How populous were the cities of antiquity?

The Acropolis of Athens

Today a real big city has at least five million inhabitants. But the great cities of the ancient world, even those that were the largest cities of their time, were small compared to modern cities.

The cities of Babylon in Mesopotamia, Athens in Greece, Carthage in Africa and Alexandria in Egypt all probably had a population between 250,000 and 500,000 people. And ancient Rome, the largest city the world had ever seen, probably had just under a million people.

The American cities of San Jose in California; Jacksonville in Florida, and Memphis in Tennessee, are medium-sized cities by modern standards, all with populations of more than 500,000. There are about 50 larger U.S. populations than ancient Babylon.

Before 1850, there were only three cities in the world with more than one million people: London, Paris, and Tokyo.

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