82 De rep. Laced. This passage is not easily reconciled with that of Plutarch above, who says that Sparta had 9000 citizens.

83 Strabo, lib. 5, says that the Emperor Augustus prohibited the raising houses higher than seventy feet. In another passage, lib. 16, he speaks of the houses of Rome as remarkably high. See also to the same purpose Vitruvius, lib. 2, cap. 8. Aristides the Sophist, in his oration εις Ρωμην, says that Rome consisted of cities on the top of cities; and that if one were to spread it out and unfold it, it would cover the whole surface of Italy. Where an author indulges himself in such extravagant declamations, and gives so much in to the hyperbolical style, one knows not how far he must be reduced. But this reasoning seems natural: if Rome was built in so scattered a manner as Dionysius says, and ran so much into the country, there must have been very few streets where the houses were raised so high. It is only for want of ground that anybody builds in that inconvenient manner.