The Demography of Roman Italy: Population Dynamics in an Ancient Conquest Society (201 BCE–14 CE) 9781107003934
This book provides a fresh perspective on the population history of Italy during the late Republic. It employs a range o
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Table of contents :
Cover
Abstract
Title page
Contents
Figures, tables and maps
Acknowledgements
Maps
I Economic and ecological parameters
1 Introduction
2 Framing the economic setting: structure and development
3 Climate and climatic change
II The demographic parameters: Mortality, fertility and migration
4 Mortality
5 Fertility
6 Migration
III Population size
7 Counting Romans
8 Archaeology and population. Demography from potsherds?
9 Summary and conclusion
Appendix 1: Known Roman census figures for the period 508 BCE—48 CE
Appendix 2: Calculations of multiplier for scenarios I, II and III in Table 7.3 (accomodating the effect of assumptions on emancipatio and sine manu marriage)
Bibliography
Index
Back cover
Citation preview
THE D EMOGRAPHY O F ROMAN ITALY
This book provides a fresh perspective on the population history of Italy during the late Republic. It employs a range of sources and a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the demographic behaviour of Roman citizens. Dr Hin shows how they adapted to the changing economic, climatic and social conditions in a period of intense conquest. Her critical evaluation of both the positive and negative accounts of the demographic toll taken by warfare and rising societal complexity on the citizen population of Italy leads her to a revisionist ‘middling scenario’. In tracing the population history of an ancient conquest society, she provides an accessible pathway into Roman demography, which focuses on the three main demographic parameters – mortality, fertility and migration. She unites literary and epigraphic sources with demographic theory, archaeological surveys, climatic and skeletal evidence, models and comparative data. Tables, figures and maps enable readers to visualize the quantitative dynamics at work. saski a h i n is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.
THE DEMOGRAPH Y OF ROMAN I TA LY Population Dynamics in an Ancient Conquest Society 201 bce–14 ce
SASKIA HIN
c a mb r i d g e un i ve r s it y p r ess Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, S˜ao Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/ c Saskia Hin
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published Printed andiboundiin the United Kingdom byitheiMPGiBooksiGroup A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Hin, Saskia, – The demography of Roman Italy : population dynamics in an ancient conquest society ( bce– ce) / Saskia Hin. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn ---- . Mortality – Italy – History. . Fertility, Human – Italy – History. . Migration, Internal – Italy – History. . Italy – Population – History. I. Title. hb.h .′ – dc isbn ---- Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
To my parents and brother Voor mijn ouders en broertje – Henk Hin, Marjo Spinhof and Remco Hin
Contents
List of figures, tables and maps Acknowledgements
page viii xi
part i: economic and ecological parameters
Introduction
Framing the economic setting: structure and development
Climate and climatic change
part ii: the demographic parameters: mortality, fertility and migration
Mortality
Fertility
Migration
part iii: population size Counting Romans
Archaeology and population. Demography from potsherds?
Summary and conclusion
Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Bibliography Index
vii
Figures, tables and maps
figures . Causal interrelations between economy and demography Source: adapted and expanded from Scheidel (b), p. . page . The earth’s climate system and potential causes (forcings) of climate change Source: adapted from Beer, Vonmoos, and Muscheler (). . ‘F’ graphed over time Source: Beer, Vonmoos and Muscheler (). . Population and climate trends c.– ce C J. Wiley and Sons Ltd. Source: Galloway (), p. . . Climate and demographic developments . Best fit models: age-specific death rates compared . Roman census figures (third and second centuries bce) . Schematic depiction of demographic crisis and post-crisis recovery . Distribution of natural fertility: comparison of controlled fertility populations with natural fertility populations Source: Redrawn from Campbell & Wood , p. . . Age-specific fertility schedules: controlled fertility vs natural fertility for populations with marriage starting from age Source: Redrawn after Coale and Trussell , p. . . Push- and pull-factors towards migration and types of migration . Box-plot of the observed, possible (% c.i.) and expected percentage males aged – on funerary inscriptions from the Roman Empire . A comparison between percentages of women ever married in London and Rome
viii
List of figures, tables and maps . From census declaration to census figures: a visualization of administrative processes implied by the all-adult-males hypothesis (Model ) and sui iuris hypothesis (Model ) . Share of citizen population in Italy included in the census figures according to the sui iuris hypothesis . Change in numbers of farms in survey areas from Republic to Empire a. Changes displayed on normal scale. b. Changes displayed on log scale. Source: Launaro () , Table .. . Villa site change from Republic to Empire a. Changes displayed on normal scale. b. Changes displayed on log scale. Source: Launaro () , Table .. . Scatterplot of farm site size (x-axis) plotted against % increase over time (y-axis)
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tables . . . . . . . . . .
