Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/305

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 281 Wars, and the administration of public affairs, are CHAP, the principal subjects of history; but the number of persons interested in these busy scenes, is very dif- Numbers. ferent, according to the different condition of mankind. In great monarchies, millions of obedient subjects pur- sue their useful occupations in peace and obscurity. The attention of the writer, as well as of the reader, is solely confined to a court, a capital, a regular army, and the districts which happen to be the occasional scene of mihtary operations. But a state of freedom and barbarism, the season of civil commotions, or the situation of petty republics % raises almost every mem- ber of the community into action, and consequently into notice. The irregular divisions, and the restless motions, of the people of Germany, dazzle our imagina- tion, and seem to multiply their numbers. The pro- fuse enumeration of kings and warriors, of armies and nations, inclines us to forget that the same objects are continually repeated under a variety of appellations, and that the most splendid appellations have been fre- quently lavished on the most inconsiderable objects. « Should we suspect that Athens contained only twenty-one thousand citizens, and Sparta no more than thirty-nine thousand 1 See Hume and Wallace on the number of mankind in ancient and modern times.