Part 17

Whether a man was a citizen or a stranger among that people, it seems indeed requisite either that he should impoverish himself or the people would impoverish him, and perhaps kill him into the bargain. The orator last mentioned gives a pleasant account of an estate laid out in the public service​—that is, above the third of it in raree-shows and figured dances.

I need not insist on the Greek tyrannies, which were altogether horrible. Even the mixed monarchies, by which most of the ancient states of Greece were governed before the introduction of republics, were very unsettled. Scarce any city but Athens, says Isocrates, could show a succession of kings for four or five generations.

Besides many other obvious reasons for the instability of ancient monarchies, the equal division of property among the brothers in private families must, by a necessary consequence, contribute to unsettle and disturb the state. The universal preference given to the elder by modern laws, though it increases the inequality of fortunes, has, however, this good effect, that it accustoms men to the same idea of public succession, and cuts off all claim and pretension of the younger.

The new settled colony of Heraclea, falling immediately into factions, applied to Sparta, who sent Heripidas with full authority to quiet their dissensions. This man, not provoked by any opposition, not inflamed by party rage, knew no better expedient than immediately putting to death about 500 of the citizens. A strong proof how deeply rooted these violent maxims of government were throughout all Greece.

If such was the disposition of men’s minds among that refined people, what may be expected in the commonwealths of Italy, Africa, Spain, and Gaul, which were denominated barbarous? Why otherwise did the Greeks so much value themselves on their humanity, gentleness, and moderation above all other nations? This reasoning seems very natural; but unluckily the history of the Roman commonwealth in its earlier times, if we give credit to the received accounts, stands against us. No blood was ever shed in any sedition at Rome till the murder of the Gracchi. Dionysius Halicarnassæus, observing the singular humanity of the Roman people in this particular, makes use of it as an argument that they were originally of Grecian extraction; whence we may conclude that the factions and revolutions in the barbarous republics were usually more violent than even those of Greece above mentioned.

If the Romans were so late in coming to blows, they made ample compensation after they had once entered upon the bloody scene; and Appian’s history of their civil wars contains the most frightful picture of massacres, proscriptions, and forfeitures that ever was presented to the world. What pleases most in that historian is that he seems to feel a proper resentment of these barbarous proceedings, and talks not with that provoking coolness and indifference which custom had produced in many of the Greek historians.​

The maxims of ancient politics contain, in general, so little humanity and moderation that it seems superfluous to give any particular reason for the violences committed at any particular period; yet I cannot forbear observing that the laws in the latter ages of the Roman commonwealth were so absurdly contrived that they obliged the heads of parties to have recourse to these extremities. All capital punishments were abolished. However criminal, or, what is more, however dangerous any citizen might be, he could not regularly be punished otherwise than by banishment; and it became necessary in the revolutions of party to draw the sword of private vengeance; nor was it easy, when laws were once violated, to set bounds to these sanguinary proceedings. Had Brutus himself prevailed over the Triumvirate, could he, in common prudence, have allowed Octavius and Anthony to live, and have contented himself with banishing them to Rhodes or Marseilles, where they might still have plotted new commotions and rebellions? His executing C. Antonius, brother to the Triumvir, shows evidently his sense of the matter. Did not Cicero, with the approbation of all the wise and virtuous of Rome, arbitrarily put to death Catiline’s associates contrary to law and without any trial or form of process? And if he moderated his executions, did it not proceed either from the clemency of his temper or the conjunctures of the times? A wretched security in a government which pretends to laws and liberty!

Thus, one extreme produces another. In the same manner as excessive severity in the laws is apt to beget great relaxation in their execution, so their excessive lenity naturally produces cruelty and barbarity. It is dangerous to force us, in any case, to pass their sacred boundaries.

One general cause of the disorders so frequent in all ancient governments seems to have consisted in the great difficulty of establishing any aristocracy in those ages, and the perpetual discontents and seditions of the people whenever even the meanest and most beggarly were excluded from the legislature and from public offices. The very quality of freeman gave such a rank, being opposed to that of slave, that it seemed to entitle the possessor to every power and privilege of the commonwealth. Solon’s laws excluded no freeman from votes or elections, but confined some magistracies to a particular census; yet were the people never satisfied till those laws were repealed. By the treaty with Antipater, no Athenian had a vote whose census was less than 2000 drachmas (about £60 sterling). And though such a government would to us appear sufficiently democratical, it was so disagreeable to that people that above two-thirds of them immediately left their country. Cassander reduced that census to the half, yet still the government was considered as an oligarchical tyranny and the effect of foreign violence.

