By the by, this seems to be one of the best reasons which can be given, for a gradual and universal encrease of the denomination of money, though it has been entirely overlooked in all those volumes which have been written on that question by MELON, Du TOT, and PARIS de VERNEY [Joseph Paris-Duverney, Examen du livre intitulé Réflections politiques sur les finances et le commerce, par de Tott (Examination of a book entitled Political reflections upon finances and commerce, by Dutot), 1740]. Were all our money, for instance, recoined, and a penny's worth of silver taken from every shilling, the new shilling would probably purchase every thing that could have been bought by the old; the prices of every thing would thereby be insensibly diminished; foreign trade enlivened; and domestic industry, by the circulation of a great number of pounds and shillings, would receive some encrease and encouragement. In executing such a project, it would be better to make the new shilling pass for 24 halfpence, in order to preserve the illusion, and make it be taken for the same. And as a recoinage of our silver begins to be requisite, by the continual wearing of our shillings and sixpences, it may be doubtful, whether we ought to imitate the example in King WILLIAM'S reign, when the clipt money was raised to the old standard.^d

29. The ITALIANS gave to the Emperor MAXIMILIAN, the nickname of POCCI-DANARI. None of the enterprises of that prince ever succeeded, for want of money. [Maximilian I became Holy Roman Emperor Elect in 1508, but because of Venetian hostility, he was unable to go to Rome for his coronation. Maximilian then joined with France, Spain, and the Pope in the League of Cambrai, whose aim was to partition the Republic of Venice. Because of his lack of money and troops, he was considered an unreliable partner in the war that followed. Pochi danari means "very few funds."]

30. [Hume uses West Indies broadly to refer to Central and South America. The exploration and conquest of the new world after Christopher Columbus's discovery of the West Indies islands off the Atlantic coast of America in 1492 led, in the next century, to a tremendous increase in the supply of precious metals in Europe. Hume's point is that the increase of prices has not kept pace with the increase in coin.]

31. Lib. ii. cap. 15. [Histories 2.15.]

32. PLIN. lib. xxxiii. cap. II. [Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Loeb edition, 33.50.]

Part II, Essay IV

33. [Mercantilist writers had held that a lowering of interest, or the price paid for the use of resources over time, is one of the benefits of increasing the quantity of money. Hume continues his attack on mercantilism by denying that rates of interest are caused by the quantity of money in circulation. Hume turns to his theory of human nature as well as to historical examples in order to prove that low interest is produced ultimately by the growth of industry and commerce, which reduces the proportion of borrowers and increases the number of lenders with savings available to supply the demand for money. For an assessment of Hume's views on interest, see Rotwein, David Hume: Writings on Economics, pp. lxvii-lxxii.]

34. [Hume offers several rules for distinguishing causes from accidental circumstances: see Treatise of Human Nature 1.3.15.]

35. [Garcilaso de la Vega, "El Inca" (1539-1616), was born in Peru, the son of a Spanish conqueror and an Indian princess, and he was brought up there until the age of twenty. He is best known for a two-part history of Peru: I. Comentarios Reales que tratan del origen de los Yncas (1608 or 1609) and II. Historia general de Peru (1617); translated as The Royal Commentaries of Peru, in Two Parts (1688). Hume possibly has in mind the discussion of the return on leases in pt. 2, bk. 1, chap. 6.]

36. Lib. li. [Dio(n) Cassius (A.D. 155-235), Roman History 51.21.5: "... loans for which the borrower had been glad to pay twelve per cent. could now be had for one third that rate" (Loeb translation by Earnest Cary).]

37. COLUMELLA, lib. iii. cap. 3. [Columella (first century A.D.), Rei Rusticae (On agriculture) 3.3.9.]

38. PLINII epist. lib. vii. ep. 18. [Pliny the Younger, Letters 7.18.]

39. Id. lib. x. ep. 62. [Ibid. 10.54 in the Loeb edition.]

Part II, Essay V

40. PLUT. De Curiositate. [Plutarch, Moralia, "On Curiosity," sec. 16.]

41. [Edward III was king of England from 1327 to 1377.]

42. [In this essay and the next, Hume combats the suspicious fear or "jealousy" of free trade that mercantilism had helped to promote. This essay seeks to allay the fear that an imbalance of imports over exports will deplete a nation's supply of gold and silver money. Hume develops a "general theory" according to which money bears a regular proportion to the industry and commodities of each nation. In the natural course of things, this level will be preserved; and a nation's attempts to hoard up a supply of money that exceeds this natural level, by trade barriers and restrictions on the circulation of money, are ineffectual and, at worst, destructive. Hume does concede at the end of this essay that protective tariffs may sometimes be beneficial, but generally his writings condemn domestic market restrictions. See Rotwein, David Hume: Writings on Economics, pp. lxxii-lxxxi.]

43. [Joshua Gee, The Trade and Navigation of Great-Britain Considered (1729). The subtitle reads in part: "That the surest Way for a Nation to increase in Riches, is to prevent the Importation of such Foreign Commodities as may be rais'd at Home."]

44. [Jonathan Swift, A Short View of the State of Ireland (1727-28).]

45. [The period from 1100 to 1553.]

46. There is another cause, though more limited in its operation, which checks the wrong balance of trade, to every particular nation to which the kingdom trades. When we import more goods than we export, the exchange turns against us, and this becomes a new encouragement to export; as much as the charge of carriage and insurance of the money which becomes due would amount to. For the exchange can never rise but a little higher than that sum.

47. [The English, Dutch, French, and Portuguese East India companies dominated trade between Europe and the Orient. The chief imports were pepper and other spices, tea, coffee, and silk and cotton textiles. Since demand in the East for European products was far from sufficient to pay for all that Europeans wanted to buy, silver coin and bullion became the principal European export. This drain of specie to the East, which Hume speaks of below, was a matter of concern to the European states.]

48. [The Heptarchy is a term applied to the independent Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England of the fifth to the ninth centuries.]

49. Les interets d' ANGLETERRE mal-entendus. [Jean Baptiste Dubos, Les interests de l'Angleterre mal-entendus dans la présente guerre (England's interests mistaken in the present war), 1703. The River Tweed forms part of the boundary between Scotland and England.]

50. It must carefully be remarked, that throughout this discourse, wherever I speak of the level of money, I mean always its proportional level to the commodities, labour, industry, and skill, which is in the several states. And I assert, that where these advantages are double, triple, quadruple, to what they are in the neighbouring states, the money infallibly will also be double, triple, quadruple. The only circumstance that can obstruct the exactness of these proportions, is the expence of transporting the commodities from one place to another; and this expence is sometimes unequal. Thus the corn, cattle, cheese, butter, of DERBYSHIRE, cannot draw the money of LONDON, so much as the manufactures of LONDON draw the money of DERBYSHIRE. But this objection is only a seeming one: For so far as the transport of commodities is expensive, so far is the communication between the places obstructed and imperfect.

51. [Sébastien Le Prestre, Seigneur de Vauban (1633-1707), Projet d'une dixme royale (1707; translated as A Project for a Royal Tythe or General Tax (1708). Vauban, a great military engineer and marshal of France, wrote also on the art of fortifying, attacking, and defending towns.]

52. We observed in Essay III. ["Of Money"] that money, when encreasing, gives encouragement to industry, during the interval between the encrease of money and rise of the prices. A good effect of this nature may follow too from paper-credit; but it is dangerous to precipitate matters, at the risk of losing all by the failing of that credit, as must happen upon any violent shock in public affairs.

53. [See Plutarch, Lives, in the life of Lycurgus, sec. 9. Lycurgus, the law-giver of Sparta, ordained the use of iron money instead of gold and silver and gave only a trifling value to a great weight and mass of this, so as to make its concealment difficult.]

54. THUCYDIDES, lib. ii. [13] and DIOD. SIC. lib. xii. [40.]

55. Vid. ÆSCHINIS et DEMOSTHENIS Epist. [Aeschines (397?-322? B.C.), The Speech on the Embassy, sec. 175; Demosthenes, Third Olynthiac Oration, sec. 24.]

56. . [Demosthenes, On the Navy-Boards, sec. 19.]

57. Lib. ii. cap. 62.

58. TITI LIVII, lib. xlv. cap. 40. [Philip V was king of Macedon from 221 to 179 B.C. Perseus, his successor, ruled from 179 to 168. Hume refers to the thirty years from Philip's peace settlement with Rome (197 B.C.) to Perseus's defeat at the hands of Lucius Aemilius Paullus in 168. The texts cited in this note and the three that follow are referring to the huge treasure that was borne in the triumphal procession of Paullus, which was celebrated in 167 B.C. following his victory over Perseus.]

59. VEL. PATERC. lib. i. cap. 9. [Velleius Paterculus (19? B.C.—after A.D. 30), Historiae Romanae (Roman History) 1.9.6.]

60. Lib. xxxiii. cap. 3. [Pliny the Elder, Natural History 33.50.]

61. TITI LIVII, ibid. [45.40.]

62. The poverty which STANIAN speaks of is only to be seen in the most mountainous cantons, where there is no commodity to bring money. And even there the people are not poorer than in the diocese of SALTSBURGH on the one hand, or SAVOY on the other. [See Abraham Stanyan, An Account of Switzerland Written in the Year 1714 (1714).]

63. Proem. [Appian (second century A.D.), Roman History, Preface sec. 10 in the Loeb edition. John Arbuthnot was author of Tables of the Grecian, Roman and Jewish Measures Weights and Coins (1705?), a greatly enlarged edition of which appeared in 1727 under the title Tables of Ancient Coins, Weights, and Measures.]

64. [See Jonathan Swift, An Answer to a Paper called A Memorial of the Poor Inhabitants, Tradesmen and Labourers of the Kingdom of Ireland (1728): "But I will tell you a Secret, which I learned many Years ago from the Commissioners of the Customs in London: They said, when any Commodity appeared to be taxed above a moderate Rate, the Consequence was to lessen that Branch of the Revenue by one Half; and one of those Gentlemen pleasantly told me, that the Mistake of Parliaments, on such Occasions, was owing to an Error of computing Two and Two to make Four; whereas, in the Business of laying heavy Impositions, Two and Two never made more than One; which happens by lessening the Import, and the strong Temptation of running such Goods as paid high Duties." In Herbert Davis, ed., The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift (Oxford: Blackwell, 1939-68) 12, p. 21.]

65. [The historic region of Flanders is today divided between the French department of Nord, the Belgian provinces of East Flanders and West Flanders, and the Dutch province of Zeeland. During the seventeenth century, it had been a part of the Spanish Netherlands. In the period of which Hume speaks (1688-1752), the region was the scene of rival territorial claims and bloody wars involving England, Holland, France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire. The three wars to which Hume refers here, and the treaties that ended them, are discussed in "Of the Balance of Power," pp. 338-40. Most of Flanders was under Austrian rule at the time Hume wrote.]

Part II, Essay VI

66. [In the preceding essay, Hume argued that no nation need fear that its supply of money will be depleted by trade. Now he addresses another of the "jealousies" that inhibit free trade, namely, the fear that trading will cause a nation harm insofar as it contributes to the improvement and prosperity of its neighbors. This essay, which made its first appearance some eight years later than the other economic essays, represents the culmination of Hume's thinking about the mutual benefits of trade or commerce and the undesirability of raising barriers to protect even what might be considered a nation's "staple" commodities. According to Green and Grose, this essay appeared for the first time in the 1758 edition of the Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. Greig points out, however, that both this essay and the one entitled "Of the Coalition of Parties" were printed and paged separately and bound up with later copies of the 1758 edition of the Essays and Treatises. The actual date of its appearance, therefore, was late 1759 or early 1760. See J. T. Y. Greig, ed., The Letters of David Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 1:272 and 317.]

