Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary by David Hume

Author:David Hume [Hume, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liberty Fund Inc.
Published: 2014-01-09T07:00:00+00:00

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 in 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.123

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’S124 account; and is very seriously insisted on by that historian. STRABO125 also mentions the same number of SYBARITES.

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