The Greatness of Cities [20]
and the supreme place of justice is there kept. All matters of importance have recourse to that place, all princes and all persons of account, ambassadors of princes and of commonwealths, and all agents of cities that are subject make their repair thither; all such as aspire and thirst after offices and honours run thither amain with emulation and disdain at others. Thither are the revenues brought that pertain unto the state, and there are they disposed out again. By all which means cities must needs increase apace it may easily be conceived by the examples, in a matter, of all the cities of importance and of name. The ancientest kingdom was that of Egypt, whose princes kept their court partly in Thebes and partly in Memphis, by means whereof those two cities grew to mighty greatness and to beautiful and sumptuous buildings. Forasmuch as Thebes (which Homer calls poetically the City of a Hundred Gates) was in circuit (as Diodorus writeth) seventeen miles about, and was beautiful with proud and stately buildings both public and private, and also full of people. And Memphis was but little less. In after ages, other kings succeeding (which were called Ptolemies) they kept their court in Alexandria, which did by that means mightily increase in buildings, in people, in reverent reputation taken of it, and in inestimable wealth and riches; and the other two cities aforesaid, that by the ruin of that kingdom falling first under the Chaldeans and afterward under the Persians were exceedingly decayed, are now utterly defaced. The Sultans after that forsaking Alexandria drew themselves to Cairo which, even for this very cause became (within a little time to speak of) a city so populous as it hath gotten, not without good cause, the name of the Great Cairo. But the Sultans, because they thought themselves not to be secure in respect of the innumerable multitude, if so great a people should perchance rise up in arms against them, divided it with large and many ditches filled full of water, so that it might appear not one city alone but many little towns united and joined together. At this day it is divided into three towns a little mile distant one from another, whose names are these: Bulak, old Cairo and new Cairo. It is said there are sixteen thousand or (as Ariosto writeth) eighteen thousand great streets in it, that are every night shut up with iron gates. It may be eight miles about, within which compass, for that these people dwell not so at large nor so commodiously for ease as we do, but for the most part within the ground, stowed up as it were, and crowded and thrust together, there is such an infinite multitude of them as they cannot be numbered. The plague, in a matter, never leaveth them, but every seventh year they feel it most exceedingly. And if it dispatch not out of the way above three hundred thousand, they count it but a flea-bite. In the time of the Sultans that city was accounted to stand to health when as there died not in it above a thousand persons in a day. And let this suffice that I have said of Cairo, which is of so great a fame in the world at this day. In Assyria, the kings made their residence in Nineveh, whose circuit was four hundred and eighty furlongs about, which comes to threescore miles. And in length it was (as Diodorus writeth) one hundred and fifty furlongs. The suburbs thereof no doubt must needs besides that be very large. For the Scripture affirmeth that Nineveh was great, three days journey to pass it over. Diodorus writeth, there was never any city after that set up of so great a circuit and of so huge a greatness. For the height of the walls was an hundred foot, the breadth able to contain three carts abreast together, towers in the walls a thousand and five hundred, in height an hundred foot, as Vives saith. The residence of the kings of Chaldea was in Babylon. This city was in compass four hundred and fourscore furlongs, so writes Herodotus. Her walls were wide fifty cubits, high two hundred and more. Aristotle maketh it much greater, for he writes that it was