Ancient Populations

[Tim]

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?

[Duncan Head]

" Many have believed there were as many as one million inhabitants" - says one article, but the author thinks it was a fair bit less.

[Erpingham]

According to this 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.

[Tim]

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.