Part II, Essay VII

67. Lib. i. [Cyropaedia (The education of Cyrus) 1.5.2-3.]

68. Lib. i. [23.]

69. XENOPH. Hist. GRAEC. lib. vi. & vii. [The defeat of the invading Spartan army at Leuctra by Theban forces under Epaminondas's command, in 371 B.C., ended the military supremacy of Sparta in the Peloponnesus. Fearful of the growing power of Thebes, Athens concluded a formal alliance with her long-time enemy, Sparta, in 369 B.C.]

70. [Following his victory at Leuctra, Epaminondas sought to balance Spartan power in the Peloponnese by helping to establish Megalopolis as the new capital of a united Arcadia. In 353 B.C., when war threatened between Megalopolis and Sparta, both cities sent embassies to Athens, seeking her support. Demosthenes spoke unsuccessfully on behalf of aid to Megalopolis, holding that such a policy would best serve Athens's interest in maintaining a balance of power between Sparta and Thebes. As Hume goes on to suggest, Demosthenes later promoted an alliance of Athens with Thebes and several Peloponnesian states in order to block Macedonian power. The defeat of this alliance at Chaeronea in 338 B.C. made Philip II of Macedon the undisputed master of Greece.]

71. [Ostracism was one of the democratic reforms introduced into the Athenian constitution by Cleisthenes, late in the sixth century B.C., ostensibly as a safeguard against the restoration of tyranny. The procedure, which was used against a number of prominent Athenian statesmen in the fifth century, permitted an assembly consisting of not less than six thousand to vote to exile some citizen for a period of ten years, after which he could reclaim his citizenship and property. Petalism, as practiced in Syracuse, was a similar procedure, except that names of prospective exiles were written on olive leaves rather than on pieces of broken pottery (ostraka).]

72. THUCYD. lib. viii. [8.46. Alcibiades, who earlier had taken Sparta's side against his native Athens, deserted the Spartans and went over to the Persian satrap Tissaphernes in 412 B.C. Alcibiades gave his advice with a view to his own eventual restoration in Athens.]

73. DIOD. SIC. lib. xx. [After the death of Alexander the Great, Antigonus, one of Alexander's generals, tried to restore the empire under his own leadership, but he was defeated by rival generals at Ipsus in 301 B.C.]

74. Lib. ii. cap. 51. [Polybius here describes events of 225 B.C., when Antigonus III was king of Macedon.]

75. It was observed by some, as appears by the speech of AGELAUS of NAUPACTUM, in the general congress of GREECE. See POLYB. lib. v. cap. 104. [Hannibal invaded Italy in 218 B.C. Agelaus's speech warns that the victor in the war between Rome and Carthage will become a menace to Greece, and it counsels Philip V of Macedon to treat the Greeks well so that he can later count on their support.]

76. TITI LIVII, lib. xxiii. cap. 33. [The treaty between Philip's ambassador, Xenophantes, and Hannibal was concluded in 215 B.C.]

77. [As king of Numidia (202-148 B.C.) and Rome's ally, Masinissa followed an aggressive policy against neighboring Carthage. When Carthage was finally goaded into attacking Masinissa, Rome declared war on Carthage. This Third Punic War (149-146 B.C.) led to the destruction of Carthage and the establishment of its territory as the Roman province of Africa. The territory of Numidia was annexed to the province a century later. Attalus I, king of Pergamum from 241 to 197 B.C., enlisted Rome's aid to check Macedonian power, but eventually (133 B.C.) Rome acquired the kingdom and constituted it as the province of Asia. Prusias I, king of Bithynia (230?-182? B.C.) was neutral in the Roman war against Antiochus III. His son, Prusias II, who was king of Bithynia from 182? to 149 B.C., was loyal to Rome to the point of servility. Bithynia became a Roman province in the first century B.C.]

78. Lib. i. cap. 83. [Hiero II was king of Syracuse from 269 to 215 B.C. Polybius refers here to events of 239 B.C.]

79. [Charles V, king of Spain and later Holy Roman Emperor, from 1519 to 1556, sought to establish a unified empire in Europe.]

80. [France is the power that Hume has in mind.]

81. ["They treat us like slaves, as though we belonged to them, but they regard us as worthless, as though we belonged to someone else." Hume here paraphrases a passage from Tacitus, The Histories 1.37, where Otho, in rebellion against the emperor Galba, complains of Galba's supporter Titus Vinius: "... now he keeps us under his heel as if we were his slaves, and regards us as cheap because we belong to another" (Loeb translation by Clifford H. Moore).]

82. [Hume seems to be referring to the parliament of 1741-47 and to its early measures in support of Maria Theresa, queen of Hungary, against her rival, Frederick II of Prussia, in the War of the Austrian Succession. In 1740, Frederick had laid claim to a part of Silesia, and when the claim was rejected by the Court of Vienna, his army invaded and overran Silesia. Her treasury empty, Maria Theresa made an appeal for aid to the nations that had guaranteed her hereditary succession to the Austrian dominions. In response to this appeal, George II of England declared his intention to maintain the balance of power in Europe by supplying troops and subsidies to the queen of Hungary. This policy was strongly supported at first by parliament and the people, although it ensured England's involvement in an expensive war on the Continent by strengthening Maria Theresa's resolve not to purchase peace by ceding part of Silesia to Frederick. The "factious vote" to which Hume refers came in December 1742, when the House of Commons approved several war measures, including the king's request to take sixteen thousand troops from his electorate of Hanover into British pay, over substantial opposition. English enthusiasm for supporting the claims of Maria Theresa had completely faded by 1748, when she was at last compelled by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle to ratify Frederick's acquisition of Silesia.]

83. If the ROMAN empire was of advantage, it could only proceed from this, that mankind were generally in a very disorderly, uncivilized condition, before its establishment.

84. [The eighteenth-century rulers of France and Spain belonged to the House of Bourbon. By this reference, Hume makes it clear that his general remarks on the inevitable downfall of great monarchies are applicable to modern Europe.]

Part II, Essay VIII

85. [The "maxim" that Hume considers here was commonly held by the mercantilist writers and by others between 1660 and 1750. See Edwin R. A. Seligman, The Shifting and Incidence of Taxation, 5th ed., rev. (New York, Columbia University Press, 1927), pp. 25-30, 46-62. Hume finds it to be partly correct, in that workers can be expected to absorb moderate taxes on commodities by increasing their industry rather than by retrenching consumption or by increasing wages. Since people are often more industrious and opulent where there are "natural disadvantages" of soil and climate to overcome, we may expect that "artificial burdens," such as judicious taxes, will likewise be favorable to industry. Yet Hume qualifies the argument by refusing to apply it to taxes on "the necessaries of life" and by warning that a people can be ruined by exorbitant or inappropriate taxes (see paragraph 2 in note b of the variant readings for this essay). Later in the essay, Hume opposes the view that all taxes are ultimately shifted to land. John Locke had taken this view, and he may be the "celebrated writer" that Hume refers to in earlier versions of this essay (see the passage in note d of the variant readings). Locke's theory of the shifting of all taxes to land was revived in the eighteenth century by the school of French economists known as the "Physiocrats" (see Seligman, pp. 125-142). Hume debated the issue with one of the leading Physiocrats, Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot, in correspondence during 1766 and 1767. For the significance of Hume's views on taxation, see Rotwein, David Hume: Writings on Economics, pp. lxxxi-lxxxiii.]

86. Epist. ad ATT. lib. ix. ep. II. [Letters to Atticus 9.9 in the Loeb edition.]

87. Account of the NETHERLANDS, chap. 6.

88. [Hume has in mind excise taxes on consumable commodities produced domestically and customs duties on commodities that are imported.]

89. [See Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, bk. 5, chap. 2, pt. 2: "The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary. The time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor, and to every other person. Where it is otherwise, every person subject to the tax is put more or less in the power of the tax-gatherer, who can either aggravate the tax upon any obnoxious contributor, or extort, by the terror of such aggravation, some present or perquisite to himself. The uncertainty of taxation encourages the insolence and favours the corruption of an order of men who are naturally unpopular, even where they are neither insolent nor corrupt. The certainty of what each individual ought to pay is, in taxation, a matter of so great importance, that a very considerable degree of inequality, it appears, I believe, from the experience of all nations, is not near so great an evil as a very small degree of uncertainty."]

90. [A poll tax (or capitation or head tax) was a tax levied upon each citizen of a community, regardless of the amount of his income or property.]

91. [Constantine ("the Great") was emperor from A.D. 306 to 337. Initially he shared power, but after 324 he was the sole ruler of a united empire. In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 17, Edward Gibbon gives an account of Constantine's taxation policy and its consequences, drawing on the historians to whom Hume alludes.]

Part II, Essay IX

92. Essay V. ["Of the Balance of Trade."]

93. ALCIB. I. [Alcibiades 1.122d-123b.]

94. Lib. iii. [Expedition of Alexander 3.16 and 19.]

95. PLUT. in vita ALEX. [secs. 36, 37.] He makes these treasures amount to 80,000 talents, or about 15 millions sterl. QUINTUS CURTIUS (lib. v. cap. 2.) says, that ALEXANDER found in SUSA above 50,000 talents.

96. [See 2 Kings 18:15; 2 Chronicles 32:27-29.]

97. STRABO, lib. iv. [1.13 in the Loeb edition.]

98. [At the outset of the Civil War of 49-45 B.C., which ended in his total victory over Pompey and other enemies, Julius Caesar seized the state treasure of Rome, which consisted of a huge sum in gold and silver bars and other valuables. See Plutarch, Lives, in the life of Caesar, sec. 35.]

99. [Hume's reflections in this essay should be seen against the background of eighteenth-century controversy as to whether public debt is beneficial or harmful. The French economist Melon, as well as some in Britain, argued that the national debt was nourishment for the body politic or a treasure that enriched the nation, but most British writers, including Hume and Adam Smith, were alarmed at the growing public debt. See Shutaro Matsushita, The Economic Effects of Public Debts (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929), chap. 1. Smith develops views very much along the lines of Hume's essay, but in greater detail, in The Wealth of Nations, bk. 5, chap. 3. Hume's position on fiscal policy is summarized by Rotwein in David Hume: Writings on Economics, pp. lxxxiii-lxxxviii.]

100. [This passage is intended chiefly as a criticism of Sir Robert Walpole, who had played a leading role in the House of Commons from his election in 1701 to his resignation as "Prime Minister" in 1742, and of the Whigs who supported him. Hume's intent is somewhat clearer in a passage omitted from this version of the essay (see the reference to "Lord Orford" in note c of the variant readings; Walpole was made First Earl of Orford in 1742). The omitted passage is closely paraphrased by Adam Smith: "To stop this clamour Sir Robert Walpole endeavoured to shew that the public debt was no inconvenience, tho' it is to be supposed that a man of his abilities saw the contrary himself" (Lectures on Jurisprudence [London: Oxford University Press, 1978; Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1982], p. 515). In 1717, Walpole had been instrumental in establishing a sinking fund to redeem the principal of the national debt, and this policy was at least partially successful in the decade that followed. In 1733, however, Walpole insisted that Parliament take money from the sinking fund to meet current expenses, arguing that this would be less burdensome to the country than raising the land tax. This measure was opposed by those who saw the sinking fund as a "sacred blessing" and "the nation's only hope." Money was regularly diverted from the sinking fund in the subsequent years of Walpole's ministry. See Norris A. Brisco, The Economic Policy of Robert Walpole (New York: AMS Press, 1967), chap. 2. Hume is suggesting in this passage that Walpole's justification for continuing the debt is as obviously fallacious as speeches in praise of tyrants (Busiris, according to Greek mythology, was a cruel Egyptian king) or other blamable things.]

101. [Presumably Hume means shares of stock in the British East India Company.]

102. [The Jacobites were the adherents of the Stuart cause after the Revolution of 1688. There was a Jacobite rising in 1715 in support of James Edward Stuart, the "Old Pretender," and another in 1745 in support of Charles Edward Stuart, the "Young Pretender." Jacobite sentiment was particularly strong in the Scottish Highlands.]

