Faulty Ancient Records

Upon comparing the whole, it is impossible 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 favourable to their population growth. 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 overbalance the former advantages and support the opposite opinion that the ancients had a fewer population.

The facts delivered by ancient authors are so uncertain or imperfect. Our computations from them must likewise by uncertain or incomplete.

Emperor Heliogabalus estimated the immense greatness of Rome, from 10,000 pounds weight of cobwebs found in that city.

Any alteration, in other places, commonly affects the sense or grammar, and is more readily perceived by the reader and transcriber.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.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 in 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.

I think that the first page of Thucydides is the start of real history. Anything before him must be abandoned.

Diodorus Siculus says that:

Strabo also mentions the same number of Sybarites.

Siculus,126 enumerating the inhabitants of Agrigentum, when it was destroyed by the Carthaginians, says, that they amounted to 20,000 citizens, 200,000 foreigners, besides slaves, who, in so opulent a city as he represents it, would probably be, at least, as numerous.

The women and the children are not included; and that, therefore, upon the whole, this city must have contained near two millions of inhabitants.

Theocritus says that

I suppose the singularity of the number was the reason of assigning it. Diodorus Siculus assigns 3m inhabitants to Ægypt, a small number.

But then he makes the number of cities amount to 18,000: An evident contradiction. says the people were formerly 7m.

Xerxes’s army was extremely numerous both from:

• the great extent of his empire, and
• the practice in the eastern nations of filling their camp with superfluous people.

But Herodotus’ narrations are irrational.

Lysias’ arguments on this are more rational:

If Xerxes’s army were incredibly numerous, he would have made a bridge over the Hellespont. In this way, it would have been easier to transport his men over so short a passage compared to using so many ships.

says, that the Romans, between the first and second Punic wars, being threatened with an invasion from the Gauls, mustered all their own forces, and those of their allies, and found them amount to 700,000 men able to bear arms.

A great number surely, and which, when joined to the slaves, is probablys not less, if not rather more, than that extent of country affords at present.

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 magnified, in order to encourage the people?

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 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?

Cæsar according to Appian, encountered 4m Gauls, killed 1m, and made another 1m prisoners.

Supposing the number of the enemy’s army and that of the slain 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 does not tell us the mediums, upon which the calculations were founded.makes the number of Gauls killed by Cæsar amount only to 400,000:

A more probable account, and more easily reconciled to the history of these wars given by that conqueror himself in his Commentaries.

The most bloody of his battles were fought against the Helvetii and the Germans.

The life and actions of Dionysius the elder is authentic because:

• he lived when letters flourished most in Greece, and
• his chief historian was Philistus: a great genius who was also his minister

His had a army of 100,000 foot, 10,000 horse, and fleet of 400 gallies were mercenaries.

His citizens were all disarmed. 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 a huge mercenary force can only be maintained by:

• a great trade
• numerous manufactures, or
• extensive dominions.

The United Provinces never were masters of such a force by sea and land, as that of Dionysius. Yet they:

• possess a territory as large and as well cultivated, and
• have much more resources from their commerce and industry.

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 produce of that fertile island was consumed in Italy.