Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, (July 2007)
Abstract
This paper provides a critical assessment of the current state of the debate about the number of Roman citizens and the size of the population of Roman Italy. Rather than trying to make a case for a particular reading of the evidence, it aims to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of rival approaches and examine the validity of existing arguments and critiques. After a brief survey of the evidence and the principal positions of modern scholarship, it focuses on a number of salient issues such as urbanization, military service, labor markets, political stability, living standards, and carrying capacity, and considers the significance of field surveys and comparative demographic evidence.
Our ignorance of ancient population numbers is one of the biggest obstacles to our understanding of Roman history. After generations of prolific scholarship, we still do not know how many people inhabited Roman Italy and the Mediterranean at any given point in time. When I say ‘we do not know’ I do not simply mean that we lack numbers that are both precise and safely known to be accurate: that would surely be an unreasonably high standard to apply to any pre-modern society. What I mean is that even the appropriate order of magnitude remains a matter of intense dispute. This uncertainty profoundly affects modern reconstructions of Roman history in two ways. First of all, our estimates of overall Italian population number are to a large extent a direct function of our views on the size of the Roman citizenry, and inevitably shape any broader guesses concerning the demography of the Roman empire as a whole. These guesses, in turn, determine how we assess Roman conditions in relation to other, later periods of Mediterranean population history. Secondly, moreover, this is by no means an antiquarian issue, a case of wanting to know for sake of filling in blanks in our knowledge: absolute and relative population numbers matter greatly for the simple reason that they are critically related to key variables of development such as economic performance: thus, a ‘large’ population (by pre- modern standards) might imply a ‘strong’ economy (by the same standards), or, alternatively, might suggest relatively low living standards.
Roman population size: the logic of the debate
Walter Scheidel
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, (July 2007)
Abstract
This paper provides a critical assessment of the current state of the debate about the number of Roman citizens and the size of the population of Roman Italy. Rather than trying to make a case for a particular reading of the evidence, it aims to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of rival approaches and examine the validity of existing arguments and critiques. After a brief survey of the evidence and the principal positions of modern scholarship, it focuses on a number of salient issues such as urbanization, military service, labor markets, political stability, living standards, and carrying capacity, and considers the significance of field surveys and comparative demographic evidence.
Our ignorance of ancient population numbers is one of the biggest obstacles to our understanding of Roman history. After generations of prolific scholarship, we still do not know how many people inhabited Roman Italy and the Mediterranean at any given point in time. When I say ‘we do not know’ I do not simply mean that we lack numbers that are both precise and safely known to be accurate: that would surely be an unreasonably high standard to apply to any pre-modern society. What I mean is that even the appropriate order of magnitude remains a matter of intense dispute. This uncertainty profoundly affects modern reconstructions of Roman history in two ways. First of all, our estimates of overall Italian population number are to a large extent a direct function of our views on the size of the Roman citizenry, and inevitably shape any broader guesses concerning the demography of the Roman empire as a whole. These guesses, in turn, determine how we assess Roman conditions in relation to other, later periods of Mediterranean population history. Secondly, moreover, this is by no means an antiquarian issue, a case of wanting to know for sake of filling in blanks in our knowledge: absolute and relative population numbers matter greatly for the simple reason that they are critically related to key variables of development such as economic performance: thus, a ‘large’ population (by pre- modern standards) might imply a ‘strong’ economy (by the same standards), or, alternatively, might suggest relatively low living standards.
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