. . .
Scholarly estimates of slave numbers in Italy (Augustan period) Best fit of life tables to Roman census data and Ulpian life table Model life table (e = ) – Coale and Demeny West Model Model life table (e = ) – Woods’ South Model (Chile) Model life table (e = ) – Navrongo (Ghana) Model Model life table (e = ) – Morogoro (Tanzania) Model Model life table (e = ) – Butajira (Ethiopia) Model Demographic summary of migrants identified by bioarchaeological studies Sex ratios among migrants on grave inscriptions from Rome Source: Noy (). Sex ratios of Roman grave inscriptions for deceased individuals aged – Source: All data except no. taken from Saller (), pp. –; see for no. Table .). Population size and population trends in a nutshell: main interpretative scenarios as derived from key figures The late Republican census: assumptions and advantages of a sui iuris interpretation over an all-adult-males hypothesis Three hypothetical middle count scenarios
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List of figures, tables and maps
. Settlement trends between late Republic (LR) and early Empire (EE), according to Launaro () . Correlation between % increase in attested farms and initial site size . Trend increases in farm sites by group . Site trends for survey areas that covered diverse ecological environments (lowlands as well as higher terrains) . Site trends in large sites that covered diverse ecological environments (lowlands as well as higher terrains) . Number of identified Republican sites in the Tiber Valley by period and number of black-gloss potsherds Source: based on Di Giuseppe (), Appendix , pp. –. . Type of diagnostic material that enabled the identification of site occupation: late Republic versus early Empire Sources: Potenza Valley: Percossi et al. (). Liri Valley: Hayes and Martini (). Rieti Basin: Coccia et al. () . Mean number of identified sites by accessibility of location . Increase in site numbers late Republic to early Empire, by location type
maps Map of Italy The Roman Empire The Roman Empire: a double-layered core-periphery model
xiii xiv
Acknowledgements
This book was written at the Universities of Leiden and Stanford and at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Rostock, Germany). I am grateful to colleagues and friends who are or were at each of these places for their advice, support and friendship. Writing a book was always a dream for me. That it became a history book, and one about Roman history, is, to be honest, first thanks to my preference for chocolate over sports, and, second, to inspiring teachers: Patrick Nieuwenhuyse and Johan Strubbe. In Leiden, Luuk de Ligt enabled me to begin work on the project, and encouraged and helped me bring the Ph.D. project this book is based on to a good conclusion. We finally agreed to disagree over the approach to Roman history, and I am grateful to him for tolerating that. For a good few years, I shared offices and thoughts with Jeremia Pelgrom and Saskia Roselaar, and nothing would have been the same without them. Other colleagues in Leiden have contributed to this book in many ways. I would especially like to thank Paul Erdkamp and Rens Tacoma for their help and advice. Continuous input from the other side of the Dutch border came from Walter Scheidel as a co-advisor, and I have benefited tremendously from that. Few people would be more honest in their opinions, more supportive and more fun to interact with, while also living in a remarkably pleasant spot on the planet to stay at for research visits. The ‘Stanford crowd’ has given me several warm welcomes, and I feel that I have been truly lucky to work there. Christelle Fischer Bovet and Andy Monson, former ancient history Ph.D. students at Stanford, adopted me into their lives in a natural way that was very special. Several other scholars read drafts of chapters and offered valuable suggestions for further reading, comments and the like. In particular, I would like to thank: Eelco Rohling from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, as well as Robert Sallares and Alain Bresson, who kindly offered their expertise for the chapter on climate; John Rich for his interest in Chapter ; Adam Lenart for his help with demographic modelling; and xi
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Acknowledgements
