Besides, we are to consider that the number assigned by Athenæus,78 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; {p151} for, excepting Athens, which traded to Pontus for that commodity, the other cities seem to have subsisted chiefly from their neighbouring territory.79
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.80 Phliasia is said to be a small city by Xenophon, {p152} 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.