Servius Tullius’s laws seem very equal and reasonable, by fixing the power in proportion to the property, yet the Roman people could never be brought quietly to submit to them.

In those days there was no medium between a severe, jealous aristocracy, ruling over discontented subjects, and a turbulent, factious, tyrannical democracy.

But, thirdly, there are many other circumstances in which ancient nations seem inferior to the modern, both for the happiness and increase of mankind. Trade, manufactures, industry were nowhere in former ages so flourishing as they are at present in Europe. The only garb of the ancients, both for males and females, seems to have been a kind of flannel which they wore commonly white or gray, and which they scoured as often as it grew dirty. Tyre, which carried on, after Carthage, the greatest commerce of any city in the Mediterranean before it was destroyed by Alexander, was no mighty city, if we credit Arrian’s account of its inhabitants.​ Athens is commonly supposed to have been a trading city; but it was as populous before the Median War as at any time after it, according to Herodotus,​ and yet its commerce at that time was so inconsiderable that, as the same historian observes, even the neighbouring coasts of Asia were as little frequented by the Greeks as the Pillars of Hercules—for beyond these he conceived nothing.

Great interest of money and great profits of trade are an infallible indication that industry and commerce are but in their infancy. We read in Lysias of 100 per cent. profit made of a cargo of two talents, sent to no greater distance than from Athens to the Adriatic. Nor is this mentioned as an instance of exorbitant profit. Antidorus, says Demosthenes, paid three talents and a half for a house which he let at a talent a year; and the orator blames his own tutors for not employing his money to like advantage. “My fortune,” says he, “in eleven years minority ought to have been tripled.” The value of twenty of the slaves left by his father he computes at 40 minas, and the yearly profit of their labour at 12. The most moderate interest at Athens (for there was higher often paid) was 12 per cent., and that paid monthly. Not to insist upon the exorbitant interest of 34 per cent. to which the vast sums distributed in elections had raised money at Rome, we find that Verres, before that factious period, stated 24 per cent. for money, which he left in the publicans’ hands. And though Cicero declaims against this article, it is not on account of the extravagant usury, but because it had never been customary to state any interest on such occasions. Interest, indeed, sunk at Rome after the settlement of the empire; but it never remained any considerable time so low as in the commercial states of modern ages.

Among the other inconveniences which the Athenians felt from the fortifying Decelia by the Lacedemonians, it is represented by Thucydides as one of the most considerable that they could not bring over their corn from Eubea by land, passing by Oropus; but were obliged to embark it and to sail about the promontory of Sunium—a surprising instance of the imperfection of ancient navigation, for the water-carriage is not here above double the land.

I do not remember any passage in any ancient author where the growth of any city is ascribed to the establishment of a manufacture. The commerce which is said to flourish is chiefly the exchange of those commodities for which different soils and climates were suited. The sale of wine and oil into Africa, according to Diodorus Siculus, was the foundation of the riches of Agrigentum. The situation of the city of Sybaris, according to the same author, was the cause of its immense populousness, being built near the two rivers, Crathys and Sybaris. But these two rivers, we may observe, are not navigable, and could only produce some fertile valleys for agriculture and husbandry—an advantage so inconsiderable that a modern writer would scarcely have taken notice of it.

The barbarity of the ancient tyrants, together with the extreme love of liberty which animated those ages, must have banished every merchant and manufacturer, and have quite depopulated the state, had it subsisted upon industry and commerce. While the cruel and suspicious Dionysius was carrying on his butcheries, who that was not detained by his landed property, and could have carried with him any art or skill to procure a subsistence in other countries, would have remained exposed to such implacable barbarity? The persecutions of Philip II. and Louis XIV. filled all Europe with the manufacturers of Flanders and of France.

