I was taking part in a Virtual Pub Quiz tonight. One of the questions in 133 BC which city was the first to have a population of 1 million. The answer given (without attribution) was Rome. Nothing I have read suggests the population of Rome reached that number under the Republic. Do we have any source evidence for that?
" Many have believed there were as many as one million inhabitants" - says one article (https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/BACD7DF32B0B77609CD6713B8AF88882/S0003598X00085859a.pdf/population_of_ancient_rome.pdf), but the author thinks it was a fair bit less.
According to this (https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/08/06/42-mega-cities-of-the-ancient-world/10/) based on a NASA study, Alexandria was the first ancient city to have 1m inhabitants, in 100 BC. The same information is given by another source on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history).
Duncan, Anthony
Thank you both. I guess the quiz master must have been using the sources Storey noted; I ain't convinced either. Alexandria was my guess based upon a vague memory what must be the Nasa stuff, just could not remember the date.