Human mobility in Roman Italy, I: The free population

Journal of Roman Studies

Volumn 94, Issue , 2004, Pages 1-26

  Scheidel, Walter ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34147101204     PISSN: 00754358     EISSN: 1753528X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0075435800064157     Document Type: Review

References (83)

1. 'Human mobility in Roman Italy, II: the slave population', JRS 95 (2005)
2. W. Scheidel, 'Roman age structure: evidence and models', JRS 91 (2001), 1-26
3. J. Beloch, Die Bevölkerung der griechisch-römischen Welt (1886), 370-8
4. P. A. Brunt, Italian Manpower 225 B.C.-A.D. 14 (1971, repr. 1987), 113-20
5. 2 (2000), 811-14
6. T. Frank, 'Roman census statistics from 225 to 28 B.C.', CP 19 (1924), 329-41
7. T. P. Wiseman, 'The census in the first century B.C.', JRS 59 (1969), 59-75, at 72-5
8. E. Lo Cascio, 'The size of the Roman population: Beloch and the meaning of the Augustan census figures', JRS 84 (1994a), 23-40
9. 'La dinamica della popolazione in Italia da Augusto al III secolo', in L'Italie d'Auguste à Dioclétien (1994b), 91-125
10. 'The population of Roman Italy in town and country', in J. Bintliff and K. Sbonias (eds), Reconstructing Past Population Trends in Mediterranean Europe (3000 BC-AD 1800) (1999), 161-71
11. N. Morley, 'The transformation of Italy, 225-28 B.C.', JRS 91 (2001), 50-62
12. Polyb. 2.24
13. Liv., Per. 89
14. Phlegon FGrHist 257 F 12
15. RGDA 8
16. Close variants of the final totals are also attested in other sources, all of them ultimately derived from Fabius Pictor: F. W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius I (1957), 199
17. For the most comprehensive list of references, see D. W. Baronowski, 'Roman military forces in 225 B.C. (Polybius 2.23-24)', Historia 42 (1993), 181-202
18. to which one needs to add E. Lo Cascio, 'Recruitment and the size of the Roman population from the third to the first century BCE', in W. Scheidel (ed.), Debating Roman Demography (2001), 111-37, esp. 129-33
19. 2 for the allied states listed or implied by Polybius
20. G. Bandelli, 'La popolazione della Cisalpina dale invasioni galliche alla Guerra sociale', in D. Vera (ed.), Demografia, sistemi agrari, regimi alimentari nel mondo antico (1999), 189-215
21. For the fading of the past, see W. Scheidel, 'Emperors, aristocrats, and the Grim Reaper: towards a demographic profile of the Roman élite', CQ 49 (1999), 279-80
22. For the census, see, e.g., L. Neesen, Untersuchungen zu den Staatsabgaben in der römischen Kaiserzeit (27 v. Chr.-284 n. Chr.) (1980), 39-41
23. R. S. Bagnall and B. W. Frier, The Demography of Roman Egypt (1994), 2-5
24. M. H. Hansen, Three Studies in Athenian Demography (1988), 22, 27
25. City-states are different creatures: see in general H. Spruyt, The Sovereign State and its Competitors (1996), 130-50
26. M. H. Hansen (ed.), A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures (2000)
27. cf. now N. Rosenstein, 'Marriage and manpower in the Hannibalic War: assidui, proletarii and Livy 24.18.7-8'
28. Historia 51 (2002), 163-91, for a new and convincing explanation of how it was possible that, in 214 B.C., only 2,000 iuniores who could not claim a legitimate exemption had not yet served in the army
29. J. M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (1998), 306 n. 41
30. M. R. Haines, 'Estimated life tables for the United States, 1850-1910', Historical Methods 31 (1998), 149-69
31. N. Morley, Metropolis and Hinterland (1996), 182
32. K. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (1978), 68-9
33. M. Ginatempo and L. Sandri, L'Italia delle città (1990), 148-9, 190-1, 227
34. A. Bellettini, La popolazione italiana (1987), 25
35. For the share of cities of under 5,000 in the total urban population, cf. J. de Vries, European Urbanization 1500-1800 (1984), 49-77
36. M. H. Hansen, 'The concept of the consumption city applied to the Greek polis', in T. H. Nielsen (ed.), Once Again: Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis (2004), at 11-16. I am grateful to M. H. Hansen for this reference
37. D. L. Proctor, Grain Storage Techniques (1994); www.cropstorage.com (storage losses)
38. M. S. Spurr, Arable Cultivation in Roman Italy c.200 B.C.-c.A.D. 100 (1986), 10-17, who points out that barley was so unpopular that it was distributed as punishment rations in the army; fed to slaves; and grown either as a back-up crop or as animal fodder (14-15)
39. See also L. Casteletti, 'Contributo alla ricerche paleobotaniche in Italia', RIL 106 (1972), 331-74
40. C. McEvedy and R. Jones, Atlas of World Population History (1978)
41. M. Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (1973), 84
42. Cf. K. Hopkins, 'Rome, taxes, rents and trade', Kodai 6/7 (1995/6), 46-7
43. For the latter, see D. W. Rathbone, 'Villages, land and population in Graeco-Roman Egypt', PCPS 36 (1990), 134
44. E. Lo Cascio, 'La popolazione dell'Egitto romano', Studi Storici 40 (1999), 425-47, assigns some 9 million people to Roman Egypt, compared to Frier's 5 million. If we multiply Frier's other estimates for the Roman East by 1.8, Roman population number in Anatolia and Syria reaches mid-twentieth-century levels
45. G. Forni, Il reclutamento delle legioni da Augusto a Diocleziano (1953), with W. Scheidel, Measuring Sex, Age and Death in the Roman Empire (1996), 95-6 n. 18
46. Roman soldiers ate better: A. C. King, 'Animal bones and the dietary identity of military and civilian groups in Roman Britain, Germany and Gaul', in T. Blagg and A. King (eds), Military and Civilian in Roman Britain (1984), 187-217
