The Thessalians, till their final conquest by the Romans, were in all ages turbulent, factious, seditious, disorderly. It is not, therefore, natural to suppose that that part of Greece abounded much in people.
We 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, animals which can only inhabit vast unpeopled forests. These were the two extremities of Greece.
All 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.
Justin tells us that when Philip of Macedon was declared head of the Greek confederacy he called a congress of all the states, except the Lacedemonians, 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, for as the Greek republics maintained no mercenary forces, and had no militia distinct from the whole body of the citizens, 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 could be maintained there, is contrary to all history. Upon this supposition, therefore, we may thus reason. The free Greeks of all ages and sexes 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—viz., 430,000. And all the inhabitants of ancient Greece, excepting Laconia, were about 1,290,000—no mighty number, nor exceeding what may be found at present in Scotland, a country of nearly the same extent, and very indifferently peopled. {p154}