103. [See Melon, Essai politique sur le commerce, chap. 23: "The debts of a state are the debts of the right hand to the left hand, of which the body will not be weakened at all, if it has the necessary quantity of nourishments and if it knows how to distribute those (debts)." Quoted in Matsushita, The Economic Effects of Public Debts, p. 20.]

104. [Adam Smith describes the several methods of borrowing used by the British government in the eighteenth century. These included a perpetual annuity equivalent to the interest, which the government could redeem at any time by paying back the principal on the sum borrowed. This way of raising money was known as perpetual funding, or more simply as funding. Other types of annuities ran for a fixed term or for the life of the lender. See The Wealth of Nations, bk. 5, chap. 3.]

105. [Archibald Hutcheson, A Collection of Treatises relating to the National Debts and Funds (1721).]

106. [The period from 1643 to 1661, during the early reign of Louis XIV, when responsibility for ruling France lay chiefly with Cardinal Mazarin.]

107. [By speaking of an unalienable right to self-preservation (see also the Treatise of Human Nature, 3.2.10), Hume calls to mind the political thought of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke as well as such later formulations as the American Declaration of Independence. In general, however, Hume opposes the Hobbesian tradition by denying that the desire for self-preservation is the fundamental passion by reference to which man's moral and political life must be understood. He explicitly criticizes the "selfish system of morals" of Hobbes and Locke (An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, App. 2) and emphasizes that the disinterested passions often override the interested ones. It is true that all creatures, including men, necessarily perform those actions that tend to self-preservation (Treatise, 1.3.16), that "the love of life" is one of the instincts originally implanted in our natures (Treatise, 2.3.3.), and that we have a natural "horror of death" (see "Of Suicide," p. 580). Nevertheless, Hume gives this instinct only slight attention and does not say that it dominates the other passions. Unlike Hobbes, Hume recognizes the nobility of courage and of self-sacrifice for the sake of others. He acknowledges a right of suicide when life becomes burdensome (see "Of Suicide," pp. 580-89).]

108. [Louis XV, during the War of the Austrian Succession.]

109. Hist. lib. iii. [55: "But the mob attended in delight on the great indulgences that he bestowed; the most foolish citizens bought them, while the wise regarded as worthless privileges which could neither be granted nor accepted if the state was to stand (Loeb translation by Clifford H. Moore). Tacitus is commenting here on the efforts of the emperor Vitellius, in A.D. 69, to secure the favor of the people in his unsuccessful struggle with Vespasian. It is striking that Hume speaks of Tacitus's reasoning as "eternally true."]

110. I have heard it has been computed, that all the creditors of the public, natives and foreigners, amount only to 17,000. These make a figure at present on their income; but in case of a public bankruptcy, would, in an instant, become the lowest, as well as the most wretched of the people. The dignity and authority of the landed gentry and nobility is much better rooted; and would render the contention very unequal, if ever we come to that extremity. One would incline to assign to this event a very near period, such as half a century, had not our fathers' prophecies of this kind been already found fallacious, by the duration of our public credit so much beyond all reasonable expectation. When the astrologers in FRANCE were every year foretelling the death of HENRY IV. These fellows, says he, must be right at last. We shall, therefore, be more cautious than to assign any precise date; and shall content ourselves with pointing out the event in general.

Part II, Essay X

1. His harangue for it is still extant; . [Demosthenes, On the Navy-Boards, secs. 17-22.]

2. Pro CTESIPHONTE. [Demosthenes, In Defense of Ctesiphon (or, On the Crown), secs. 102-9.]

3. [Hume is referring to Demosthenes' defense of Ctesiphon in his oration On the Crown.]

4. PLUTARCHUS in vita decem oratorum. [Moralia, "Lives of the Ten Orators," under "Hypereides," 849a. Philip of Macedon defeated the Athenians and Thebans at Chaeronea in 338 B.C.] DEMOSTHENES gives a different account of this law. Contra ARISTOGITON. orat. II. [803-4.] He says, that its purport was, to render the ["the disenfranchised enfranchised"], or to restore the privilege of bearing offices to those who had been declared incapable. Perhaps these were both clauses of the same law.

5. The senate of the Bean was only a less numerous mob, chosen by lot from among the people; and their authority was not great.

6. In CTESIPHONTEM. [Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon, secs. 5-8.] It is remarkable, that the first step after the dissolution of the Democracy by CRITIAS and the Thirty, was to annul the , as we learn from DEMOSTHENES . [Against Timocrates.] The orator in this oration gives us the words of the law, establishing the , pag. 297. ex edit. ALDI. [sec. 33 in the Loeb edition]. And he accounts for it, from the same principles we here reason upon.

7. PLUT. in vita PELOP. [in the life of Pelopidas, sec. 25.]

8. DEMOST. Olynth. I.2. [Hume refers to Eubulus, an important Athenian politician of the mid-fourth century B.C. and to his legislation regarding the Theoric Fund (theorika). This fund had been established by Pericles to enable the poorer citizens to attend the public festivals. Through the efforts of Eubulus, laws were enacted that required that all of the city's surplus revenues should go to the Theoric Fund and, moreover, that made it a capital offense to try to repeal this revenue law by the indictment of illegality. In the First Olynthiac Oration (secs. 19-20), Demosthenes points out that unless the city draws on this fund to pay for a war against Philip, a special tax must be levied for the war. The Third Olynthiac (secs. 10-13) calls for the repeal of the laws restricting use of the Theoric Fund.]

9. DEMOST. contra LEPT. [Against Leptines, secs. 1-4.]

10. DEMOST. contra ARISTOCRATEM. [Against Aristocrates, sec. 86.]

11. Essay on the freedom of wit and humour, part 3. § 2. [This essay appears in Shaftesbury's Characteristicks, vol. 1. In the section cited by Hume, Shaftesbury argues that while men are naturally inclined to associate and even to make civil government, they tend to prefer the closeness of small associations to the remoteness of large nations. Thus when "the Society grows vast and bulky," it is natural for men to seek a narrower sphere in which to exercise their powers by forming parties or factions or by "cantonizing," i.e., dividing themselves into smaller associations of an institutional or territorial kind. Shaftesbury continues: "Thus we have Wheels within Wheels. And in some National Constitutions (notwithstanding the Absurdity in Politicks) we have one Empire within another." Hume takes this as a reference to the German empire, with its confederated states.]

12. [A comitia was an assembly of the Roman people to vote on business presented to them by the magistrates. The comitia curiata was the most ancient of the three types of assembly, but in the late republic its work was confined largely to the formal confirmation of magistrates, adoptions, and wills. The comitia centuriata was supposedly instituted by one of the early kings, Servius Tullius, in the sixth century B.C. It was concerned with the enactment of laws, the election of the highest magistrates and of the censors, the declaration of war and peace, and the infliction of the death penalty for political offences. The comitia tributa, besides enacting legislation on nearly every matter of business, elected the tribunes of the plebs and the plebeian aediles, and held trials for noncapital offenses. In the comitia centuriata, the people voted by groups, called centuries, which were distributed into five main classes according to wealth. There were also two additional classes, the equites (or knights) and the plebeians. The two wealthiest classes, along with the equites, had well over a majority of the total number of voting centuries, even though the number of citizens in those centuries was far less than the number in the other three classes, to say nothing of the number of plebeians. Thus if the wealthiest citizens were united, it was unnecessary for the other classes to vote at all. In the comitia tributa, the people voted by electoral divisions or "tribes," with each tribe having one vote, irrespective of its number of voters. Since only four of the thirty-five tribes represented the city of Rome, power in the comitia tributa lay decisively in the hands of the country tribes and thus of the agricultural middle class. Hume's description of voting in the comitia centuriata is probably drawn from Livy, History of Rome 1.43.]

13. [Appian, Roman History: The Civil Wars 3.27-30. Decimus Brutus had been assigned command of Cisalpine Gaul, in north Italy, by Julius Caesar; and he refused, after Caesar's death in 44 B.C., to surrender the province to Mark Antony.]

14. [One of the controversies between Charles I and Parliament in the period leading up to the Civil War involved the king's right, without parliamentary approval, to impose a levy known as "ship money" for outfitting the navy. John Hampden (1594-1643), a member of the House of Commons and first cousin of Oliver Cromwell, refused to pay twenty shillings assessed on one of his estates under a writ for ship money issued in 1735. Hampden was tried in the Court of the Exchequer and, in 1738, was found guilty by a vote of 7 to 5. By virtue of his trial, Hampden became a parliamentary leader and a symbol for those who sought to protect liberty and property by limiting the royal prerogative.]

15. [From medieval times the British Crown has claimed the power to impress men without their consent for service in the navy. Naval parties known as "press gangs" were often used before the nineteenth century to recruit by force a quota of seamen. The king's impressment of British subjects in the colonies was one of the grievances that led to the American Revolution.]

16. [By speaking here of a state of nature, Hume seems to be closer to Hobbes and Locke than to his own position elsewhere. In the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume had insisted that since man's "very first state and situation may justly be esteem'd social," the "suppos'd state of nature" must be regarded as "a mere philosophical fiction, which never had, and never cou'd have any reality" (3.2.2). In the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, he says the following of the state of nature: "Whether such a condition of human nature could ever exist, or if it did, could continue so long as to merit the appellation of a state, may justly be doubted. Men are necessarily born in a family-society, at least; and are trained up by their parents to some rule of conduct and behaviour" (sec. 3, pt. 1). Hume thus rejects the state of nature, conceived as a strictly solitary and asocial condition of man. Yet the state of nature might be understood as only a condition without civil society, or government. Even Hobbes had granted that family society might develop in the state of nature. Hume could endorse a "state of nature" thus understood, for he emphasizes that large societies may subsist for some time without the establishment of government. Society without government is "one of the most natural states of men, and must subsist with the conjunction of many families, and long after the first generation" (Treatise, 3.2.8). Be this as it may, the passage here seems to be close to the view of Hobbes and Locke that the state of nature is renewed in civil society whenever an individual's life or liberty is threatened by another, even by the civil authority.]

Part II, Essay XI

17. COLUMELLA says [On Agriculture], lib. iii. cap. 8. that in ÆGYPT and AFRICA the bearing of twins was frequent, and even customary; gemini partus familiares, ac pæne solennes sunt. If this was true, there is a physical difference both in countries and ages. For travellers make no such remarks on these countries at present. On the contrary, we are apt to suppose the northern nations more prolific. As those two countries were provinces of the ROMAN empire, it is difficult, though not altogether absurd, to suppose that such a man as COLUMELLA might be mistaken with regard to them.

18. [Hume's essay is directed against the common supposition of his time that the ancient world was more populous than the modern world. Hume refers to the essay in correspondence of 1750 and mentions Isaak Vossius (1618-89) and Montesquieu as writers who exaggerate the populousness of antiquity (see Greig, Letters of David Hume, 1, 140). In the summer of 1751, Hume read the manuscript of a fellow member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, Dr. Robert Wallace, which argued for the greater populousness of the ancient world. Wallace is the "eminent clergyman" to whose discourse Hume draws attention in a footnote to the earliest editions of the present essay (see note a in the variant readings). As a result of Hume's urging and the interest created by the footnote, Wallace published his work in 1753, along with an appendix critical of Hume's arguments, under the title of A Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind in Antient and Modern Times. Hume rewrote his footnote for some later editions to take notice of Wallace's attempted refutation. Although Hume generously acknowledges that Wallace has detected "many mistakes" in his authorities and reasonings, he saw fit to make only slight amendments in his essay. Hume's relations with Wallace are examined in Mossner, The Life of David Hume, pp. 260-68. For a discussion of population theories of Hume's time and the influence of his essay, see Charles E. Stangeland, Pre-Malthusian Doctrines of Population (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966; reprint of the 1904 ed.); and Joseph J. Spengler, French Predecessors of Malthus (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1942). P. A. Brunt, in his recent study of the population of ancient Italy, speaks of Hume's essay as an "epoch-making" demographic study and points out that, despite the availability of better techniques where facts are more plentiful, Hume's method of conjecturing from literary texts "must still be employed by the student of the population of Republican Italy, as the only one which can at least enable us to determine whether that population numbered some 14 millions or only 7 or 8" (Italian Manpower: 225 B.C.-A.D. 14 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971], pp. 11-12).]

