Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/358

 334 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, of forty and seventy, had been equal to the whole sum ^' of claimants, from fourteen to fourscore years of age, who remained alive after the reign of Gallienus ''. Ap- plying this authentic fact to the most correct tables of mortality, it evidently proves, that above half the peo- ple of Alexandria had perished ; and could we venture to extend the analogy to the other provinces, we might suspect that war, pestilence, and famine had consumed, in a few years, the moiety of the human species ^ ^ Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vii. 2L The fact is taken from the letters of Diony- sius, who, in the time of those troubles, was bishop of Alexandria. y In a great number of parishes eleven thousand persons were found between fourteen and eighty ; five thousand three hundred and sixty -five between forty and seventy. See Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, torn. ii. p. 590.