in Ancient and Modem Times, 97 



careful cultivation of the soil, will account for their extreme 

 abundance of inhabitants. The splendid and opulent cities 

 which commerce and manufactures have reared in modern 

 Italy, will not overbalance these considerations. 



Ancient Greece comes next under our review, and nothing 

 surely can be imagined more lamentable than the contrast be- 

 tween that illustrious nation and the countries now called Tur- 

 key in Europe. The great number of large cities, and the 

 immense population contained in so small a space, would ap- 

 pear quite incredible, if we did not recollect the extreme sim- 

 plicity of their mode of life, and that they received abundant 

 and perpetual supplies from Asia, Africa, and Sicily, The 

 assertion of the Greek historians, that Athens alone con- 

 tained 31,000 freemen, and 400,000 slaves, seems generally 

 admitted ; but I should suppose that this calculation included 

 some part of the surrounding district of Attica. Corinth, Sparta, 

 Thebes, and several other cities, were esteemed not much infe- 

 rior to Athens. Sybaris, which was never numbered among 

 cities of the first class, sent out, on one occasion, if we may 

 believe the historian, 100,000 fighting men, which, even on the 

 supposition that every man fit to bear arms was mustered 

 without exception, would lead us to infer that the place con- 

 tained nearly 500,000 inhabitants. The city of Crotona 

 supplied an army of almost equal magnitude. The various 

 nations into which Greece was divided, contained, in fact, each 

 a capital city ; which, even after making due allowances for the 

 national vanity of the Greek writers, appear to have been, in 

 most instances, populous and flourishing. The more northern 

 countries, such as Epirus, Macedonia, and Thrace, were pro- 

 bably not much better inhabited than the same provinces are at 

 present. Macedonia, it is true, gave rise to the third of the four 

 great monarchies ; but the armies with which Philip subdued 

 Greece, and Alexander conquered Asia, were raised with diffi- 

 culty, and were swelled with the auxiliaries of the subjugated 

 Greeks. 



At the present moment, with the exception of Constantinople 

 alone, there is not a single large city in the whole of these nu- 

 merous provinces. Commerce and manufactures are held in 

 little esteem, and the useful, as well as the liberal arts, are in a 



JAN.— MARCH, 1828. H 



