THE THREAT OF OVERPOPULATION 193 



long before such masses are milling over the face of the earth 

 nature will have the "standing room only" sign out, and 

 will be exercising her most lethal weapons. There are vari- 

 ous ways in which man, ancient and modern, has reacted to 

 the problem of overpopulation. He has run away from it 

 by migrating; he has gone to war to seize the lands of others; 

 and he has reorganized his economy by increasing agricul- 

 tural and manufacturing production. But he has never 

 gotten at the root of the problem by reducing his own re- 

 productive activity. 



Toynbee tells how the ancient Greeks responded to the 

 ordeal of crowdingr durinor the centuries between 700 and 

 300 B.C. At the opening of this period Greece depended 

 almost entirely on what she could raise at home in a varied 

 agricultural production. As the crisis of overpopulation 

 came upon the Hellenic peoples they reacted quite differ- 

 ently. 



Corinth and Chalcis relieved the pressure of surplus num- 

 bers by colonization. They claimed and developed new 

 lands overseas in Sicily and Southern Italy and elsewhere 

 and were able for a time to extend their geographical area 

 and augment their agricultural production without chang- 

 ing their social character. 



Other Hellenic states, Sparta, for instance, responded to 

 overpopulation by attacking their neighbors. The history 

 of the Spartans after 725 B.C. is a long ordeal of war for 

 more than a century with the Messenians whom they finally 

 conquered and completely enslaved, only to be themselves 

 drawn into an unhappy period in which their social insti- 

 tutions became rigidly, even fatally, adapted to their para- 

 sitic dependence on the conquered peoples. The individual 

 life of the Spartan male, from the cradle to the grave, was 

 completely taken over by the state in its effort to exploit 



1952. As this book goes to press practically all population figures for the 

 future are being revised upward due to a combination of rising birth 

 rates and increasing use of hygiene. 



