The population of Syracuse is estimated at 1,200,000 souls; and this number is adopted in a great many books, but it is quite inconceivable. The population of all Sicily at present amounts to from 1,600,000 to 1,700,000, and seventy or eighty years ago it was only 1,200,000. How then is it possible, that Syracuse alone should have had such a population of free men? Diodorus indeed speaks of thirty myriads, but they must be understood as the numbers in the Roman census, that is, as comprising not only the citizens of Syracuse, but including all the inhabitants of the towns which stood to Syracuse in the relation of isopolity. Hence we may assume that Syracuse itself, at the time of its highest prosperity, contained within its walls at the most 200,000 inhabitants, including both free men and slaves, and I should be surprised to find that it actually did amount to so much. You remember that Thebes, when it was destroyed by Alexander, contained only 30,000 persons of every age, rank, and sex. The statements about the population in antiquity are monstrously exaggerated; the numbers are not always fictitious, but are founded upon misunderstandings. AGRIGENTUM (Ἀκράγας, according to the common derivation of such names, where ς is changed into _ntum_) was the second large city in Sicily. Plans of it are found in books of travel, and in Graevius’ Thesaurus; but nothing can be more erroneous than they are, for towns in the neighbourhood are represented as parts of Agrigentum, which they never were. It was a Rhodian colony, and was inferior in greatness to Syracuse alone. The population is said to have amounted to 200,000 souls; but the case is quite similar to that of Syracuse, as is clear from another statement, which mentions only 20,000. Both numbers may be correct, if we take the 20,000 as that of the real citizens, and the 200,000 as comprising all the isopolites of Agrigentum. But notwithstanding all this, the population of Sicily in ancient times was far larger than it is at present; its numbers in the towns of the island change with incredible rapidity. In the middle ages, Messina had 140,000 inhabitants; at the end of the seventeenth century, the ill-usage of the Spaniards reduced them to somewhat less than 100,000, and the plague brought them down to 90,000; afterwards, by the systematic oppression, the object of which was to crush Messina and to raise Palermo, they were reduced to 40,000; and before the earthquake their number amounted only to 25,000; at present it is said to be 70,000. Such is the vitality in those southern countries, and such are the changes in their population. In the north, too, fluctuations occur, but not to the same extent as in the south, where people have so few wants, and many can live in the open air without a cover for their heads until some favourable opportunity occurs. Immense ruins of Agrigentum still exist: it was situated on a hill and was visible from the sea at a great distance, whence Virgil