57,) with admirable good sense and scepticism
betrays some secret disposition to extenuate the populousness of ancient
times.]

[Footnote 67: Olympiodor. ap. Phot. p. 197. See Fabricius, Bibl. Graec.
tom. ix. p. 400.]

[Footnote 68: In ea autem majestate urbis, et civium infinita
frequentia, innumerabiles habitationes opus fuit explicare. Ergo cum
recipero non posset area plana tantam multitudinem in urbe, ad auxilium
altitudinis aedificiorum res ipsa coegit devenire. Vitruv. ii. 8. This
passage, which I owe to Vossius, is clear, strong, and comprehensive.]

[Footnote 69: The successive testimonies of Pliny, Aristides, Claudian,
Rutilius, &c., prove the insufficiency of these restrictive edicts. See
Lipsius, de Magnitud. Romana, l. iii. c. 4.

Tabulata tibi jam tertia fumant;
Tu nescis; nam si gradibus trepidatur ab imis
Ultimus ardebit, quem tegula sola tuetur
A pluvia. ---Juvenal. Satir. iii. 199]

[Footnote 70: Read the whole third satire, but particularly 166, 223,
&c. The description of a crowded insula, or lodging-house, in Petronius,
(c. 95, 97,) perfectly tallies with the complaints of Juvenal; and we
learn from legal authority, that, in the time of Augustus, (Heineccius,
Hist. Juris. Roman. c. iv. p. 181,) the ordinary rent of the several
coenacula, or apartments of an insula, annually produced forty thousand
sesterces, between three and four hundred pounds sterling, (Pandect. l.
xix. tit. ii. No. 30,) a sum which proves at once the large extent, and
high value, of those common buildings.]

[Footnote 71: This sum total is composed of 1780 domus, or great houses
of 46,602 insuloe, or plebeian habitations, (see Nardini, Roma Antica,
l. iii. p. 88;) and these numbers are ascertained by the agreement of
the texts of the different Notitioe. Nardini, l. viii. p. 498, 500.]

[Footnote 72: See that accurate writer M. de Messance, Recherches sur la
Population, p. 175-187. From probable, or certain grounds, he assigns to
Paris 23,565 houses, 71,114 families, and 576,630 inhabitants.]

[Footnote 73: This computation is not very different from that which M.
Brotier, the last editor of Tacitus, (tom. ii. p. 380,) has assumed
from similar principles; though he seems to aim at a degree of precision
which it is neither possible nor important to obtain.]

[Footnote 7311: M. Dureau de la Malle (Economic Politique des Romaines,
t. i. p. 369) quotes a passage from the xvth chapter of Gibbon, in which