47. e.g., G. Rickman, The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome (1980), 157-97
48. D. Noy, Foreigners at Rome (2000), 15-29
49. Rome may not have grown much further during the Principate: comparative evidence for the expansion of other pre-modern capital cities often points to a limited growth spurt followed by stagnation; see W. Scheidel, 'Creating a metropolis: a comparative demographic perspective', in W. V. Harris (ed.), Ancient Alexandria (forthcoming)
50. R. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire (2nd edn, 1982), 262-77
51. and K. Lomas, 'Roman imperialism and the city in Italy', in R. Laurence and J. Berry (eds), Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire (1998), 64-78, deal with different aspects of Italian urbanization
52. Annales de Démographie Historique 1990, 5-151 includes several more recent contributions
53. C. Galley, 'A model of early modern urban demography', Economic History Review 48 (1995), 448-69, stresses the crucial role of the sex ratio and fertility in smaller English cities but allows for substantial excess mortality in London
54. His finding that low urban sex ratios can cause natural decrease may be relevant here in so far as cities in late Republican Italy attracted women who had lost male relatives: see J. K. Evans, War, Women and Children in Ancient Rome (1991), 114-44
55. W. Jongman, 'Slavery and the growth of Rome. The transformation of Italy in the second and first centuries BCE', in C. Edwards and G. Woolf (eds), Rome the Cosmopolis (2003), 100-22, at 106-9
56. R. Sallares, Malaria and Rome (2002), 201-34 (Rome), cf. 264-7 (on the relocation of the town of Salapia in Apulia because of malaria)
57. Lo Cascio's polemic against the notion of urban excess mortality in Roman cities in 'Condizioni igienico-sanitarie e dinamica della popolazione della città di Roma dall'età tardorepubblicana at tardoantico', in J.-N. Corvisier et al. (eds), Thérapies, médecine et démographie antiques (2001), 37-70
58. and 'La population', Pallas 55 (2001), 179-98, fails to appreciate the probable role of endemic infectious disease. I note in passing that lower urban excess mortality would make it even easier to defend the 'low' count attacked by Lo Cascio
59. e.g., P. R. Galloway, 'A reconstruction of the population of North Italy from 1650 to 1881 using annual inverse projection comparisons to England, France, and Sweden', European Journal of Population 10 (1994), 223-74
60. cf. W. Scheidel, 'The Greek demographic expansion: models and comparisons', JHS 123 (2003), 120-40, esp. 127-8
61. For the latter, see now N. Rosenstein, Rome at War (2004).
62. W. Scheidel, 'Sex ratios and femicide in the ancient Mediterranean world' (in preparation)
63. C. Nicolet, The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome (trans. 1980), 2
64. C. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992 (rev. edn 1992)
65. I hope to address this deficit in my current project on Coercion, Capital, and Ancient Mediterranean States
66. cf. H. Mouritsen, Italian Unification (1998) for the previous lack of integration
67. J. Mattingly, 'Vulgar and weak "Romanization", or time for a paradigm shift?', JRA 15 (2002), 537-8 lists nine different terms that have been used in recent work
68. S. Keay and N. Terrenato (eds), Italy and the West (2001) is representative
69. G. Woolf, Becoming Roman (1999) offers the most detailed survey of the numerous facets of emulative culture change in a Roman province
70. M. W. Doyle, Empires (1986), 128-38
71. See below, n. 138, and J. Z. Lee and W. Feng, One Quarter of Humanity (1999), 117-19
72. Thus G. Woolf, 'Becoming Roman, staying Greek: culture, identity and the civilizing process in the Roman East', PCPS 40 (1994), 116-43, esp. 131
73. A. Wallace-Hadrill, 'Rome's cultural revolution', JRS 79 (1989), 157-64
74. Proper consideration of mobility may require an adjustment of the kinship simulations in R. P. Saller, Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family (1994), 43-69, to approximate the actual (i.e., lower) accessibility of relatives. Ex-slaves and veterans ought to have been particularly strongly affected
75. These similarities will be explored by the Stanford Ancient Chinese and Mediterranean Empires Comparative History Project (www.stanford.edu/scheidel/ acme.htm)
76. M. I. Finley, Economy and Society in Ancient Greece (1981), 51-2
77. For sex ratios, see W. Clarysse and D. Thompson, Counting the People (in press)
78. G. M. Cohen, The Seleucid Colonies (1978), 14-19 lists c. 70 of 'the more important Seleucid settlements'; cf. 30-2 on the ethnic composition of their inhabitants
79. J. D. Grainger, The Cities of Seleukid Syria (1990), 95-100 reckons with a minimum of 60,000 adult male settlers in the ten principal foundations of Seleukos I but allows for an overall total of up to half a million
80. Cf. R. A. Billows, Kings and Colonists (1995) 155, 206-9 for constraints on Macedonian emigration after Alexander
81. J. Lee, 'Migration and expansion in Chinese history', in W. H. McNeill and R. S. Adams (eds), Human Migration (1978), 20-43, esp. 21-5
82. P. Horden and N. Purcell, The Corrupting Sea (2000), 377-91
83. J. Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel (1997) shows that overall levels of civilizational development are contingent on ecological conditions. However, the gradual extension of imperial state formation from the Fertile Crescent to the west and north-west suggests that there was nothing essentially 'Mediterranean' about the Roman Empire: large territorial states could emerge anywhere in the temperate zones of Eurasia