19. [See Isaak Vossius, Variarum Observationum Liber (1685), pp. 1-68. The opening essay of this book considers the size of ancient Rome and other cities and tries to prove that Rome had a population of fourteen million, with an area twenty times greater than that of Paris and London combined.]

20. Lettres PERSANES. See also L'Esprit de Loix, liv. xxiii. cap. 17, 18, 19. [Charles de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755) published The Persian Letters anonymously in 1721. Letters 112-22 argue that the population of the world has decreased greatly since ancient times and that the decrease is to be explained in terms of moral rather than physical causes. Book 23 of The Spirit of the Laws (1748) deals with the physical and moral determinants of population and argues, in the chapters cited by Hume, that a general depopulation of Europe and Asia Minor occurred as the little republics of ancient times were swallowed up in the Roman Empire. The passage that Hume paraphrases can be found in The Persian Letters, no. 112. (The passage is amended in the 1758 edition of The Persian Letters to read "a tenth" rather than "the fiftieth part.") For a comparison of Hume's essay with Montesquieu's writings on population, see Roger B. Oake, "Montesquieu and Hume," Modern Language Quarterly 2 (March 1941): 25-41.]

21. This too is a good reason why the small-pox does not depopulate countries so much as may at first sight be imagined. Where there is room for more people, they will always arise, even without the assistance of naturalization bills. It is remarked by DON GERONIMO DE USTARIZ, that the provinces of SPAIN, which send most people to the INDIES, are most populous; which proceeds from their superior riches. [See Gerónimo de Uztáriz, Theorica, y practica de comercio, y de marina (1724); translated as The Theory and Practice of Commerce and Maritime Affairs (1751), chap. 12.]

22. [The principle that Hume states here—that a large population is a sign of a happy and virtuous nation and of wise institutions—was widely held in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it serves to connect the question of population size to important issues in moral and political philosophy. For example, the debate over the populousness of ancient and modern nations was part of a broader dispute as to the comparative worth of ancient and modern ways of life. The alleged depopulation of the world in modern times could be taken as evidence of the defectiveness of modernity. The goodness of such things as luxury, commerce, and republicanism was often judged in terms of the tendency of these things to promote or retard the increase of population, and public policies that would promote an increase were in favor. This favorable view of large and growing populations was brought into question at the turn of the nineteenth century by the writings of T. R. Malthus (1766-1834), which emphasize the tendency of population growth to outrun the supply of food. On this general question, see Ernest Campbell Mossner, "Hume and the Ancient-Modern Controversy, 1725-1752: A Study in Creative Scepticism," University of Texas Studies in English 28 (1949): 139-53.]

23. [This paragraph and the ones that follow are notable for their strong condemnation of domestic slavery as a condition far worse than submission to even the most arbitrary civil government. In this and in his insistence that slavery debases even the slave masters by turning them into petty tyrants, Hume anticipates the arguments of many in Britain and America who agreed with him in opposing slavery.]

24. SUETONIUS in vita CLAUDII. [The Lives of the Caesars, in the life of Claudius, sec. 25.]

25. PLUT. in vita CATONIS. [Plutarch, Lives, in the life of Marcus Cato, sec. 4.]

26. Lib. i. cap. 6.

27. Id. lib. xi. cap. 1.

28. Amor. lib. i. eleg. 6. [Amores 1.6.]

29. SUETON. de claris rhetor. [Suetonius, Of Illustrious Rhetoricians, sec. 3.] So also the ancient poet, Janitoris tintinnire impedimenta audio. ["I hear the door-keeper's impediments rattling." This fragment from the Roman poet Afranicus Vopisco (second century B.C.) is recorded in Nonius Marcellus, De compendiosa doctrina 40 M.]

30. In Oniterem orat. I. [Against Onetor 1.37.]

31. The same practice was very common in ROME; but CICERO seems not to think this evidence so certain as the testimony of free-citizens. Pro CÆlio. [A Speech in Defense of Marcus Caelius, sec. 28.]

32. Epist. 122. The inhuman sports exhibited at ROME, may justly be considered too as an effect of the people's contempt for slaves, and was also a great cause of the general inhumanity of their princes and rulers. Who can read the accounts of the amphitheatrical entertainments without horror? Or who is surprised, that the emperors should treat that people in the same way the people treated their inferiors? One's humanity is apt to renew the barbarous wish of CALIGULA, that the people had but one neck: A man could almost be pleased, by a single blow, to put an end to such a race of monsters. You may thank God, says the author above cited, (epist. 7.) addressing himself to the ROMAN people, that you have a master (to wit the mild and merciful NERO) who is incapable of learning cruelty from your example. This was spoke in the beginning of his reign: But he fitted them very well afterwards; and, no doubt, was considerably improved by the sight of the barbarous objects, to which he had, from his infancy, been accustomed.

33. We may here observe, that if domestic slavery really encreased populousness, it would be an exception to the general rule, that the happiness of any society and its populousness are necessary attendants. A master, from humour or interest, may make his slaves very unhappy, yet be careful, from interest, to encrease their number. Their marriage is not a matter of choice with them, more than any other action of their life.

34. Ten thousand slaves in a day have often been sold for the use of the ROMANS, at DELUS in CILICIA. STRABO, lib. xiv. [Geography 14.5.2.]

35. COLUMELLA, lib. i. proœm. et cap. 2. et 7. VARRO [116-27 B.C., Rerum Rusticarum (On agriculture)], lib. iii. cap. 1. HORAT. [Horace, Odes] lib. ii. od. 15. TACIT. annal. lib. iii. cap. 54. SUETON. in vita AUG. [in the life of Augustus] cap. xlii. PLIN. lib. xviii. cap. 13. [Pliny the Elder, Natural History. The appropriate citation in the Loeb edition would seem to be 18.4.]

36. Minore indies plebe ingenua, says TACITUS, ann. lib. xxiv. cap. 7. [Tacitus, Annals 4.27 in the Loeb edition: "The free-born populace dwindled day by day" (Loeb translation by John Jackson).]

37. As servus was the name of the genus, and verna of the species, without any correlative, this forms a strong presumption, that the latter were by far the least numerous. It is an universal observation which we may form upon language, that where two related parts of a whole bear any proportion to each other, in numbers, rank or consideration, there are always correlative terms invented, which answer to both the parts, and express their mutual relation. If they bear no proportion to each other, the term is only invented for the less, and marks its distinction from the whole. Thus man and woman, master and servant, father and son, prince and subject, stranger and citizen, are correlative terms. But the words seaman, carpenter, smith, tailor, &c. have no correspondent terms, which express those who are no seamen, no carpenters, &c. Languages differ very much with regard to the particular words where this distinction obtains; and may thence afford very strong inferences, concerning the manners and customs of different nations. The military government of the ROMAN emperors had exalted the soldiery so high, that they balanced all the other orders of the state: Hence miles and paganus became relative terms; a thing, till then, unknown to ancient, and still so to modern languages. Modern superstition exalted the clergy so high, that they overbalanced the whole state: Hence clergy and laity are terms opposed in all modern languages; and in these alone. And from the same principles I infer, that if the number of slaves bought by the ROMANS from foreign countries, had not extremely exceeded those which were bred at home, verna would have had a correlative, which would have expressed the former species of slaves. But these, it would seem, composed the main body of the ancient slaves, and the latter were but a few exceptions.

38. Verna is used by ROMAN writers as a word equivalent to scurra ["a fashionable city idler"], on account of the petulance and impudence of those slaves. MART. lib. i. ep. 42 [Martial (A.D. 40?-104?), Epigrams 1.41 in the Loeb edition]. HORACE [Satires 2.6.66] also mentions the vernæ, procaces ["saucy slaves"]; and PETRONIUS [Satyricon], cap. 24. vernula urbanitas [one textual reading is urbanitatis vernulae ("of the sophistication of the home-bred slave")]. SENECA, de provid. cap. I. vernularum licentia [On Providence 1.6; "Slave boys by their forwardness"].

39. It is computed in the WEST INDIES, that a stock of slaves grow worse five per cent. every year, unless new slaves be bought to recruit them. They are not able to keep up their number, even in those warm countries, where cloaths and provisions are so easily got. How much more must this happen in EUROPEAN countries, and in or near great cities?^e I shall add, that, from the experience of our planters, slavery is as little advantageous to the master as to the slave, wherever hired servants can be procured. A man is obliged to cloath and feed his slave; and he does no more for his servant: The price of the first purchase is, therefore, so much loss to him: not to mention, that the fear of punishment will never draw so much labour from a slave, as the dread of being turned off and not getting another service, will from a freeman.

40. CORN. NEPOS in vita ATTICI. [Lives of Illustrious Men, Atticus, sec. 13.] We may remark, that ATTICUS'S estate lay chiefly in EPIRUS, which, being a remote, desolate place, would render it profitable for him to rear slaves there.

41. Lib. vii. [Geography 7.3.12.]

42. In MIDIAM. p. 221, ex. edit. ALDI. [Against Meidias, secs. 45-50.]

43. Panegyr. [Isocrates (436-338 B.C.), Panegyricus.]

44. Lib. vii. cap. 10. sub fin.

45. ARISTOPH. Equites, I. 17. [Aristophanes (445?-380 B.C.), The Knights, 1. 17.] The ancient scholiast remarks on this passage [he speaks barbarically like a slave].

46. In Amphobum orat. I. [Against Aphobus 1.9-11.]

47. , makers of those beds which the ancients lay upon at meals.

48. In vita CATONIS [sec. 21].

49. "Non temere ancillæ ejus rei causa comparantur ut pariant." Digest. lib. v. tit. 3. de hæred. petit. lex 27. [Hume is citing the Digest or Pandects of the emperor Justinian. The translation used here is by S. P. Scott in The Civil Law, 17 vols. (Cincinnati: The Central Trust Co., 1932). The first quotation reads: "it is not customary for female slaves to be acquired for breeding purposes."] The following texts are to the same purpose, "Spadonem morbosum non esse, neque vitiosum, verius mihi videtur; sed sanum esse, sicuti illum qui unum testiculum habet, qui etiam generare potest." Digest. lib. ii. tit. 1. de ædilitio edicto, lex 6. § 2. [The citation for this and subsequent passages should be bk. 21, title 1; "A slave who has been castrated is not, I think, diseased or defective, but sound; just as one who has but one testicle, who is still capable of reproduction."] "Sin autem quis ita spado sit, ut tam necessaria pars corporis penitus absit, morbosus est." Id. lex 7. ["Where, however, a slave has been castrated in such a way that any part of his body required for the purpose of generation is absolutely absent, he is considered to be diseased."] His impotence, it seems, was only regarded so far as his health or life might be affected by it. In other respects, he was full as valuable. The same reasoning is employed with regard to female slaves. "Quæritur de ea muliere quæ semper mortuos parit, an morbosa sit? et ait Sabinus, si vulvæ vitio hoc contingit, morbosam esse." Id. lex 14. ["The question was asked whether a female slave was diseased who always brought forth dead children. Sabinus says that if this was caused by an uterine affection, she must be so considered."] It had even been doubted, whether a woman pregnant was morbid or vitiated; and it is determined, that she is sound, not on account of the value of her offspring, but because it is the natural part or office of women to bear children. "Si mulier prægnans venerit, inter omnes convenit sanam eam esse. Maximum enim ac præcipuum munus fœminarum accipere ac tueri conceptum. Puerperam quoque sanam esse; si modo nihil extrinsecus accedit, quod corpus ejus in aliquam valetudinem immitteret. De sterili CÆlius distinguere Trebatium dicit, ut si natura sterilis sit, sana sit; si vitio corporis, contra." Id. ["Where a female slave, who is pregnant, is sold, it is held by all the authorities that she is sound, for it is the greatest and most important function of a woman to conceive and preserve a child. A woman in child-birth is also sound, provided nothing else happens which would cause her some bodily illness. Caelius says Trebatius makes a distinction in the case of sterility, for if a woman is sterile by nature, she is healthy, but if this occurs through some defect of the body she is not.")

