Note 66 — Chapter VI · THE SKIRTS OF THE MOUNTAINS (RABBAN HORMIZD, BAVIAN, AND AKRA)
Reading edition
Gibbon takes the “six-score thousand persons who could not discern between their right hand and their left” as referring only to the children, and thus calculates the total population of Nineveh at 700,000 souls. Taking a line from Mosul we might estimate that about 150,000 could actually be housed within the walls.