Total, 219,344,116 Since the publication of my first annotated edition of Gibbon, the subject of the population of the Roman empire has been investigated by two writers of great industry and learning; Mons.

Dureau de la Malle, in his Economie Politique des Romains, liv.ii.c.1.to 8, and M.Zumpt, in a dissertation printed in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy, 1840.

M.Dureau de la Malle confines his inquiry almost entirely to the city of Rome, and Roman Italy.

Zumpt examines at greater length the axiom, which he supposes to have been assumed by Gibbon as unquestionable, "that Italy and the Roman world was never so populous as in the time of the Antonines." Though this probably was Gibbon's opinion, he has not stated it so peremptorily as asserted by Mr.Zumpt.
It had before been expressly laid down by Hume, and his statement was controverted by Wallace and by Malthus.

Gibbon says (p.