50. TACIT. ann. lib. xiv. cap. 43.

51. The slaves in the great houses had little rooms assigned to them, called cellæ. Whence the name of cell was transferred to the monk's room in a convent. See farther on this head, JUST. LIPSIUS, Saturn. i. cap. 14. [Justus Lipsius (1547-1606). Hume is probably referring to Saturnalium sermonum libri duo (1585), which discusses Roman festivals and gladiatorial contests.] These form strong presumptions against the marriage and propagation of the family slaves.

52. Opera et Dies, lib. ii. 1. 24. also 1. 220. [Hesiod (eighth century B.C.), Works and Days. See l. 405 and l. 602 in the Loeb edition.]

53. [Xenophon, On Estate Management 9.5.]

54. STRABO, lib. viii. [8.5.4.]

55. De ratione redituum. [Xenophon, Ways and Means 4.14.]

56. See CATO de re rustica, cap. 56. Donatus in Phormion [the commentary of Aelius Donatus (fourth century A.D.) on Terence's Phormio], 1.I.9. SENECAE epist. 80. [7-8].

57. De re rust. cap. 10, 11.

58. Lib. i. cap. 18.

59. Lib. i. cap. 17.

60. Lib. i. cap. 18. [On Agriculture 1.8.5.]

61. [Varro, On Agriculture 1.17.]

62. Lib. xxxiii. cap. I. [Pliny the Elder, Natural History 33.6.26 in the Loeb edition. The passage reads: "This is the progress achieved by our legions of slaves—a foreign rabble in one's home, so that an attendant to tell people's names now has to be employed even in the case of one's slaves" (Loeb translation by H. Rackham).] So likewise TACITUS, annal. lib. xiv. cap. 44.ⁱ

63. Lib. ii. cap. 10. [6.]

64. Pastoris duri est hic filius, ille bubulci. JUVEN. sat. 11. 151. [Juvenal, Satires 11.151: "One is the son of a hardy shepherd; another of the cattleman" (Loeb translation by G. G. Ramsay).]

65. Lib. i. cap. 8. [19.]

66. De bel. civ. lib. i. [Appian, Roman History: The Civil Wars 1.7.]

67. In vita TIB. & C. GRACCHI. [Lives, in the life of Tiberius Gracchus 8.3.]

68. To the same purpose is that passage of the elder SENECA, ex controversia 5. lib. v. "Arata quondam populis rura, singulorum ergastulorum sunt; latiusque nunc villici, quam olim reges, imperant." [Seneca the Elder (55? B.C.-A.D. 40?), The Controversies 5.5: "It is for all this that country once ploughed by whole peoples belongs to single slave-farms and bailiffs have wider sway than kings" (Loeb translation by M. Winterbottom).] "At nunc eadem," says PLINY, "vincti pedes, damnatae manus, inscripti vultus exercent." Lib. xviii. cap. 3. [Pliny the Elder, Natural History 18.4 in the Loeb edition: "But nowadays those agricultural operations are performed by slaves with fettered ankles and by the hands of malefactors with branded faces" (Loeb translation by H. Rackham).] So also MARTIAL.

"Et sonet innumera compede Thuscus ager." Lib. ix. ep. 23. [Martial, Epigrams 9.22 in the Loeb edition: "... and Tuscan fields clank with countless fettered slaves" (Loeb translation by Walter C. A. Ker).] And LUCAN.

"Tum longos jungere fines
Agrorum, et quondam duro sulcata Camilli,
Vomere et antiquas Curiorum passa ligones,
Longa sub ignotis extendere rura colonis." Lib. i.

[Lucan, The Civil War 1. 167-70: "Next they stretched wide the boundaries of their lands, till those acres, which once were furrowed by the iron plough of Camillus and felt the spade of a Curius long ago, grew into vast estates tilled by foreign cultivators" (Loeb translation by J. D. Duff).]

"Vincto fossore coluntur
Hesperiae segetes. ———" Lib. vii.

[The Civil War 7.402: "The corn-fields of Italy are tilled by chained labourers" (Loeb translation by J. D. Duff).]

69. Lib. iii. cap. 19. [Florus (second century A.D.), Epitome of Roman History 2.7 in the Loeb edition.]

70. Id. lib. iv. cap. 8. [Epitome of Roman History 2.18 in the Loeb edition.]

71. [Benoit de Maillet (1656-1738) wrote Description de l'Egypte (1735) and Idée du gouvernement ancien et moderne de l'Egypte (1743).]

72. TACITUS blames it. De morib. Germ. [Germany, sec. 19.]

73. De fraterno amore. [Moralia, "On Brotherly Love," sec. 18. The Loeb translator (W. C. Helmbold) understands the text to say only that Attalus "was unwilling to acknowledge as his own any of the children his wife had borne him," i.e., by the ceremony in which the father raises the child in his arms to acknowledge its legitimacy. By this interpretation, the children of Attalus were not murdered, but simply were not recognized as heirs to the throne, or, at worse, were disowned.] SENECA also approves of the exposing of sickly infirm children. De ira ["On Anger"], lib. i. cap. 15.

74. SEXT. EMP. lib. iii. cap. 24. [Sextus Empiricus (second or third century A.D.), Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3.24.]

75. De amore prolis. [Moralia, "On Affection for Offspring," sec. 5. Plutarch's point is that the failure of poor men to raise their children is not an exception to the general rule that parents naturally love their offspring, for since they cannot give their children a good education, they do not wish them to become vicious and poor.]

76. The practice of leaving great sums of money to friends, though one had near relations, was common in GREECE as well as ROME; as we may gather from LUCIAN. This practice prevails much less in modern times; and BEN. JOHNSON'S VOLPONE is therefore almost entirely extracted from ancient authors, and suits better the manners of those times.

It may justly be thought, that the liberty of divorces in ROME was another discouragement to marriage. Such a practice prevents not quarrels from humour, but rather encreases them; and occasions also those from interest, which are much more dangerous and destructive. See farther on this head, Part I. Essay XVIII. [This probably should read essay XIX ("Of Polygamy and Divorces").] Perhaps too the unnatural lusts of the ancients ought to be taken into consideration, as of some moment. [Hume refers in this final sentence to the practice of homosexuality.]

77. De exp. CYR. lib. vii. [The Expedition of Cyrus 7.6.]

78. DEMOST. de falsa leg. ["On the Embassy," sec. 158.] He calls it a considerable sum.

79. THUCYD. lib. iii. [History of the Peloponnesian War 3.17.]

80. Lib. vi. cap. 37. [Histories 6.39 in the Loeb edition.]

81. TIT. LIV. lib. xli. cap. 7. 13 & alibi passim. [Livy, History of Rome 41.7, 13, and elsewhere throughout.]

82. APPIAN. De bell. civ. lib. iv. [120.]

83. CÆSAR gave the centurions ten times the gratuity of the common soldiers, De bello Gallico, lib. viii. [The Gallic War 8.4.] In the RHODIAN cartel, mentioned afterwards, no distinction in the ransom was made on account of ranks in the army.

84. DIOD. SIC. lib. xii. [The Library of History 12.59.] THUCYD. lib. iii. [92.]

85. DIOD. SIC. lib. xvi. [82.]

86. In vita TIMOL. [Lives, in the life of Timoleon, sec. 23.]

87. PLIN. lib. xviii. cap. 3. [Natural History 18.4 in the Loeb edition.] The same author, in cap. 6. says, Verumque fatentibus latifundia perdidere ITALIAM; jam vero et provincias. Sex domi semissem AFRICÆ possidebant, cum interfecit eos NERO princeps. [18.7 in the Loeb edition: "And if the truth be confessed, large estates have been the ruin of Italy, and are now proving the ruin of the provinces too—half of Africa was owned by six landlords, when the Emperor Nero put them to death" (Loeb translation by H. Rackham).] In this view the barbarous butchery committed by the first ROMAN emperors, was not, perhaps, so destructive to the public as we may imagine. These never ceased till they had extinguished all the illustrious families, which had enjoyed the plunder of the world, during the latter ages of the republic. The new nobles who arose in their place, were less splendid, as we learn from TACIT. Ann. lib. iii. cap. 55.

88. The ancient soldiers, being free citizens, above the lowest rank, were all married. Our modern soldiers are either forced to live unmarried, or their marriages turn to small account towards the encrease of mankind. A circumstance which ought, perhaps, to be taken into consideration, as of some consequence in favour of the ancients.

89. Hist. lib. ii. cap. 44.

90. As ABYDUS, mentioned by LIVY, lib. xxxi. cap. 17, 18. and POLYB. lib. xvi. [34.] As also the XANTHIANS, APPIAN. de bell. civil. lib. iv. [80.]

91. In vita ARATI. [Lives, in the life of Aratus, sec. 6.]

92. INST. lib. ii. cap. 6.^m

93. DIOD. SICUL. lib. xx. [84.]

94. LYSIAS, who was himself of the popular faction, and very narrowly escaped from the thirty tyrants, says, that the Democracy was as violent a government as the Oligarchy. Orat. 24. de statu popul. [In the Loeb edition, Oration 25: Defence Against a Charge of Subverting the Democracy, sec. 27.]

95. CICERO, PHILIP I. [Philippic 1. 1. Thrasybulus led the democratic forces that overthrew the rule of the Thirty Tyrants and restored the democratic constitution to Athens (404-403 B.C.).]

96. As orat. 11. contra ERATOST. orat. 12. contra AGORAT. orat. 15. pro MANTITH. [In the Loeb edition, Oration 12: Against Eratosthenes, Who Had Been One of the Thirty; Oration 13: Against Agoratus; Oration 16: In Defense of Mantitheus.]

97. APPIAN. de bell. civ. lib. ii. [2. 100. Hirtius was one of Caesar's officers.]

98. See CÆSAR'S speech de bell. Catil. [Sallust, The War with Catiline, sec. 51.]

99. Orat. 24. [See 25.19 in the Loeb edition.] And in orat. 29. [in the Loeb edition, Oration 30: Against Nicomachus, secs. 13-14] he mentions the factious spirit of the popular assemblies as the only cause why these illegal punishments should displease.

100. Lib. iii. [83.]^p

101. PLUT. de virt. & fort. ALEX. [Plutarch, Moralia, "On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander." Dionysius I, who was tyrant of Syracuse from 405 to 367 B.C., is mentioned at 1.9 and 2.1, but it is not immediately clear why Hume draws attention to this essay.]

102. DIOD. SIC. lib. xviii, xix. [Agathocles (361-289 B.C.) was tyrant and king of Syracuse. His deeds are described in detail in book 19.]

103. TIT. LIV. xxxi, xxxiii, xxxiv.

104. DIOD. SIC. lib. xiv. [See 14.5. Diodorus doesn't mention a specific number of Athenians killed.] ISOCRATES says there were only 5000 banished. He makes the number of those killed amount to 1500. AREOP. [Areopagiticus, sec. 67.] ÆSCHINES contra CTESIPH. [Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon, sec. 235] assigns precisely the same number. SENECA (de tranq. anim. cap. 5.) says 1300.

