Montesquieu,
Persian Letters — Letter 113
(1721)
“ I dwelt for more than a year in Italy, where I saw nothing but the ruins of that ancient Italy, so famous in former times. Although all the people live in the towns, they are quite deserted and empty: they seem to exist only to indicate the places where those powerful cities stood of which history says so much. ”
Montesquieu,
Persian Letters — Letter 113
(1721)
“ Some people here pretend that the city of Rome alone contained formerly more people than one of the great kingdoms of Europe does to-day. There were Roman citizens who had ten, and even twenty thousand slaves, without counting those employed in their country houses; and as it is calculated that there were four or five hundred thousand citizens, the imagination rebels at any attempt to fix the number of the inhabitants. ”
Montesquieu,
Persian Letters — Letter 113
(1721)
“ You have perhaps given some attention to a matter which continually occasions my surprise. How is the world so thinly peopled in comparison with what it was once?1 How has nature lost the wonderful fruitfulness of the first ages? Can it be that she is already old and fallen into decline? ”
