10. Plato’s focus on population control indicated the problem was severe in Ancient Greece
Historical records are sparse regarding the population growth of Athens through the fourth century BCE. Athens ruled the smaller towns of Attica, making it the largest and wealthiest of the city-states on the Greek mainland, eclipsing Sparta. The size of its population at any one time is based largely on speculation, but during the fifty years between repelling the invasion of the Persians (480 BCE) and the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431 BCE), its population more than doubled. By 430 BCE Athens was densely populated, with over 100 persons per square mile of land.
Plato noted that as more and more of the land of Attica was deforested for farming, land was lost to erosion and the environment was permanently altered. “What is left now is like the skeleton of a body wasted by disease,” he wrote, “the rich soil is carried off and only the bare framework of the district is left”. To Plato, the state was destroying itself through unrestricted population growth. The Peloponnesian war, which was caused in part by overpopulation, led to a new imbalance in Attica, caused by the losses of so many young men of the population in battle, and the plague which struck the region in 425 BCE.