14,000 children had been born in one day°. If these numbers in Photius are not grossly corrupted, we might well believe, upon the authority of such a statement, that Rome contained, or would soon come to contain, at this period of its history, 14,000,000 of inhabitants.

Had the assertion been that 14,000 children were born in one year, it would have been perfectly credible, and consistent with what was probably the real state of the case: viz. that Rome at this period contained a free population of between 4 and 500,000. The content of the Circus Maximus, for the same period, is represented by the anonymous author of the Descriptio Urbis Romæ, before quoted, at 485,000, and by Publius Victor, not long before, at 385,000. The proportion of new births in a large population, like that of a crowded city, every year, may be reckoned about one thirtieth of the whole: on which principle, if 14,000 children had been born at Rome in one year, about A. D. 411, Rome contained 420,000 free inhabitants.

Whatever be the language in which contemporary writers speak of the numbers or magnitude of Rome, it is necessary to make great allowances for it: especially if such things as very large and very populous cities, with some few exceptions, besides Rome itself, were then uncommon. That it was the greatest and most populous city in the empire, and perhaps in the known world, for the time of Augustus, may indeed be admitted; and independent of the extent of ground actually covered by it, the houses were many stories high, and a number of families, or of different individuals, often lived in the same house,

o Photius, Bibliotheca, ut supra, p. 59. 1. 30. sqq.

upon the several floors or stories of it P: a circumstance, however, not peculiar to Rome, but characteristic of many other cities of the empire. Yet Strabo tells us, it was a regulation of Augustus that no building by the side of the public streets, should exceed seventy feet from the ground in height; and Juvenal speaks of the third loft or story, apparently as the upperinost or highest of all".

There is no doubt too, that even within the walls of Rome, there was a variety of spaces (as lacus, campi, horti, fora, &c.) unoccupied by buildings; and still more, the site of buildings which could not in any wise contribute to the number of the inhabitants, such as baths, aqueducts, porticos, temples, courts, theatres, museums, amphitheatres, &c.; however much they might add to the size of the place in general; and that the houses of the Roman grandees or rich men were almost always of a magnitude very disproportionate to the number of their owners. We read even that on two occasions, a single palace of the reigning emperor, first that of Caius, and afterwards that of Nero, was of such dimensions as to run round, or compass, the whole city.

Let us consider then, in the last place, the passage of Pliny", which describes the magnitude and extent of Rome, as it was in his time, U. C. 830.

Monia ejus collegere ambitu imperatoribus censoribusque Vespasianis anno conditæ 826, pass. xiii. M. cc. Complexa montes septem, ipsa dividitur in regiones quatuordecim, compita Larium cclxv. ejusdem spatium,

P Dionysius Halic. x. 32: Plutarch, Sylla, i: Tibullus, ii. vi. 37-40: Strabo, xvi. 2. §. 23. 337: Vitruvius, De Architectura, ii. 8: Cf. Eschines, Oratio i. 124. 9 Lib. v. 3. §. 7. 166. Aurelius Victor, Epitome, De Trajano, tells us that Trajan afterwards limited this altitude to sixty feet; for the reasons there assigned. r Sat. iii. 199. s Cf. Photius, loc. cit. 63. 17. sqq: Publius Victor, Descriptio, &c. t Pliny, H. N. xxxvi. 24, 5: Suetonius, Nero, 31: Cf. Herodian, iv. I. u H. N. iii. 9. p. 611.

mensura currente a milliario in capite Romani Fori statuto, ad singulas portas, quæ sunt hodie numero triginta septem, ita ut duodecim semel numerentur, prætereanturque ex veteribus septem, quæ esse desierunt, efficit passuum per directum xxx. m. DCCLXV. ad extrema vero tectorum, cum castris Prætoriis*, ab eodem milliario, per vicos omnium viarum, mensura colligit 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.

That the reading of xiii Roman miles for the extent of the walls as such, in this passage, is correct, appears from the testimony of the best manuscripts; and as to the rest of the description, which speaks of 30 miles and of 70 miles and upwards, distinct from these, I think it is to be explained consistently with the previous statement, as follows.