105. DIOD. SIC. lib. xv. [58.]

106. DIOD. SIC. lib. xiii. [48.]

107. We shall mention from DIODORUS SICULUS alone a few massacres, which passed in the course of sixty years, during the most shining age of GREECE. There were banished from SYBARIS 500 of the nobles and their partizans; lib. xii. p. 77. ex edit. RHODOMANNI. Of CHIANS, 600 citizens banished; lib. xiii. p. 189. At EPHESUS, 340 killed, 1000 banished; lib. xiii. p. 223. Of CYRENIANS, 500 nobles killed, all the rest banished; lib. xiv. p. 263. The CORINTHIANS killed 120, banished 500; lib. xiv. p. 304. PHÆBIDAS the SPARTAN banished 300 BÆOTIANS; lib. xv. p. 342. Upon the fall of the LACEDÆMONIANS, Democracies were restored in many cities, and severe vengeance taken of the nobles, after the GREEK manner. But matters did not end there. For the banished nobles, returning in many places, butchered their adversaries at PHIALÆ, in CORINTH, in MEGARA, in PHLIASIA. In this last place they killed 300 of the people; but these again revolting, killed above 600 of the nobles, and banished the rest; lib. xv. p. 357. In ARCADIA 1400 banished, besides many killed. The banished retired to SPARTA and to PALLANTIUM: The latter were delivered up to their countrymen, and all killed; lib. xv. p. 373. Of the banished from ARGOS and THEBES, there were 509 in the SPARTAN army; id. p. 374. Here is a detail of the most remarkable of AGATHOCLES'S cruelties from the same author. The people before his usurpation had banished 600 nobles; lib. xix. p. 655. Afterwards that tyrant, in concurrence with the people, killed 4000 nobles, and banished 6000; id. p. 647. He killed 4000 people at GELA; id. p. 741. By AGATHOCLES'S brother 8000 banished from SYRACUSE; lib. xx. p. 757. The inhabitants of ÆGESTA, to the number of 40,000, were killed, man, woman, and child; and with tortures, for the sake of their money; id. p. 802. All the relations, to wit, father, brother, children, grandfather, of his LIBYAN army, killed; id. p. 803. He killed 7000 exiles after capitulation; id. p. 816. It is to be remarked, that AGATHOCLES was a man of great sense and courage,^q and is not to be suspected of wanton cruelty, contrary to the maxims of his age.

108. DIOD. SIC. lib. xviii. [8.]

109. [Isocrates, To Philip, sec. 96: "Besides, you will find as many soldiers at your service as you wish, for such is now the state of affairs in Hellas that it is easier to get together a greater and stronger army from among those who wander in exile than from those who live under their own polities" (Loeb translation by George Norlin). See also Panegyricus, secs. 168 ff. on the evils of factional strife in the Greek cities and the prospect of achieving concord through a common war on Persia.]

110. Pag. 885. ex edit. LEUNCLAV. [Banquet 4.29-32. Hume gives a loose paraphrase of the text.]

111. Orat. 29. in NICOM. [Hume perhaps has in mind section 25 of the oration Against Nicomachus, which speaks of putting citizens to death for peculation, or fraudulently drawing off public property.]

112. In order to recommend his client to the favour of the people, he enumerates all the sums he had expended. When , 30 minas: Upon a chorus of men 20 minas; , 8 minas; , 50 minas; , 3 minas; Seven times trierarch, where he spent 6 talents: Taxes, once 30 minas, another time 40; , 12 minas; , 15 minas; , 18 minas; , 7 minas; , 15 minas; , 30 minas: In the whole ten talents 38 minas. [The Greek terms refer to officers in the theater to whom money was paid—the leader of the chorus, etc.] An immense sum for an ATHENIAN fortune, and what alone would be esteemed great riches, Orat. 20. [21.1-5.] It is true, he says, the law did not oblige him absolutely to be at so much expence, not above a fourth. But without the favour of the people, no body was so much as safe; and this was the only way to gain it. See farther, orat. 24. de pop. statu. In another place, he introduces a speaker, who says that he had spent his whole fortune, and an immense one, eighty talents, for the people. Orat. 25. de prob. Evandri. [Oration 26: On the Scrutiny of Evandros.] The , or strangers, find, says he, if they do not contribute largely enough to the people's fancy, that they have reason to repent it. Orat. 30. contra PHIL. [Oration 31: Against Philon.] You may see with what care DEMOSTHENES displays his expences of this nature, when he pleads for himself de corona; and how he exaggerates MIDIAS'S stinginess in this particular, in his accusation of that criminal. All this, by the by, is a mark of a very iniquitous judicature: And yet the ATHENIANS valued themselves on having the most legal and regular administration of any people in GREECE.

113. Panath. [Panathenaicus, sec. 126.]

114. DIOD. SIC. lib. xiv. [38.]

115. Lib. i. [The Roman Antiquities 1.89.]

116. The authorities cited above, are all historians, orators, and philosophers, whose testimony is unquestioned. It is dangerous to rely upon writers who deal in ridicule and satyr. What will posterity, for instance, infer from this passage of Dr. SWIFT: "I told him, that in the kingdom of TRIBNIA (BRITAIN) by the natives called LANGDON (LONDON) where I had sojourned some time in my travels, the bulk of the people consist, in a manner, wholly of discoverers, witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidences, swearers, together with their several subservient and subaltern instruments, all under the colours, the conduct, and pay of ministers of state and their deputies. The plots in that kingdom are usually the workmanship of those persons," &c. GULLIVER'S travels [pt. 3, chap. 6; the second anagram should be Langden, for England]. Such a representation might suit the government of ATHENS; not that of ENGLAND, which is remarkable even in modern times, for humanity, justice, and liberty. Yet the Doctor's satyr, though carried to extremes, as is usual with him, even beyond other satyrical writers, did not altogether want an object. The Bishop of ROCHESTER, who was his friend, and of the same party, had been banished a little before by bill of attainder, with great justice, but without such a proof as was legal, or according to the strict forms of common law.

117. PLUTARCHUS in vita SOLON. [Lives, in the life of Solon, sec. 18.]

118. DIOD. SIC. lib. xviii. [18.18. Hume refers to the treaty of 322 B.C. in which the Macedonian general Antipater imposed an oligarchic constitution on Athens.]

119. Id. ibid.

120. Id. ibid. [18.74. Hume refers to actions in 318 B.C. by Cassander, Antipater's son and successor.]

121. TIT. LIV. lib. i. cap. 43.

122. Lib. ii. [Anabasis of Alexander 2.24.] There were 8000 killed during the siege; and the captives amounted to 30,000. DIODORUS SICULUS, lib. xvii. [46] says only 13,000: But he accounts for this small number, by saying that the TYRIANS had sent away before-hand part of their wives and children to CARTHAGE.

123. Lib. v. [History 5.97] he makes the number of the citizens amount to 30,000.

124. Ib. v. [History 8.132 in the Loeb edition.]

125. Orat. 33. advers. DIAGIT. [In the Loeb edition, Oration 32: Against Diogeiton, sec. 25.]

126. Contra APHOB. p. 25. ex edit. ALDI. [Against Aphobus 1.58.]

127. Id. p. 19. [1.9.]

128. Id. ibid.

129. Id. ibid. and ÆSCHINES contra CTESIPH. [Against Ctesiphon, sec. 104.]

130. Epist. ad ATTIC. lib. iv. epist. 15. [Cicero, Letters to Atticus 4.15.]

131. Contra VERR. orat. 3. [Against Verres 2.3.71 in the Loeb edition.]

132. See Essay IV. ["Of Interest."]

133. Lib. vii. [28.]

134. Lib. xiii. [13.81. Agrigentum (or Acragas) was a large and affluent Hellenic city in southwest Sicily.]

135. Lib. xii. [12.9. Sybaris had been a powerful and wealthy Hellenic city in southern Italy prior to its destruction in 510 B.C.]

136. Oecon. [On Estate Management 15.10-11. For Columella's suggestion that the observations of Xenophon's Ischomachus apply only to a more primitive time, see On Agriculture 11.5.]

137. See Part I. Essay XI. [This is probably a reference to "Of Civil Liberty." Some earlier editions read "Essay XII."]

138. ÆLII LAMPRID. in vita HELIOGAB. cap. 26. [Aelius Lampridius (fourth century A.D.), Augustan History, in the life of Heliogabalus, sec. 26. Heliogabalus (or Elagabalus) was Roman emperor from A.D. 218 to 222.]

139. In general, there is more candour and sincerity in ancient historians, but less exactness and care, than in the moderns. Our speculative factions, especially those of religion, throw such an illusion over our minds, that men seem to regard impartiality to their adversaries and to heretics, as a vice or weakness: But the commonness of books, by means of printing, has obliged modern historians to be more careful in avoiding contradictions and incongruities. DIODORUS SICULUS is a good writer, but it is with pain I see his narration contradict, in so many particulars, the two most authentic pieces of all GREEK history, to wit, XENOPHON'S expedition, and DEMOSTHENES'S orations. PLUTARCH and APPIAN seem scarce ever to have read CICERO'S epistles.

140. Lib. xii. [9.]

141. Lib. vi. [Geography 6.1.13.]

142. Lib. xiii. [13.84. Agrigentum was captured and pillaged by the Carthaginians in 406 B.C.]

143. DIOGENES LAERTIUS (in vita EMPEDOCLIS) says, that AGRIGENTUM contained only 800,000 inhabitants. [Diogenes Laertius (third century A.D.?), Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. 8, chap. 2: "Empedocles," sec. 63.]

144. Idyll. 17. [Theocritus (300?-260? B.C.), Idyls, 17: The Panegyric of Ptolemy, sec. 80. "The cities builded therein are three hundreds and three thousands and three tens of thousands, and threes twain and nines three"; in The Greek Bucolic Poets, translated by J. M. Edmonds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960).]

145. Lib. i. [31.]

146. Id. ibid.

147. Orat. funebris. [Funeral Oration, secs. 27-28.]

148. Lib. ii. [24.]

149. The country that supplied this number, was not above a third of ITALY, viz. the Pope's dominions, TUSCANY, and a part of the kingdom of NAPLES: But perhaps in those early times there were very few slaves, except in ROME, or the great cities.^t

150. Lib. ii. [5.]

151. CELTICA. [The Gallic History, sec. 2.]

152. PLUTARCH (in vita CÆS. [sec. 15]) makes the number that CÆSAR fought with amount to three millions; JULIAN (in CÆSARIBUS) to two. [Julian (A.D. 331-363; Roman emperor from 360 to 363), The Caesars 321a.]

153. Lib. ii. cap. 47. [Velleius Paterculus (19? B.C.-after A.D. 30), Roman History 2.47.]

154. PLINY, lib. vii. cap. 25. says, that CÆSAR used to boast, that there had fallen in battle against him one million one hundred and ninety-two thousand men, besides those who perished in the civil wars. It is not probable, that that conqueror could ever pretend to be so exact in his computation. But allowing the fact, it is likely, that the HELVETII, GERMANS, and BRITONS, whom he slaughtered, would amount to near a half of the number.^u

155. DIOD. SIC. lib. ii. [2.5. The Loeb text reads 120,000 foot soldiers and 12,000 cavalry.]

156. PLUTARCH in vita DIONIS. [Lives, in the life of Dion, secs. 23-29.]

157. STRABO, lib. vi. [6.2.7.]

158. Apolog. SOCR. [Apology of Socrates 29d.]

159. ARGOS seems also to have been a great city; for LYSIAS contents himself with saying that it did not exceed ATHENS. Orat. 34. ["Against the Subversion of the Ancestral Constitution of Athens," sec. 34.]

160. Lib. vi. [33.] See also PLUTARCH in vita NICIÆ. [Lives, in the life of Nicias, sec. 17.]

161. Orat. contra VERREM, lib. iv. cap. 52. STRABO, lib. vi. [6.2.4] says, it was twenty-two miles in compass. But then we are to consider, that it contained two harbours within it; one of which was a very large one, and might be regarded as a kind of bay.

