, yet the numbers of people with which it abounds, notwithstanding their enlisting themselves into every service in Europe, prove sufficiently the advantages of their political institutions.

The ancient republics derived their chief or only security from the numbers of their citizens. The Trachinians having lost great numbers of their people, the remainder, instead of enriching themselves by the inheritance of their fellow-citizens, applied to Sparta, their metropolis, for a new stock of inhabitants. The Spartans immediately collected ten thousand men, among whom the old citizens divided the lands of which the former proprietors had perished.

After Timoleon had banished Dionysius from Syracuse {p127} and had settled the affairs of Sicily, finding the cities of Syracuse and Sellinuntium extremely depopulated by tyranny, war, and faction, he invited over from Greece some new inhabitants to repeople them. Immediately forty thousand men (Plutarch says sixty thousand) offered themselves, and he distributed so many lots of land among them, to the great satisfaction of the ancient inhabitants; a proof at once of the maxims of ancient policy, which affected populousness more than riches, and of the good effects of these maxims in the extreme populousness of that small country Greece, which could at once supply so large a colony. The case was not much different with the Romans in early times. “He is a pernicious citizen,” said M. Curius, “who cannot be contented with seven acres.”?[57] Such ideas of equality could not fail of producing great numbers of people.

We must now consider what disadvantages the ancients lay under with regard to populousness, and what checks they received from their political maxims and institutions. There are commonly compensations in every human condition, and though these compensations be not always perfectly equal, yet they serve, at least, to restrain the prevailing principle. To compare them and estimate their influence is indeed very difficult, even where they take place in the same age, and in neighbouring countries; but where several ages have intervened, and only scattered lights are afforded us by ancient authors, what can we do but amuse ourselves by talking, pro and con, on an interesting subject, and thereby correcting all hasty and violent determinations? {p128}

First, we may observe that the ancient republics were almost in perpetual war, a natural effect of their martial spirit, their love of liberty, their mutual emulation, and that hatred which generally prevails among nations that live in a close neighbourhood. Now, war in a small state is much more destructive than in a great one, both because all the inhabitants in the former case must serve in the armies, and because the state is all frontier and all exposed to the inroads of the enemy.

The maxims of ancient war were much more destructive than those of modern, chiefly by the distribution of plunder, in which the soldiers were indulged. The private men in our armies are such a low set of people that we find any abundance beyond their simple pay breeds confusion and disorder, and a total dissolution of discipline. The very wretchedness and meanness of those who fill the modern armies render them less destructive to the countries which they invade; one instance, among many, of the deceitfulness of first appearances in all political reasonings.?[58]

Ancient battles were much more bloody by the very nature of the weapons employed in them. The ancients drew up their men sixteen or twenty, sometimes fifty men deep, which made a narrow front, and it was not difficult to find a field in which both armies might be marshalled and might engage with each other. Even where any body of the troops was kept off by hedges, hillocks, woods, or hollow ways, the battle was not so soon decided between the contending parties but that the others had time to overcome the difficulties which opposed them and take part in the engagement. And as the whole armies were thus engaged, and each man closely buckled to his antagonist, the battles were commonly very bloody, and great slaughter was made on both sides, especially on the vanquished. {p129} The long thin lines required by firearms, and the quick decision of the fray, render our modern engagements but partial rencounters, and enable the general who is foiled in the beginning of the day to draw off the greatest part of his army, sound and entire. Could Folard’s project of the column take place (which seems impracticable?[59]) it would render modern battles as destructive as the ancient.

The battles of antiquity, both by their duration and their resemblance of single combats, were wrought up to a degree of fury quite unknown to later ages. Nothing could then engage the combatants to give quarter but the hopes of profit by making slaves of their prisoners. In civil wars, as we learn from Tacitus, the battles were the most bloody, because the prisoners were not slaves.

What a stout resistance must be made where the vanquished expected so hard a fate! How inveterate the rage where the maxims of war were, in every respect, so bloody and severe!

Instances are very frequent in ancient history of cities besieged whose inhabitants, rather than open their gates, murdered their wives and children, and rushed themselves on a voluntary death, sweetened perhaps with a little prospect of revenge upon the enemy. Greeks as well as barbarians have been often wrought up to this degree of fury. And the same determined spirit and cruelty must, in many other instances less remarkable, have been extremely destructive to human society in those petty commonwealths which lived in a close neighbourhood, and were engaged in perpetual wars and contentions.

Sometimes the wars in Greece, says Plutarch, were carried on entirely by inroads and robberies and piracies. Such a method of war must be more destructive in small states than the bloodiest battles and sieges.

By the laws of the twelve tables, possession for two years {p130} formed a prescription for land; one year for movables;?[60] an indication that there was not in Italy during that period much more order, tranquillity, and settled police than there is at present among the Tartars.

The only cartel I remember in ancient history is that between Demetrius Poliorcetes and the Rhodians, when it was agreed that a free citizen should be restored for 1000 drachmas, a slave bearing arms for 500.

