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.
Athens is said by Plato to be a very great city; and it was surely the greatest of all the Greek73 cities, except Syracuse, which was nearly about the same size in Thucydides’ time, and afterwards increased beyond it; for Cicero74 mentions it as the greatest of all the Greek cities in his time, not comprehending, I suppose, either Antioch or Alexandria under that denomination. Athenæus says that, by the enumeration of Demetrius Phalereus, there were in Athens 21,000 citizens, 10,000 strangers, and 400,000 slaves. This number is very much insisted on by those whose opinion I call in question, and is esteemed a fundamental fact to their purpose; but, in my opinion, there is no point of criticism more certain than that Athenæus and Ctesicles, whom he cites, are here mistaken, and that the number of slaves is augmented by a whole cypher, and ought