he estimates the population of Rome at not less than a million, and adds
(omitting any reference to this passage,) that he (Gibbon) could not
have seriously studied the question. M. Dureau de la Malle proceeds
to argue that Rome, as contained within the walls of Servius Tullius,
occupying an area only one fifth of that of Paris, could not have
contained 300,000 inhabitants; within those of Aurelian not more than
560,000, inclusive of soldiers and strangers. The suburbs, he endeavors
to show, both up to the time of Aurelian, and after his reign, were
neither so extensive, nor so populous, as generally supposed. M.
Dureau de la Malle has but imperfectly quoted the important passage
of Dionysius, that which proves that when he wrote (in the time of
Augustus) the walls of Servius no longer marked the boundary of the
city. In many places they were so built upon, that it was impossible to
trace them. There was no certain limit, where the city ended and ceased
to be the city; it stretched out to so boundless an extent into the
country. Ant. Rom. iv. 13. None of M. de la Malle's arguments appear to
me to prove, against this statement, that these irregular suburbs did
not extend so far in many parts, as to make it impossible to calculate
accurately the inhabited area of the city. Though no doubt the city, as
reconstructed by Nero, was much less closely built and with many more
open spaces for palaces, temples, and other public edifices, yet many
passages seem to prove that the laws respecting the height of houses
were not rigidly enforced. A great part of the lower especially of the
slave population, were very densely crowded, and lived, even more than
in our modern towns, in cellars and subterranean dwellings under the
public edifices. Nor do M. de la Malle's arguments, by which he would
explain the insulae insulae (of which the Notitiae Urbis give us the
number) as rows of shops, with a chamber or two within the domus,
or houses of the wealthy, satisfy me as to their soundness of their
scholarship. Some passages which he adduces directly contradict his
theory; none, as appears to me, distinctly prove it. I must adhere
to the old interpretation of the word, as chiefly dwellings for the
middling or lower classes, or clusters of tenements, often perhaps,
under the same roof. On this point, Zumpt, in the Dissertation before
quoted, entirely disagrees with M. de la Malle. Zumpt has likewise
detected the mistake of M. de la Malle as