[81] Diod. Sic., lib. 17. When Alexander attacked Thebes we may safely conclude that almost all the inhabitants were present. Whoever is acquainted with the spirit of the Greeks, especially of the Thebans, will never suspect that any of them would desert their country when it was reduced to such extreme peril and distress. As Alexander took the town by storm, all those who bore arms were put to the sword without mercy, and they amounted only to 6000 men. Among these were some strangers and manumitted slaves. The captives, consisting of old men, women, children, and slaves, were sold, and they amounted to 30,000. We may therefore conclude that the free citizens in Thebes, of both sexes and all ages, were near 24,000, the strangers and slaves about 12,000, These last, we may observe, were somewhat fewer in proportion than at Athens; as is reasonable to imagine from this circumstance, that Athens was a town of more trade to support slaves, and of more entertainment to allure strangers. It is also to be remarked that thirty-six thousand was the whole number of people, both in the city of Thebes and the neighbouring territory; a very moderate number, it must be confessed, and this computation being founded in facts which appear undisputable, must have great weight in the present controversy. The above-mentioned number of Rhodians, too, were all the inhabitants of the island who were free and able to bear arms.
[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.
[84] Lib. 2, epist. 16; lib. 5, epist. 6. It is true Pliny there describes a country house; but since that was the idea which the ancients formed of a magnificent and convenient building, the great men would certainly build the same way in town. “In laxitatem ruris excurrunt,” says Seneca of the rich and voluptuous, epist. 114. Valerius Maximus, lib. 4, cap. 4, speaking of Cincinnatus’ field of four acres, says: “Augustus se habitare nunc putat, cujus domus tantum patet quantum Cincinnati rura patuerant.” To the same purpose see lib. 36, cap. 15; also lib. 18, cap. 2.
[85] “Mœnia ejus (Romæ) collegere ambitu imperatoribus, censoribusque Vespasianis, A.U.C. 828, pass. xiii. MCC, complexa montes septem, ipsa dividitur in regiones quatuordecim, compita earum 265. Ejusdem spatii mensura, currente a milliario in capite Rom. Fori statuto, ad singulas portas, quæ sunt hodie numero 37, ita ut duodecim portæ semel numerentur, prætereanturque ex veteribus septem, quæ esse desierunt, efficit passuum per directum 30,775. Ad extrema vero tectorum cum castris prætoris ab eodem Milliario, per vicos omnium viarum, mensura collegit paulo amplius septuaginta millia passuum. Quo si quis altitudinem tectorum addat, dignam profecto, æstimationem concipiat, fateaturque nullius urbis magnitudinem in toto orbe potuisse ei comparari.” (Pliny, lib. 3, cap. 5.)
All the best manuscripts of Pliny read the passage as here cited, and fix the compass of the walls of Rome to be thirteen miles. The question is, what Pliny means by 30,775 paces, and how that number was formed? The manner in which I conceive it is this: Rome was a semicircular area of thirteen miles circumference. The Forum, and consequently the Milliarium, we know was situated on the banks of the Tiber, and near the centre of the circle, or upon the diameter of the semicircular area. Though there were thirty-seven gates to Rome, yet only twelve of them had straight streets, leading from them to the Milliarium. Pliny, therefore, having assigned the circumference of Rome, and knowing that that alone was not sufficient to give us a just notion of its surface, uses this further method. He supposes all the streets leading from the Milliarium to the twelve gates to be laid together into one straight line, and supposes we run along that line so as to count each gate once, in which case, he says that the whole line is 30,775 paces; or, in other words, that each street or radius of the semicircular area is upon an average two miles and a half, and the whole length of Rome is five miles, and its breadth about half as much, besides the scattered suburbs.
Père Hardouin understands this passage in the same manner, with regard to the laying together the several streets of Rome into one line in order to compose 30,775 paces; but then he supposes that streets led from the Milliarium to every gate, and that no street exceeded 800 paces in length. But (1) a semicircular area whose radius was only 800 paces could never have a circumference near thirteen miles, the compass of Rome as assigned by Pliny. A radius of two miles and a half forms very nearly that circumference. (2) There is an absurdity in supposing a city so built as to have streets running to its centre from every gate in its circumference. These streets must interfere as they approach. (3) This diminishes too much from the greatness of ancient Rome, and reduces that city below even Bristol or Rotterdam.
The sense which Vossius, in his Observationes Variæ, puts on this passage of Pliny errs widely in the other extreme. One manuscript of no authority, instead of thirteen miles, has assigned thirty miles for the compass of the walls of Rome; and Vossius understands this only of the curvilinear part of the circumference, supposing that, as the Tiber formed the diameter, there were no walls built on that side. But (1) this reading is allowed contrary to almost all the manuscripts. (2) Why should Pliny, a concise writer, repeat the compass of the walls of Rome in two successive sentences? (3) Why repeat it with so sensible a variation? (4) What is the meaning of Pliny’s mentioning twice the Milliarium if a line was measured that had no dependence on the Milliarium? (5) Aurelian’s wall is said by Vopiscus to have been drawn laxiore ambitu, and to have comprehended all the buildings and suburbs on the north side of the Tiber, yet its compass was only fifty miles; and even here critics suspect some mistake or corruption in the text. It is not probable that Rome would diminish from Augustus to Aurelian. It remained still the capital of the same empire; and none of the civil wars in that long period, except the tumults on the death of Maximus and Balbinus, ever affected the city. Caracalla is said by Aurelius Victor to have increased Rome. (6) There are no remains of ancient buildings which mark any such greatness of Rome. Vossius’s reply to this objection seems absurd—that the rubbish would sink sixty or seventy feet below ground. It appears from Spartian (in vita Severi) that the five-mile stone in via Lavicana was out of the city. (7) Olympiodorus and Publius Victor fix the number of houses in Rome to be between forty and fifty thousand. (8) The very extravagance of the consequences drawn by this critic, as well as Lipsius, if they be necessary, destroys the foundation on which they are grounded—that Rome contained fourteen millions of inhabitants, while the whole kingdom of France contains only five, according to his computation, etc.
The only objection to the sense which we have affixed above to the passage of Pliny seems to lie in this, that Pliny, after mentioning the thirty-seven gates of Rome, assigns only a reason for suppressing the seven old ones, and says nothing of the eighteen gates, the streets leading from which terminated, according to my opinion, before they reached the Forum. But as Pliny was writing to the Romans, who perfectly knew the disposition of the streets, it is not strange he should take a circumstance for granted which was so familiar to everybody. Perhaps, too, many of these gates led to wharves upon the river.
[86] Not to take the people too much from their business, Augustus ordained the distribution of corn to be made only thrice a year; but the people, finding the monthly distribution more convenient (as preserving, I suppose, a more regular economy in their family), desired to have them restored. (Sueton. August. cap. 40.) Had not some of the people come from some distance for their corn, Augustus’s precaution seems superfluous.