the midst of its native population, and this one city presented an epitome of the whole world ". But it is not probable that the number of strangers at any time resident in the capital was allowed to do more than equal the native population: if it did so, they were considered dangerous, and it was usual to expel them from it: of which we have an instance, U. C. 689. The Jews in particular were often so treated; yet, U. C. 751, when Archelaus was at Rome, about his father's will, we read only of 8000, resident in the city, who joined the deputation from the mother country to oppose his appointment to the throne. This does not imply that they were so very numerous. *) Seneca has a statement (De Clementia, xxiv. 1. which, unless great allowance is to be made for his usual declamatory manner of speaking on every subject, clearly implies that the number of slaves at Rome was at least two to one, in proportion to that of the citizens. Certain it is, that individual Roman citizens possessed numerous families of slaves, some many thousands in amount; though not all of them perhaps resident in the city: and so common was this species of property at this period of Roman history, that we can scarcely conceive a single citizen so poor, as not to be worth one slave. Yet in the time of Xenophon, though the gross amount of the slave population in proportion to that of the free, was probably as great at Athens as in any other community that can be mentioned, we may infer from his De Vectigalibus, iv. 17, that even there it was not in the proportion of three to one. * Cf. Appian, De Bellis Civilibus, ii. 120. r Lucan, Pharsalia, i. 510-514. vii. 399-407 : Seneca, Consolatio ad Helviam, vi. 2, 3: Athenæus, i. 36: Aristides, xiv. 'Púuns 'Eyкwμιov, 348. 1. sqq. s Dio, xxxvii. 9. Upon the whole, then, we may conclude, that if the gross amount of the free population of Rome, at a given time, was 320,000; that of slaves, and strangers, and of others, not freemen of the city but living there, was, perhaps, six or seven hundred thousand more: so as to make the total of the inhabitants of the city, at the given time in question, about a million. I shall proceed to confirm this conclusion, in the last place, by a comparison of the magnitude of Rome with that of other celebrated cities; especially those which in numbers and grandeur are allowed to have rivalled it most nearly: viz. ancient Carthage; Alexandria in Egypt; Seleucia ad Tigrim; and Antioch in Syria. And first of Carthage. If we may judge of the magnitude and opulence of ancient Carthage, by those of New Carthage, founded upon the site of the old, U. C. 710: we find Herodian " observing of the latter city, in the reign of Maximin, A. D. 237 : ἡ γοῦν πόλις ἐκείνη καὶ δυνάμει χρημάτων, καὶ πλήθει τῶν κατοικούντων, καὶ μεγέθει, μόνης Ρώμης ἀπολεί πεται, φιλονεικοῦσα πρὸς τὴν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ Αλεξάνδρου πόλιν Teρi SEUTEрeίwv. To the like effect, Ausonius, of the same city in his days, that it acknowledged no superior but Rome, not even Constantinople. Constantinopoli adsurgit Carthago priori, Fastidit x. De Nobilibus Urbibus Carmen ii. 1-3. Servius, ad Æneidem i. 367, 368, informs us from the Vita illustrium of Cornelius Nepos, that ancient Carthage consisted of an inner and an outer town; the former called Byrsa, the original settlement, as encompassed by the bull's hide-of 22 stades in circuit; the t Vide Strabo, xvi. 2. §. 5. 304. Diodorus Siculus, xvii. 52: Dio Chrysostom, Oratio xxxii. 669. 45: Aristides, Oratio xiv. 333.1.9: Pausanias, viii. 33: Seneca, Epistolæ, 102 §. 21. u Lib. vii. 14. x Cf. Photius, Bibliotheca, Codex 243. p. 376. l. 30. Himerii Sophistæ Meλéral. X latter called Magalia. We know that it was situated on a chersonesus, or peninsula, the breadth of the aux or neck of which, where it was contiguous to the main land, and in which direction only it was accessible by land, Polybius and Appian state at 25 stades, though Strabo puts it, apparently, at 60w. The circuit of Carthage is estimated by Livy at 23 Roman miles, that is, 184 stades; but by Strabo loc. cit. at 360 stades. The numbers of Strabo in this instance are probably corrupt, or were intended to be understood of much more than the circuit of the city. If we reduce this statement of the circuit of the city, in proportion to that of the breadth of the isthmus, as corrected by Appian and Polybius, the real extent of Carthage, according to Strabo, was about one half of 360 stades, that is, 180, or nearly so: which will agree with the statement of Livy. Now when Carthage went to war with Rome on the last occasion, B. C. 149, she is said by Strabo to have been mistress of 300 cities in Africa, and to have contained a population of 700,000 souls. If this is a correct statement of the population of a city 180 stades in circuit, it seems absurd to suppose that any city, before or after its time, of still inferior magnitude in point of extent, could contain a greater number of inhabitants. Let us now consider the magnitude of Alexandria, and the number of its inhabitants; in both which respects it was acknowledged by general consent to be the second city in the empire, and scarcely inferior to Rome itself. The shape of Alexandria is compared to that of a Macedonian chlamys; a species of military cloak, w xvii. 3. ▾ Polybius, i. 73.Appian, De Rebus Punicis, viii. 95. 