I grant that agriculture is the species of industry which is chiefly requisite to the subsistence of multitudes, and it is possible that this industry may flourish even where manufactures and other arts are unknown and neglected. Switzerland is at present a very remarkable instance, where we find at once the most skilful husbandmen and the most bungling tradesmen that are to be met with in all Europe. That agriculture flourished in Greece and Italy, at least in some parts of them, and at some periods, we have reason to presume; and whether the mechanical arts had reached the same degree of perfection may not be esteemed so material, especially if we consider the great equality in the ancient republics, where each family was obliged to cultivate with the greatest care and industry its own little field in order to its subsistence.

But is it just reasoning, because agriculture may in some instances flourish without trade or manufactures, to conclude that, in any great extent of country and for any great tract of time, it would subsist alone? The most natural way surely of encouraging husbandry is first to excite other kinds of industry, and thereby afford the labourer a ready market for his commodities and a return of such goods as may contribute to his pleasure and enjoyment. This method is infallible and universal, and as it prevails more in modern government than in the ancient, it affords a presumption of the superior populousness of the former.

Every man, says Xenophon, may be a farmer; no art or skill is requisite: all consists in the industry and attention to the execution. A strong proof, as Columella hints, that agriculture was but little known in the age of Xenophon.

All our later improvements and refinements, have they operated nothing towards the easy subsistence of men, and consequently towards their propagation and increase? Our superior skill in mechanics, the discovery of new worlds, by which commerce has been so much enlarged, the establishment of posts, and the use of bills of exchange: these seem all extremely useful to the encouragement of art, industry, and populousness. Were we to strike off these, what a check should we give to every kind of business and labour, and what multitudes of families would immediately perish from want and hunger! And it seems not probable that we could supply the place of these new inventions by any other regulation or institution.

Have we reason to think that the police of ancient states was any wise comparable to that of modern, or that men had then equal security either at home or in their journeys by land or water? I question not but every impartial examiner would give us the preference in this particular.

Thus, upon comparing the whole, it seems impossible to assign any just reason why the world should have been more populous in ancient than in modern times. The equality of property among the ancients, liberty, and the small divisions of their states, were indeed favourable to the propagation of mankind; but their wars were more bloody and destructive, their governments more factious and unsettled, commerce and manufactures more feeble and languishing, and the general police more loose and irregular. These latter disadvantages seem to form a sufficient counterbalance to the former advantages, and rather favour the opposite opinion to that which commonly prevails with regard to this subject.

But there is no reasoning, it may be said, against matter of fact. If it appear that the world was then more populous than at present, we may be assured that our conjectures are false, and that we have overlooked some material circumstance in the comparison. This I readily own: all our preceding reasonings I acknowledge to be mere trifling, or, at least, small skirmishes and frivolous rencounters which decide nothing. But unluckily the main combat, where we compare facts, cannot be rendered much more decisive. The facts delivered by ancient authors are either so uncertain or so imperfect as to afford us nothing positive in this matter. How indeed could it be otherwise? The very facts which we must oppose to them in computing the greatness of modern states are far from being either certain or complete. Many grounds of calculation proceeded on by celebrated writers are little better than those of the Emperor Heliogabalus, who formed an estimate of the immense greatness of Rome from ten thousand pound weight of cobwebs which had been found in that city.

It is to be remarked that all kinds of numbers are uncertain in ancient manuscripts, and have been subject to much greater corruptions than any other part of the text, and that for a very obvious reason. Any alteration in other places commonly affects the sense or grammar, and is more readily perceived by the reader and transcriber.

Few enumerations of inhabitants have been made of any tract of country by any ancient author of good authority so as to afford us a large enough view for comparison.

It is probable that there was formerly a good foundation for the number of citizens assigned to any free city, because they entered for a share of the government, and there were exact registers kept of them. But as the number of slaves is seldom mentioned, this leaves us in as great uncertainty as ever with regard to the populousness even of single cities.

The first page of Thucydides is, in my opinion, the commencement of real history. All preceding narrations are so intermixed with fable that philosophers ought to abandon them, in a great measure, to the embellishment of poets and orators.​

With regard to remote times, the numbers of people assigned are often ridiculous, and lose all credit and authority. The free citizens of Sybaris, able to bear arms and actually drawn out in battle, were 300,000. They encountered at Siagra with 100,000 citizens of Crotona, another Greek city contiguous to them, and were defeated. This is Diodorus Siculus’s account, and is very seriously insisted on by that historian. Strabo also mentions the same number of Sybarites.