But, secondly, it appears that ancient manners were more unfavourable than the modern, not only in times of war but also in those of peace; and that too in every respect, except the love of civil liberty and equality, which is, I own, of considerable importance. To exclude faction from a free government is very difficult, if not altogether impracticable; but such inveterate rage between the factions and such bloody maxims are found, in modern times, amongst religious parties alone, where bigoted priests are the accusers, judges, and executioners. In ancient history we may always observe, where one party prevailed, whether the nobles or people (for I can observe no difference in this respect?[61]), that they immediately butchered all of the opposite party who fell into their hands, and banished such as had been so fortunate as to escape their fury. No form of process, no law, no trial, no pardon. A fourth, a third, perhaps near a half of the city were slaughtered or expelled every revolution; and the exiles always joined foreign enemies and did all the mischief possible to their fellow-citizens, till fortune put it in their power to take full revenge by a new revolution. And as these were very frequent in such violent governments, the disorder, diffidence, jealousy, enmity which must prevail are not easy for us to imagine in this age of the world. {p131}

There are only two revolutions I can recollect in ancient history which passed without great severity and great effusion of blood in massacres and assassinations—viz., the restoration of the Athenian democracy by Thrasybulus, and the subduing the Roman republic by CÆsar. We learn from ancient history that Thrasybulus passed a general amnesty for all past offences, and first introduced that word as well as practice into Greece. It appears, however, from many orations of Lysias, that the chief, and even some of the subaltern offenders in the preceding tyranny were tried and capitally punished. This is a difficulty not cleared up, and even not observed by antiquarians and historians. And as to CÆsar’s clemency, though much celebrated, it would not gain great applause in the present age. He butchered, for instance, all Cato’s senate, when he became master of Utica; and these, we may readily believe, were not the most worthless of the party. All those who had borne arms against that usurper were forfeited, and, by Hirtius’s law, declared incapable of all public offices.

These people were extremely fond of liberty, but seem not to have understood it very well. When the Thirty Tyrants first established their dominion at Athens, they began with seizing all the sycophants and informers who had been so troublesome during the Democracy, and putting them to death by an arbitrary sentence and execution. “Every man,” says Sallust and Lysias,?[62] “rejoiced at these punishments;” not considering that liberty was from that moment annihilated.

The utmost energy of the nervous style of Thucydides, and the copiousness and expression of the Greek language, seem to sink under that historian when he attempts to describe the disorders which arose from faction throughout {p132} all the Greek commonwealths. You would imagine that he still labours with a thought greater than he can find words to communicate, and he concludes his pathetic description with an observation which is at once very refined and very solid. “In these contests,” says he, “those who were dullest and most stupid, and had the least foresight, commonly prevailed; for being conscious of this weakness, and dreading to be over-reached by those of greater penetration, they went to work hastily, without premeditation, by the sword and poniard, and thereby prevented their antagonists, who were forming fine schemes and projects for their destruction.”?[63]

Not to mention Dionysius the elder, who is computed to have butchered in cold blood above 10,000 of his fellow-citizens, nor Agathocles, Nabis, and others still more bloody than he, the transactions, even in free governments, were extremely violent and destructive. At Athens, the Thirty Tyrants and the nobles in a twelvemonth murdered, without trial, about 1200 of the people, and banished above the half of the citizens that remained.?[64] In Argos, near the same time, the people killed 1200 of the nobles, and afterwards their own demagogues, because they had refused to carry their prosecutions further. The people also in Corcyra killed 1500 of the nobles and banished a thousand. These numbers will appear the more surprising if we {p133} consider the extreme smallness of these states. But all ancient history is full of such instances.?[65]

When Alexander ordered all the exiles to be restored through all the cities, it was found that the whole amounted to 20,000 men, the remains probably of still greater slaughters and massacres. What an astonishing multitude in so narrow a country as ancient Greece! And what domestic confusion, jealousy, partiality, revenge, heart-burnings must tear those cities, where factions were wrought up to such a degree of fury and despair!

“It would be easier,” says Isocrates to Philip, “to raise {p134} an army in Greece at present from the vagabonds than from the cities.”

Even where affairs came not to such extremities (which they failed not to do almost in every city twice or thrice every century), property was rendered very precarious by the maxims of ancient government. Xenophon, in the banquet of Socrates, gives us a very natural, unaffected description of the tyranny of the Athenian people. “In my poverty,” says Charmides, “I am much more happy than ever I was while possessed of riches; as much as it is happier to be in security than in terrors, free than a slave, to receive than to pay court, to be trusted than suspected. Formerly I was obliged to caress every informer, some imposition was continually laid upon me, and it was never allowed me to travel or be absent from the city. At present, when I am poor, I look big and threaten others. The rich are afraid of me, and show me every kind of civility and respect, and I am become a kind of tyrant in the city.”

In one of the pleadings of Lysias, the orator very coolly speaks of it, by the by, as a maxim of the Athenian people, that whenever they wanted money they put to death some of the rich citizens as well as strangers, for the sake of the forfeiture. In mentioning this, he seems to have no intention of blaming them, still less of provoking them who were his audience and judges.

Whether a man was a citizen or a stranger among that people, it seems indeed requisite either that he should impoverish himself or the people would impoverish him, and perhaps kill him into the bargain. The orator last mentioned gives a pleasant account of an estate laid out in the public service?[66]—that is, above the third of it in raree-shows and figured dances. {p135}

I need not insist on the Greek tyrannies, which were altogether horrible. Even the mixed monarchies, by which most of the ancient states of Greece were governed before the introduction of republics, were very unsettled. Scarce any city but Athens, says Isocrates, could show a succession of kings for four or five generations.

Besides many other obvious reasons for the instability of ancient 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. {p136}

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] {p137}

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. {p138}

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 {p139} 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; {p140} 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 {p141} 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 {p142} 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. {p143}

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 {p144} 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 {p145} 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 {p146} 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 {p147} 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.