In order to specify the mere perimeter or circuit of Rome, nothing more, it is manifest, could be done than to assign the length of its wall, as ascertained by the last measurement. But, in order to give an adequate idea of the extent of ground covered by it, or of the superficial content of the site of the city, as enclosed by its wall, Pliny adopts the method of supposing a person to start from the Milliarium aureum, the common head of all the via, or roads, which led from Rome, into the country, in any direction; and to follow the course of each road as far as the gate of the city by which it passed into the country, but no fur

* The Prætorian cohorts, as it is well known, were first formed into one encampment by Tiberius. See Tacitus, Dio, Suetonius, Aurelius Victor, De

Tiberio. The site of this encampment it thus appears was Ad extrema tectorum; but still within the city.

ther; and he gives, as he imagines, an adequate idea of the magnitude of the place, by telling us, that one who thus made the round of the roads, would have to travel 30 miles and upwards, per directum, from the milliarium; and 70 miles and upwards, per vicos omnium viarum, before he could even get out of the city. This would be in fact almost a three days' journey.

Of the vice or roads in question, all set out from the same point, the milliarium aureum*, and all passed through some gate of the city or other. These gates Pliny tells us, were 37 in number; but that seven of them were no longer in being; that is, had either been blocked up, or rendered impassable, so that no roads passed through them. All the roads then passed through the remainder in general, which were 30 in number. Each of these roads, it is to be supposed, after setting out from the milliarium, would proceed some distance in a straight line (per directum); though it is not less probable that each somewhere or other must diverge from that right line, in passing to the gate by which it left the city.

Following each of the roads-only per directum, or in this first part of their course, a person would have to travel 30 miles and upwards; but following them through the whole of their course, not only along the straight line, but after they began to turn off, in one direction or another, per vicos omnium viarum, and ad extrema tectorum, (which I consider to mean, to the Pomarium as such, an open space within a certain distance of the wall, inside as well as outside of the

* Erected by Augustus, U.C. 734. Dio, liv. 8. Of the Via Sacra in particular this is proved

to have been the case, by Herodian, ii. 34, and iv. 3.

city, where the buildings would consequently end *,) he would have to travel upwards of 70 miles.

We observe that of twelve of the thirty gates, Pliny says, Ut semel numerentur; which I understand to refer to this fact, that through each of these twelve gates, certain two or more of the roads in question passed notwithstanding which, it was evidently necessary to Pliny's argument, that in the general computation of the distance to be travelled along each road, per directum, it should be so reckoned as though no more than one road passed through each gate. Publius Victor, it is true, and the other author above referred to, both state the number of viæ publicæ in their time at 29. But this is no proof that they might not be more numerous in the time of Pliny: as many as the gates of the city, when most numerous, or even more†.

As the areas of circles, though proportional to, are not equal to, the squares of their diameters; if the diameter of the semicircular area of Rome was about nine Roman miles, in the time of Pliny, the area of the semicircle was about one half of 9 × 9, or 81 Roman miles; that is, about 40 square Roman miles. If we were to suppose the whole of this area to have been built upon with houses, and the ground floor of every house to have been only ten yards square, about

* Pomorium autem urbis est, quod ante muros spatium sub certa mensura dimissum est. sed et aliquibus urbibus et intra muros simili modo est statutum, propter custodiam fundamentorum, quod a privatis operibus obtineri non oportebit: Aggenus Urbicus: in Frontinum de limitibus agrorum, (Rei Agrariæ SS. p. 58.) Cf. in particular Livy, i. 44. A. Gellius, xiii.

14. and Ammianus Marcellinus, xxvii. 9. p. 497.

In the course of time the number of gates would very probably decrease, and that of the Via Publicæ also. Thus, when Rome was besieged by the Goths in the reign of Justinian, A. D. 537, Procopius, De Bello Gotthico, i. 19, speaks of the epißolos as containing only 14 περίβολος πύλας, καὶ πυλίδας τινάς.