The Populousness Of Ancient Nations

What is the population size of particular cities in antiquity, omitting Nineveh, Babylon, and the Egyptian Thebes?

The more I look into this, the more I doubt the great populousness of the ancient times.

Plato says:

Cicero mentions Athens as the greatest of all the Greek cities in his time, excluding Antioch or Alexandria.

Athenæus says:

Athenæus quotes Ctesicles. Both are here mistaken. The number of slaves is, at least, augmented by a whole cypher, and should not be more than 40,000.

Athenæus says that the number of citizens is 21,000. This means only men of full age. This is because:

1. Herodotus says, that Aristagoras, ambassador from the Ionians, found it harder to deceive one Spartan than 30,000 Athenians; meaning, in a loose way, the whole state, supposed to be met in one popular assembly, excluding the women and children.

2. Thucydides says, that, making allowance for all the absentees in the fleet, army, garrisons, and for people employed in their private affairs, the Athenian assembly never rose to five thousand.

3. The forces, enumerated by Thucydides were all citizens, and amounting to 13,000 heavy-armed infantry. This proves the same method of calculation; as also the whole tenor of the Greek historians, who always understand men of full age, when they assign the number of citizens in any republic.

Now, these being but the fourth of the inhabitants,

The free Athenians were only 1/4 of the population. This means:

• The Athenians were 84,000
• The foreigners were 40,000
• The slaves were 160,000, calculating by the smaller number, and assuming that they breed at the same rate as freemen
• The total population was 284,000

The other number, 1,720,000, makes Athens larger than London and Paris united.

There were only 10,000 houses in Athens. Thucydides says that its walls were eighteen miles long beside the sea-coast. Yet Xenophon says there was much waste ground within the walls. They had joined four distinct and separate cities.

Historians mention no slave insurrection, or suspicion of insurrection, other than one commotion of the miners. Xenophon, Demosthenes, and Plautus say that the treatment of slaves by the Athenians was extremely gentle and indulgent.

!!!

This could never have been the case if there were 20 slaves to one citizen. The disproportion is not so great in our colonies, yet are we obliged to exercise a rigorous military government over the negroes.

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 six-pence a day: Yet is he esteemed but poor who has five times that sum.

Æschines says that Timarchus was left in easy circumstances. But he was master of only 10 slaves employed in manufactures.

Lysias and his brother, two foreigners, were proscribed by the 30 for their great riches; though they had but 60 a-piece.

Demosthenes was left very rich by his father. Yet he had no more than 52 slaves. His workhouse had 20 cabinet-makers and was a very considerable manufactory.

Thucydides says that during the Decelian war, 20,000 slaves deserted and brought great distress to the Athenians.

This could not have happened, had they been only the twentieth part. The best slaves would not desert.

Xenophon proposes a scheme for maintaining 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.,

The whole census done by Demosthenes at Athens was less than 6,000 talents. This is unexceptionable because:

• Demosthenes gives also the detail, which checks him
• Polybius assigns the same number, and reasons upon it.

Xenophon says that the most vulgar slave work for an obolus a day. This was over and above his maintenance. Nicias’s overseer paid his master so much for slaves to employ in mines.

An obolus a day multiplied by 400,000 slaves at four years purchase leads to over 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.

It is difficult to reconcile even 40,000 slaves with the census of 6,000 talents.

Thucydides says that Chios has more slaves than any Greek city, except Sparta which then had more than Athens, in proportion to the number of citizens.

The Spartans were 9,000 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.

This is impossible to maintain 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.

The number assigned by Athenæus, whatever it is, comprehends all the inhabitants of Attica, as well as those of Athens.

Thucydides says that the Athenians affected much a country life. When they were all chased into town during the Peloponnesian war, the city was not able to house them. They had to sleep in the porticoes, temples, and streets. This is also true for all the other Greek cities. Their number of citizens includes both the inhabitants of the neighbouring country and the city.

Yet, even with this allowance, it must be confessed, that Greece was a populous country, and exceeded what we could imagine concerning so narrow a territory, naturally not very fertile, and which drew no supplies of corn from other places.

Athens traded to Pontus for grain. The other cities subsisted chiefly from their neighbouring territory.

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

This was always one of the capital cities of Greece. But the number of its citizens exceeded not those of Rhodes.

Xenophon says that Phliasia was a small city. Yet it had 6,000 citizens. Perhaps, Xenophon calls Phliasia a small town maybe because:

• it made but a small figure in Greece, maintained only a subordinate alliance with Sparta, or
• its country was wide and most of the citizens were employed in its cultivation, living in the neighbouring villages.

With that population, it was equal to any city in Arcadia and consequently to Megalopolis, which was 6.25 miles in circumference. But Mantinea had only 3,000 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 above 20 miles long.

Syracuse was 22 miles in circumference. Yet was not more populous than Athens.

Pliny says that Babylon was a square of 15 miles, or 60 miles in circuit. But it contained large cultivated fields and enclosures.

Aurelian’s wall was 50 miles in circumference. But the circuit of all the 13 divisions of Rome, taken apart, according to Publius Victor, was only around 43 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.

Xenophon says that the high walls enabled a small number to defend them. ? is one of the cities of Greece that has the fewest inhabitants.

Yet Polybius says that it was 48 stadia in circumference and was round. The Aetolians able to bear arms in Antipater’s time, deducting some few garrisons, were but 10,000 men. tells us, that the Achæan league might, without any inconvenience, march 40,000 men. This is probable since that league comprehended the greater part of Peloponnesus.

Yet Pausanias, speaking of the same period, says, that all the Achæans able to bear arms, even when several slaves were joined to them, did not amount to 15,000.

Thessalians, till their final conquest by the Romans, were, in all ages, turbulent, factious, seditious, disorderly.

It is not therefore natural to suppose, that this part of Greece abounded much in people.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.

These were the two extremities of Greece.

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. He tells us, that, when Philip of Macedon was declared head of the Greek confederacy, he called a congress of all the states, except the Spartans, 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.

The Greek republics maintained no mercenary forces. 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 be maintained there, is contrary to all history.

The free Greeks of all ages and sexes therefore 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, to wit, 430,000.

All the inhabitants of ancient Greece, excepting Laconia, were about 1,290,000.

It does not exceed the current population of Scotland.