162. Lib. vi. cap. 20. [Deipnosophistai (The banquet of the learned) 6.272. Athenaeus of Naucrastis flourished c. A.D. 200.]

163. DEMOSTHENES assigns 20,000; contra ARISTAG. [Against Aristogeiton 1.50-51.]

164. Lib. v. [97.]

165. Lib. viii. [72.]

166. Lib. ii. [13.] DIODORUS SICULUS'S account perfectly agrees, lib. xii. [40.]

167. XENOPHON. Mem. lib. ii. [Memorabilia 3.6.14 in the Loeb edition.]

168. Lib. ii. [13.]

169. De ratione red. [Ways and Means 2.6.]

170. We are to observe, that when DIONYSIUS HALYCARNASSÆUS [4.13] says, that if we regard the ancient walls of ROME, the extent of that city will not appear greater than that of ATHENS; he must mean the ACROPOLIS and high town only. No ancient author ever speaks of the PYRÆUM, PHALERUS, and MUNYCHIA, as the same with ATHENS. Much less can it be supposed, that DIONYSIUS would consider the matter in that light, after the walls of CIMON and PERICLES were destroyed, and ATHENS was entirely separated from these other towns. This observation destroys all VOSSIUS'S reasonings, and introduces common sense into these calculations.

171. ATHEN. lib. vi. [272.]

172. De rep. ATHEN. [The Constitution of the Athenians, secs. 10-12. Xenophon's authorship of this work is doubted by modern scholars. For a text and commentary, see Hartvig Frisch, The Constitution of the Athenians (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1942).]

173. PHILIP. 3. [Third Philippic, sec. 3.]

174. STICHO. [Stichus, act 3, sc. 1.]

175. Contra TIMARCH. [Against Timarchus, sec. 42.]

176. Orat. 11. [See Oration 12: Against Eratosthenes, sec. 19.]

177. Contra APHOB. [1.9.]

178. Ibid.

179. Lib. vii. [7.27. The desertion of the slaves at Decelea occurred in 413 B.C.]

180. De rat. red. [4.13-32.]

181. De classibus. [On the Navy-Boards, sec. 19.]

182. Lib. ii. cap. 62.

183. De rat. red. [Ways and Means 4.14.]

184. Contra APHOBUM. [1.9.]

185. Lib. viii. [40.]

186. PLUTARCH. in vita LYCURG. [Lives, in the life of Lycurgus, sec. 8.]

187. [The 1777 edition of Hume's Essays reads 78,000, which Green and Grose, following earlier editions, change to 780,000. This larger number is required by Hume's argument. Hume is opposing those who believe that Athens had 400,000 male slaves, as the text of Athenaeus indicates. If this text were correct, the ratio of male Athenian citizens to male slaves would be about 1 to 20. The same ratio applied to Sparta, which had 39,000 male citizens, would yield more than 780,000 male slaves. Since male slaves would have been about one-fourth of all slaves, the total number of slaves in Sparta, using the ratio of Athenaeus, would be more than 3,120,000—a number that Hume regards as impossible.]

188. Lib. iv. [80.]

189. The same author affirms [The Banquet of the Learned 6.272], that CORINTH had once 460,000 slaves, ÆGINA 470,000. But the foregoing arguments hold stronger against these facts, which are indeed entirely absurd and impossible. It is however remarkable, that ATHENÆUS cites so great an authority as ARISTOTLE for this last fact: And the scholiast on PINDAR mentions the same number of slaves in ÆGINA.

190. Lib. ii. [14-16.]

191. THUCYD. lib. ii. [17.]

192. DEMOST. contra LEPT. [Demosthenes, Against Leptines, secs. 31-33.] The ATHENIANS brought yearly from PONTUS 400,000 medimni or bushels of corn, as appeared from the custom-house books. And this was the greater part of their importation of corn. This by the by is a strong proof that there is some great mistake in the foregoing passage of ATHENÆUS. For ATTICA itself was so barren of corn, that it produced not enough even to maintain the peasants. TIT. LIV. lib. xliii. cap. 6.^y And 400,000 medimni would scarcely feed 100,000 men during a twelvemonth. LUCIAN, in his navigium sive vota [The Ship or the Wishes, secs. 4-6], says, that a ship, which, by the dimensions he gives, seems to have been about the size of our third rates, carried as much corn as would maintain all ATTICA for a twelve-month. But perhaps ATHENS was decayed at that time; and besides, it is not safe to trust to such loose rhetorical calculations.

193. DIOD. SIC. lib. xx. [84.]

194. ISOCR. paneg. [sec. 64.]

195. DIOD. SIC. lib. xvii. [14.]^z When ALEXANDER attacked THEBES, we may safely conclude, that almost all the inhabitants were present. Whoever is acquainted with the spirit of the GREEKS, especially of the THEBANS, will never suspect, that any of them would desert their country, when it was reduced to such extreme peril and distress. As ALEXANDER took the town by storm, all those who bore arms were put to the sword without mercy; and they amounted only to 6000 men. Among these were some strangers and manumitted slaves. The captives, consisting of old men, women, children, and slaves, were sold, and they amounted to 30,000. We may therefore conclude that the free citizens in THEBES, of both sexes and all ages, were near 24,000; the strangers and slaves about 12,000. These last, we may observe, were somewhat fewer in proportion than at ATHENS; as is reasonable to imagine from this circumstance, that ATHENS was a town of more trade to support slaves, and of more entertainment to allure strangers. It is also to be remarked, that thirty-six thousand was the whole number of people, both in the city of THEBES, and the neighbouring territory: A very moderate number, it must be confessed; and this computation, being founded on facts which appear indisputable, must have great weight in the present controversy. The above-mentioned number of RHODIANS too were all the inhabitants of the island, who were free, and able to bear arms.

196. Hist. GRÆC. lib. vii. [Hellenica 7.2.1.]

197. Id. lib. vii. [See 5.3.1, where it is reported that the city of Phlius has more than five thousand men. Hume may be adding those who were exiled at the time.]

198. POLYB. lib. ii. [56.]

199. POLYC. lib. ix. cap. 20. [The reference is to Polybius, Histories 9.26^a in the Loeb edition. POLYC. is no doubt a misprint. Some earlier editions of Hume's Essays read POLYB.]

200. LYSIAS, orat. 34. [secs. 7-8.]

201. VOPISCUS in vita AUREL. [Hume's reference is to one of a collection of biographies of Roman rulers from A.D. 117 to 284. This collection has been known since the early seventeenth century as the Historia Augusta (Augustan history). Tradition holds that the biographies were written by six different authors in the late third or early fourth centuries. The Life of Aurelian was traditionally ascribed to Flavius Vopiscus. There has been considerable debate over the past century as to both the authorship of the biographies and their dates of composition. The Loeb edition is: The Scriptores Historiae Augustae. 3 vols. With an English Translation by David Magie. (London: W. Heinemann, 1921-32).]

202. [Publius Victor is the name prefixed to an enumeration of the principal buildings and monuments of ancient Rome. The usual title of the work, which was first printed in 1505, was De Regionibus Urbis Romae (On the regions of the city of Rome). For the problems that arise in using this source to make population estimates for Rome, see G. Hermansen, "The Population of Imperial Rome: The Regionaries," Historia 27 (1978): 129-68.]

203. De rep. LACED. [Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 1.1.] This passage is not easily reconciled with that of PLUTARCH above, who says, that SPARTA had 9000 citizens.

204. POLYB. lib. ix. cap. 20. [9.26^a in the Loeb edition of the Histories.]

205. DIOD. SIC. lib. xviii. [24.]

206. LEGAT. [The text of Polybius is complete for books 1-5, but for the other 34 we have to rely on various collections of excerpts. Hume's reference here is to one of the most important of these collections, which was made on the instructions of the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus (VII). This collection was organized under various headings, one of which was "de legationibus gentium ad Romanos" (Embassies of foreign peoples to the Romans). It is to this collection that LEGAT. refers. In modern texts of Polybius's Histories, the passage is found at 29.24.8. It comes in an account by Polybius of a speech which he had himself delivered to the Achaean assembly in 170 B.C., urging that it honor the request from the kings of Egypt for some troops to assist in their war against Antiochus IV of Syria. Opponents of the request maintained that the troops might be needed to help Rome in its war against Perseus of Macedonia. Polybius replied that the Romans did not need help from the Achaeans, but that if they did ask for it, a force of even thirty or forty thousand men could easily be raised.]

207. In ACHAICIS. [Pausanias (flourished around A.D. 150), Description of Greece, "Achaia" 15.7.]

208. TIT. LIV. lib. xxxiv. cap. 51. PLATO in CRITONE. [Crito 53d.]

209. Lib. vii. [4.3 in the Loeb edition.]

210. Lib. vii. [126.]

211. TIT. LIV. lib. xlv. cap. 34.

212. Lib. ix. cap. 5. [The reference is to Marcus Junianus Justinus (third century A.D.?) and his epitome in Latin of Trogus Pompeius's Historiae Philippicae (Philippic history).]

213. Lib. iv. [13.]

214. Lib. x. [32.]

215. Satyr. iii. l. 269, 270.

216. STRABO, liv. v. [see 5.3.7] says, that the emperor AUGUSTUS prohibited the raising houses higher than seventy feet. In another passage, lib. xvi. he speaks of the houses of ROME as remarkably high. See also to the same purpose VITRUVIUS, lib. ii. cap. 8. [Vitruvius (first century B.C.), On Architecture 2.8.17.] ARISTIDES the sophist, in his oration [Publius Aelius Aristides (A.D. 117-180?), To Rome. Loeb edition in preparation], says, that ROME consisted of cities on the top of cities; and that if one were to spread it out, and unfold it, it would cover the whole surface of ITALY. Where an author indulges himself in such extravagant declamations, and gives so much into the hyperbolical style, one knows not how far he must be reduced. But this reasoning seems natural: If ROME was built in so scattered a manner as DIONYSIUS says, and ran so much into the country, there must have been very few streets where the houses were raised so high. It is only for want of room, that any body builds in that inconvenient manner.

217. LIB. ii. epist. 16. lib. v. epist. 6. [Pliny the Younger, Letters 2.17 in the Loeb edition and 5.6.] It is true, PLINY there describes a country-house: But since that was the idea which the ancients formed of a magnificent and convenient building, the great men would certainly build the same way in town. "In laxitatem ruris excurrunt" ["as if they were country houses" (Loeb translation by Richard M. Gummere)], says SENECA of the rich and voluptuous, epist. 114. VALERIUS MAXIMUS, lib. iv. cap. 4. speaking of CINCINNATUS'S field of four acres, says, "Auguste se habitare nunc putat, cujus domus tantum patet quantum CINCINNATI rura patuerant." [Valerius Maximus (first century A.D.), Facta et Dicta Memorabilia (Memorable deeds and sayings) 4.4: "He counts himself to live splendidly now, whose house stands upon as much ground as all Cincinnatus's farm contained."] To the same purpose see lib. xxxvi. cap. 15. also lib. xviii. cap. 2.

218. [Pietro Santi Bartoli (c. 1635-1700) was a celebrated Italian engraver and painter. He is known chiefly for his engraved illustrations of ancient art from the catacombs and the ruins of Rome.]

219. VITRUV. lib. v. cap. 11. TACIT. annal. lib. xi. cap. 3. SUETON. in vita OCTAV. [Lives of the Caesars, in The Deified Augustus] cap. 72, &c.

