[68] Lib. 2. There were 8000 killed during the siege, and the whole captives amounted to 30,000. Diodorus Siculus (lib. 17) says only 13,000; but he accounts for this small number by saying that the Tyrians had sent away beforehand part of their wives and children to Carthage. [69] Lib. 5. He makes the number of the citizens amount to 30,000. [70] 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—viz., Xenophon’s Expedition and Demosthenes’ Orations. Plutarch and Appian seem scarce ever to have read Cicero’s Epistles. [71] Diogenes Laertius (in _vita Empedoclis_) says that Agrigentum contained only 800,000 inhabitants. [72] 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. [73] Plutarch (in _vita Cæs._) makes the number that Cæsar fought with amount only to three millions; Julian (in _Cæsaribus_) to two. [74] Argos seems also to have been a great city, for Lysias contents himself with saying that it did not exceed Athens. (Orat. 34.) [75] Orat. _contra Verem_, lib. 4, cap. 52. Strabo, lib. 6, 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. [76] Demosthenes assigns 20,000. [77] Lib. 2. Diodorus Siculus’s account perfectly agrees (lib. 12). [78] We are to observe that when Dionysius Halicarnassæus says that if we regard the ancient walls of Rome the extent of the 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.