119. §. 14. 671. x Lib. li. Lib. xvii. 3. §. 15. 673. 2 Cf. Servius ad Georg. iv. 287. which resembled, when stretched out on the ground, a curvilinear oblong, contracted at the two ends or corners *. Its oblong sides, which Strabo calls τà àμpikλvora, he describes as thirty stades in diameter ; its sides, éì λáros, as seven or eight stades apiece a. This implies a periphery of 76 stades at least. Agrippa, in his speech to the Jews of Jerusalem, U. C. 819, represents it as thirty stades in length, and ten in breadth; that is, as of eighty stades' circuit, in all b. Stephanus, De Urbibus, states its length at 34, its breadth at eight stades; and its perimeter, at 110. But 34 × 2+8 × 2 = only 84. Quintus Curtius computes its perimeter at 80 stades: Pliny at xv. Roman miles, which are equal to 120 stades. It had an harbour of thirty stades in extent f: and whatever was its original magnitude, as laid out by its founder, we learn from Ammianus Marcellinuss, it continued the same, or did not much vary from its first dimensions. In Diodorus' account of its foundation 1, B. C. 331, there is no express statement of the extent of ground covered by it. It is described merely as resembling * Pliny describes it (H. N. V. 11.) Ad effigiem Macedonicæ chlamydis orbe gyrato laciniosam, dextra lævaque anguloso procursu. No doubt the ground on which it was situated (viz. the part between the Lacus Mareotis on the south, and the sea to the north) was previously somewhat of that shape. We learn from Cæsar, De Bello Civili, and Hirtius, De Bello A lexandrino, that the city was not of uniform breadth at the two corners in question, and that the narrowest part was next to the Pharus: also that there was a considerable difference in the altitude of the different parts of the city, that some were many feet lower than others: viz. the parts nearest to the Pharus. De Bell. Civ. iii. 111, 112: De Bell. Alex. 1, 2. 6-9, &c. b Jos. De Bello Jud. ii. xvi. 4. p. 482. a Lib. xvii. 1. §. 8. 502. δρεια. stathius, ad Dionysium Periegetem, 254. Apud Geographos Minores, iv. xxii. 16. p. 343. h Lib. xvii. 52. с - 'Αλεξάν Lib. iv. viii. 2. e H. N. v. II. f Jos. De Bell. Jud. iv. x. 5: Eu g Lib. the Macedonian chlamys, and as having a street forty stades in length, and a plethrum, or 100 feet in breadth, which passed through it from one gate to another. These gates, as we may collect from Achilles Tatius i, went by the name of the sun's and the moon's respectively: the street in question had a colonnade of pillars on each side of it, and was cut by another, in an oblique direction, almost of equal size and beauty. The whole city was divided into five regions, called after the first five letters of the Greek alphabet; a division which is recognised by the author of the Res Gestæ Alexandrik, published by Angelo Maio, with this further explanation of the denominations themselves, that the five letters were taken from the initials of the words in the following proposition, which they were intended to express : Αλέξανδρος βασιλεὺς Διὸς γένος ἐποίησεν. If these regions were laid out at the foundation of the city, it is probable that they were nearly equal in size, and that each of them was one fifth of the extent of the whole. The Jews had possession of two of the five; one of them, the fourth in order or the Delta; a quarter bordering on the sea, and represented by Josephus as among the finest in the city', probably as being the airiest and most healthy. In the persecution of the Jews of Alexandria, by Flaccus Aquilius, the governor of Egypt, U. C. 791, they were forcibly ejected from one of these quarters, and obliged all of them to take refuge in the other. At that time 400 houses are said to have been rifled, and a vast number of myriads turned out of doors; for whose accommodation their new quarters being much too k Lib. i De Clitophontis et Leucippes Amoribus, v. 1. Cf. Strabo, loc. cit. i. 28. Contra Apionem, ii. 4: Ant. Jud. xiv. vii. 2: De Bell. ii. xviii. 8: Philo, Adversus Flaccum, ii. 525. 21. sqq. |