220. "MOENIA ejus (ROMÆ) collegere ambitu imperatoribus, censoribusque VESPASIANIS, A. U. C. 828. pass. xiii. MCC. complexa montes septem, ipsa dividitur in regiones quatuordecim, compita earum 265. Ejusdem spatii mensura, currente a milliario in capite ROM. Fori statuto, ad singulas portas, quæ sunt hodie numero 37, ita ut duodecim portæ semel numerentur, prætereanturque ex veteribus septem, quæ esse desierunt, efficit passuum per directum 30,775. Ad extrema veto tectorum cum castris prætoriis ab eodem Milliario, per vicos omnium viarum, mensura collegit paulo amplius septuaginta millia passuum. Quo si quis altitudinem tectorum addat, dignam profecto, æstimationem concipiat, fateaturque nullius urbis magnitudinem in toto orbe potuisse ei comparari." PLIN. lib. iii. cap. 5. [Pliny, Natural History 3.5.66-67: "The area surrounded by its walls at the time of the principate and censorship of the Vespasians, in the 826th year of its foundation, measured 13 miles and 200 yards in circumference, embracing seven hills. It is itself divided into fourteen regions, with 265 crossways with their guardian Lares. If a straight line is drawn from the milestone standing at the head of the Roman Forum to each of the gates, which to-day number thirty-seven (provided that the Twelve Gates be counted only as one each and the seven of the old gates that exist no longer be omitted), the result is a total of 20 miles 765 yards in a straight line. But the total length of all the ways through the districts from the same milestone to the extreme edge of the buildings, taking in the Praetorians' Camp, amounts to a little more than 60 miles. If one were further to take into account the height of the buildings, a very fair estimate would be formed, that would bring us to admit that there has been no city in the whole world that could be compared to Rome in magnitude." (Loeb translation by H. Rackham.) The Loeb Latin text reads "20,765 paces," which Rackham translates as 20 miles 765 yards. Hume obviously follows a different manuscript tradition.]

All the best manuscripts of PLINY read the passage as here cited, and fix the compass of the walls of ROME to be thirteen miles. The question is, What PLINY means by 30,775 paces, and how that number was formed? The manner in which I conceive it, is this. ROME was a semicircular area of thirteen miles circumference. The Forum, and consequently the Milliarium, we know, was situated on the banks of the TYBER, and near the center of the circle, or upon the diameter of the semicircular area. Though there were thirty-seven gates to ROME, yet only twelve of them had straight streets, leading from them to the Milliarium. PLINY, therefore, having assigned the circumference of ROME, and knowing that that alone was not sufficient to give us a just notion of its surface, uses this farther method. He supposes all the streets, leading from the Milliarium to the twelve gates, to be laid together into one straight line, and supposes we run along that line, so as to count each gate once: In which case, he says, that the whole line is 30,775 paces: Or, in other words, that each street or radius of the semicircular area is upon an average two miles and a half; and the whole length of ROME is five miles, and its breadth about half as much, besides the scattered suburbs.

PERE HARDOUIN [Jean Hardouin (1646-1729) published in 1685 an edition of Pliny's Natural History, which was reissued in 1723 and later with annotations] understands this passage in the same manner; with regard to the laying together the several streets of ROME into one line, in order to compose 30,775 paces: But then he supposes, that streets led from the Milliarium to every gate, and that no street exceeded 800 paces in length. But (1.) a semicircular area, whose radius was only 800 paces, could never have a circumference near thirteen miles, the compass of ROME as assigned by PLINY. A radius of two miles and a half forms very nearly that circumference. (2.) There is an absurdity in supposing a city so built as to have streets running to its center from every gate in its circumference. These streets must interfere as they approach. (3.) This diminishes too much from the greatness of ancient ROME, and reduces that city below even BRISTOL or ROTTERDAM.

The sense which VOSSIUS in his Observationes variæ [see note 3 to this essay] puts on this passage of PLINY, errs widely in the other extreme. One manuscript of no authority, instead of thirteen miles, has assigned thirty miles for the compass of the walls of ROME. And VOSSIUS understands this only of the curvilinear part of the circumference; supposing, that as the TYBER formed the diameter, there were no walls built on that side. But (1.) this reading is allowed to be contrary to almost all the manuscripts. (2.) Why should PLINY, a concise writer, repeat the compass of the walls of ROME in two successive sentences? (3.) Why repeat it with so sensible a variation? (4.) What is the meaning of PLINY'S mentioning twice the MILLIARIUM, if a line was measured that had no dependence on the MILLIARIUM? (5.) AURELIAN'S wall is said by VOPISCUS to have been drawn laxiore ambitu ["in a wider circuit"], and to have comprehended all the buildings and suburbs on the north side of the TYBER; yet its compass was only fifty miles; and even here critics suspect some mistake or corruption in the text; since the walls, which remain, and which are supposed to be the same with AURELIAN'S, exceed not twelve miles. It is not probable, that ROME would diminish from AUGUSTUS to AURELIAN. It remained still the capital of the same empire; and none of the civil wars in that long period, except the tumults on the death of MAXIMUS and BALBINUS, ever affected the city. CARACALLA is said by AURELIUS VICTOR [Sextus Aurelius Victor, whose history of the caesars was published around A.D. 360] to have encreased ROME. (6.) There are no remains of ancient buildings, which mark any such greatness of ROME. VOSSIUS'S reply to this objection seems absurd, that the rubbish would sink sixty or seventy feet under ground. It appears from SPARTIAN (in vita Severi) that the five-mile stone in via Lavicana was out of the city. [Aelius Spartianus was traditionally regarded as the author of the life of Severus in the Historia Augusta.] (7.) OLYMPIODORUS [A.D. 380?-425, whose twenty-two books of history are lost but are summarized by Photius] and PUBLIUS VICTOR fix the number of houses in ROME to be betwixt forty and fifty thousand. (8.) The very extravagance of the consequences drawn by this critic, as well as LIPSIUS [probably in Lipsius's De Magnitudine Romana Libri quatuor (Four books on the size of Rome)], if they be necessary, destroys the foundation on which they are grounded: That ROME contained fourteen millions of inhabitants; while the whole kingdom of FRANCE contains only five, according to his computation, &c.

The only objection to the sense which we have affixed above to the passage of PLINY, seems to lie in this, That PLINY, after mentioning the thirty-seven gates of ROME, assigns only a reason for suppressing the seven old ones, and says nothing of the eighteen gates, the streets leading from which terminated, according to my opinion, before they reached the Forum. But as PLINY was writing to the ROMANS, who perfectly knew the disposition of the streets, it is not strange he should take a circumstance for granted, which was so familiar to every body. Perhaps too, many of these gates led to wharfs upon the river.

221. Ex monument. Ancyr. [Hume's reference is to the Emperor Augustus's account of his public acts, which was engraved upon bronze tablets before the emperor's mausoleum in Rome as well as on the walls of many of the temples of Augustus throughout the empire. The best surviving version—the Monumentum Ancyranum—was inscribed on the temple of Rome and Augustus at Ancyra. This document is reproduced in the Loeb edition as Res Gestae Divi Augusti (The acts of Augustus), translated by Frederick W. Shipley. The passage cited by Hume is in section 15 of this edition.]

222. Tusc. Quæst. lib. iii. cap. 48. [Tusculan Disputations 3.20 (48) in the Loeb edition.]

223. Licinius apud Sallust. hist. frag. lib. iii. [This reference is to Sallust's Histories, which survives only in fragments (see 3.48.19 in the standard edition by Maurenbrecher). The passage cited by Hume is in a demogogic speech attributed to C. Licinius Macer, who was tribune of the plebs in 73 B.C. Licinius refers to the allotment of 5 modii of corn per head and says: "They have valued your freedom at five modii each."]

224. Nicolaus Hortensius de re frumentaria Roman. [Nicolaus Hortensius, "On the Provision of Corn at Rome." No information could be located about this author and book.]

225. Not to take the people too much from their business, AUGUSTUS ordained the distribution of corn to be made only thrice a-year: But the people finding the monthly distributions more convenient, (as preserving, I suppose, a more regular œconomy in their family) desired to have them restored. SUETON. AUGUST. cap. 40. Had not some of the people come from some distance for their corn, AUGUSTUS'S precaution seems superfluous.

226. Sueton. in Jul. [The deified Julius] cap. 41.

227. In vita Neronis. [Lives of the Caesars, in the life of Nero, chap. 39.]

228. Sueton. Aug. cap. 42.

229. Lib. iv. cap. 5. [Herodian (third century A.D.), History of the Empire from the Time of Marcus Aurelius 4.3.7 in the Loeb edition.]

230. Lib. xvii. [52.]

231. QUINTUS CURTIUS says, its walls were ten miles in circumference, when founded by ALEXANDER; lib. iv. cap. 8. [History of Alexander 4.8.] STRABO, who had travelled to ALEXANDRIA, as well as DIODORUS SICULUS, says it was scarce four miles long, and in most places about a mile broad; lib. 17. [1.8.] PLINY says it resembled a MACEDONIAN cassock, stretching out in the corners; lib. v. cap. 10. [5.11 in the Loeb edition.] Notwithstanding this bulk of ALEXANDRIA, which seems but moderate, DIODORUS SICULUS, speaking of its circuit as drawn by ALEXANDER (which it never exceeded, as we learn from AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS [(fourth century A.D.), History of Rome from Nerva to Valens], lib. xxii. cap. 16.) says it was , extremely great, ibid. [17.52.] The reason which he assigns for its surpassing all cities in the world (for he excepts not ROME) is, that it contained 300,000 free inhabitants. He also mentions the revenues of the kings, to wit, 6000 talents, as another circumstance to the same purpose: No such mighty sum in our eyes, even though we make allowance for the different value of money. What STRABO says of the neighbouring country, means only that it was well peopled, . Might not one affirm, without any great hyperbole, that the whole banks of the river from GRAVESEND to WINDSOR are one city? [Gravesend is some twenty-five miles east of London on the Thames River, and Windsor is some twenty miles west.] This is even more than STRABO says of the banks of the lake MAREOTIS, and of the canal to CANOPUS. It is a vulgar saying in ITALY, that the king of SARDINIA has but one town in PIEDMONT; for it is all a town. AGRIPPA, in JOSEPHUS de bello JUDAIC. lib. ii. cap. 16. [Flavius Josephus (first century A.D.), The Jewish War 2.385 in the Loeb edition] to make his audience comprehend the excessive greatness of ALEXANDRIA, which he endeavours to magnify, describes only the compass of the city as drawn by ALEXANDER: A clear proof that the bulk of the inhabitants were lodged there, and that the neighbouring country was no more than what might be expected about all great towns, very well cultivated, and well peopled.

232. Lib. xvii. [52.]

233. He says ["free people" or "free residents"], not , which last expression must have been understood of citizens alone, and grown men.

234. Lib. iv. cap. 1. . POLITIAN [the Latin translation of Herodian by Angelus Politian (1454-94)] interprets it "ædibus majoribus etiam reliqua urbe" ["with a palace greater even than the rest of the city"].

235. He says (in NERONE, cap. 30.) that a portico or piazza of it was 3000 feet long; "tanta laxitas ut porticus triplices milliarias haberet." [Life of Nero 6.31: "... it was so extensive that it had a triple colonnade a mile long" (Loeb translation by J. C. Rolfe).] He cannot mean three miles. For the whole extent of the house from the PALATINE to the ESQUILINE was not near so great. So when VOPISC. in AURELIANO mentions a portico in SALLUST'S gardens, which he calls porticus milliarensis, it must be understood of a thousand feet. [Vopiscus, The Deified Aurelian, sec. 49, in Scriptores Historiae Augustae.] So also HORACE:

"Nulla decempedis
Metata privatis opacam
Porticus exciplebat Arcton."
Lib. ii. ode 15.

[Horace, Odes 2.15: "No private citizen had a portico measuring its tens of feet, lying open to the shady north" (Loeb translation by C. E. Bennett).]

So also in lib. i. satyr. 8.

"Mille pedes in fronte, trecentos cippus in agrum
Hic dabat."

[Horace, Satires 1.8.12: "Here a pillar assigned a thousand feet frontage and three hundred of depth" (Loeb translation by H.