time of Diodorus was about the same with that in the time of Herodotus; though at the intermediate period of the reign of Ptolemy Soter, a greater distance from the time of Diodorus than from that of Herodotus, its numbers were more than double the rate of its population at either. That this change of circumstances was not peculiar to Egypt, but one which had affected most parts of the known world besides, might be shewn from the testimony of Diodorus himself. The decay of a given population, under the operation of causes calculated to produce such an effect, may be as rapid, as its increase under the action of causes of a different kind: and were it necessary here to enumerate them, many probable reasons might be assigned for the fact of a gradual diminution in the numbers of the inhabitants of Egypt, between the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the second of the Grecian princes who reigned there, and that of Diodorus.

After the reduction of Egypt, however, U. C. 724, B. C. 30, from which time it became subject to the government of Roman procurators, down to U. C. 819, a period of 95 years, the whole Roman empire enjoyed a profound tranquillity, and no part of it more than Egypt. The long reign of Augustus in particular

still, in other respects, and especially in point of population and the number of cities which they possessed; and the point of the contrast consisted in this, that anciently Egypt excelled all other countries in these respects -and even in Diodorus' time it was inferior to none of its contemporaries in the samethough not so considerable then, as it once had been. This, I say, is the drift of Diodorus' observations in the present instance. So far from asserting the con

tinued populousness of Egyptfrom the earliest times to his own-he implies quite the reverse; that between those times and his own the population of Egypt had gone back, with this difference only-relatively to other countries-that Egypt was not the only country which had decayed in comparison of what it once had been; and, however much Egypt might have gone back, compared with its former self, other countries had gone back still more.

was one of uninterrupted prosperity to that province of the empire; and none accordingly flourished more than Egypt", under the successive administration of a series of moderate and prudent prefects, as those of Augustus, appointed to Egypt in particular, appear to have been. The population of a country, naturally fertile and abundant in every thing that could facilitate the support of a family, and contribute to the multiplication of the human species, could not fail to increase rapidly under such circumstances. We know from various authorities that the proportion of births was no where so great as in Egypt. Columella mentions that the production of twins was almost of regular occurrence there and in Africa°; and Aristotle and Trogus tell us that even seven children had been known to be born at a time in Egypt P*. The practice of exposing their new-born children, as Strabo informs us 9, was unknown to the Egyptians; who were in the habit of rearing all the children they might have, how many soever they were: and no doubt the non-existence of this unnatural and inhuman custom among the Egyptians, would conduce as much to the increase of their population in particular, as its prevalence among the Greeks and Romans, to an extent of which we are perhaps incapable at present of forming even an adequate idea, must have contributed to the depo

* Cf. Ælian, De Natura Animalium, iii. 33: who speaks of the fecundity of the goat or sheep in Egypt, in the same terms, and from the same cause.

In Ambrose's time, the last half of the fourth century, the

most populous parts of the empire were notoriously Egypt, Africa, and the East, properly so called as appears from his remarks, De Virginitate, cap. vii. §. 36. Operum ii. 222. D. E.

n Cf. Strabo, xvii. 1. §. 13. 522. o iii. 8. Cf. Herodian, vii. 10. p Aristotle, De Animalibus, viii. 5. §. 1. Cf. Pliny, H.N. vii. 3. Strabo, xv. 1. §. 22. 46. Solinus, Polyhistor, i. §. 51. Also, Aristotle, De Animalibus, viii. 4. §. 5. Eustathius, ad Dionysium Periegetem, 221. q Lib. xvii. 2. §. 5. 633.

pulation of Greece and Italy, and of many other parts of the empire.

It appears accordingly from the speech of Agrippa the younger, U. C. 819, as reported by Josephus, that the population of Egypt in his time amounted to 7,500,000, exclusive of the inhabitants of Alexandria; the number of which, as we have seen from Diodorus, understood of its free population, was about 300,000. Diodorus shewed that avaypapaì, or muster-rolls, of the citizens of Alexandria were kept in his time; and Agrippa, in the above-mentioned speech, calculates the gross amount of the population in question from the tribute or poll-tax, levied by the Roman government upon all the inhabitants of Egypt, καθ ̓ ἑκάστην κεφαλήν. The amount of this tax is of no importance to our argument; though from an incident recorded of the reign of Vespasians, it seems to have been six oboli, one drachma or denarius, upon each person. We may infer also, from what Appian relates of the poll-tax imposed by the Romans on the allies of the Carthaginians, after the capture of the city, B. C. 146', that it was or might be levied on the women, as well as the men. If such was the case in Egypt at this time, the men and women being to be reckoned at 7,500,000, exclusive of Alexandria, the gross population, including all under the age of twenty, might be one half more, about 11,000,000, exclusive of Alexandria. The slave population of the country, exclusive of Alexandria, was perhaps one third more, so as, inclusive of Alexandria, to make the sum total upwards of 15,600,000.

The Jews who were settled in Egypt in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, according to the Pseudo-Ari

r De Bello, ii. xvi. 4. 482. 135. Cf. De Rebus Syriacis, 50.

s Dio, lxvi. 8.

t De Rebus Punicis, viii.

steas amounted to 120,000. By the time of Philo Judæus, whose work De Legatione was written in the reign of Claudius, they amounted throughout Egypt, Libya, Cyrenaica, &c. to about one million. In Alexandria, more particularly, we have seen that their numbers were about two fifths of the population of the city; but this is manifestly no criterion of the proportion of their numbers to that of the sum total of the population of Egypt. U. C. 868 or 869, in the reign of Trajan, they were sufficiently numerous to destroy at once, in Cyrene of Libya, and in the neighbourhood, 220,000 Greeks and Romans ", besides those who perished in Egypt.

Agrippa, in his speech above cited, tells the Jews of Jerusalem that Egypt paid more tribute to the Roman government in one month, than they did in a year. The tribute of which he speaks was probably the polltax; which the incident in the Gospels relating to the tribute money, implies to have been the denarius or drachma in Judæa as well as in Egypt. Perhaps we may infer from this statement that the population of Egypt was more than twelve times that of Jerusalem: an assertion, which would still be true, though Jerusalem had contained as many as 600,000 inhabitants, and Egypt not more than 7,500,000: much more if Jerusalem contained about 450,000, and Egypt as many as 11,000,000, two thirds of them liable to the tax in question.

To revert, however, from this digression, to our original subject. If Galilee contained, within its limited extent, 204 towns, and more than three millions of souls, almost half the population of Judæa; we need no other answer than the statement of this fact, to a question which may probably often have occurred to reflecting u Dio, lxviii. 32.

minds-Why the ministry of our Lord, for by far the greater part of its duration, was exclusively confined to that country? There might be many sufficient reasons why it should not be permanently discharged in Judæa Proper; and if any part must be fixed upon, distinct from that, what could be fitter than Galilee? What scene could be more favourable for the spiritual harvest, on which, at the commencement of his ministry, he was preparing to enter? or what tract of country in the Roman empire, at the same juncture of time, can be shewn to have been, in proportion to its extent, so thickly peopled? Where, in short, could our Lord's ministry both have been fixed and discharged, so as to be fixed and discharged among his brethren, according to the flesh, and so as to dispense its benefits among them on the widest possible scale with more propriety than here?—where not much less than half the population of the country, in general, was ready assembled within a third of the territory, in particular.