Tim Parkin, Emily Hemelrijk, Theo Engelen and Marlou Schrover, who commented on an earlier draft of the manuscript. In making the usual remark that all remaining errors are my own, I should add and emphasize that these words come from an author who takes pride in being endowed with very stubborn genes. The process of creating this book was a wonderful experience, in the course of which I learned a great deal. I hope that you, the reader, will enjoy the final product. That you have it in your hands is largely thanks to my family and friends. At this point, I would like to thank all of them, and especially Marjo Spinhof, Henk Hin, Remco Hin, Lisa Koolhoven, Marieke Schoonheim, Marte Knigge, Christelle Fischer Bovet, Jean Bovet, Andy Monson, Carolin Arlt and David Thomson. They have cared for me throughout, and I care about them. The Leiden research project on historical developments during the late Republic was financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Generous support from the Jo Kolk Fund and the Prof. Grootendorst Award helped support my stays at Stanford. The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and the members of the Historical Demography Laboratory kindly gave me the opportunity to complete my work. Special thanks also go out to the MPI library staff, and to Rosemary Robson and Douglas Olson for improving my English. Finally, I would like to thank my editors at CUP for their guidance, efforts and accuracy during the publishing process.
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c h ap t er 1
Introduction
This is a book about demography. As the study of population, demography attempts to grasp the dynamics of life: death, sex and migration. It targets turning points in people’s lives that they themselves would not easily forget: how many wedding rings (if any) they wore; when they were first married and to whom; the birth of their children; how and where they moved and how long they stayed there; personal sickness and health; and the deaths of loved ones. In trying to figure out these details, demographers are like children in their annoying ‘why?’ phase, dissatisfied with facts and wanting to know the reasons behind them. Establishing reasons ‘why’ is never easy. And although we may think that we can at least create our own ‘demographic fact sheets’, sometimes we cannot. Ages, for example, are not considered equally important across societies, so that reliable age records cannot always be obtained. And as we move back in time, reaching more and more remote ‘ages’, retrieving basic demographic facts becomes increasingly difficult. Time blurs memory, and history destroys collective memory and its records. These facts must be faced from the first, for this is a book about Roman historical demography. Setting out to spy on the lives of people who lived over two thousand years ago in Roman Republican Italy is an exciting thought, but the project can be tricky. Given the many lost – or never even created – records, we will need to take advantage of the strongly interdisciplinary character of the scholarly field of population studies to approach the questions and problems that arise in the most fruitful way. How and why is demography interdisciplinary? Neighbouring disciplines – including history, biology, sociology, economics, anthropology and other sciences – and sub-disciplines that study the behaviour of groups and individuals are of undisputed value for understanding demographic
The Dictionary of Demography by Petersen and Petersen () provides translations of demographic terminology into various languages.
Economic and ecological parameters
processes and parameters. Ultimately, these depend on human behaviour that can be fruitfully analysed only by taking a multitude of variables and perspectives into account. At the same time, it would be a mistake to view demographic outcomes as purely the result of human demographic behaviour. Socio-political structures and natural environments play important roles as well. In pre-industrial contexts in particular, mortality is shaped by exposure to (primarily infectious) diseases that are locus-specific (endemic). Such disease pools in turn are influenced by ecological factors, notably climatic conditions. The natural environment also affects agricultural production, which was and is crucial to sustaining population in pre-industrial settings. Likewise, socio-political structures affect demographic outcomes by setting the (perceived) limits of the possible, and by encouraging or discouraging certain types of behaviour. Agency in migration and fertility is influenced by societal structures. In a similar vein, conditions generated by the organization of society affect mortality rates. This dazzling interconnectivity makes the study of demography challenging. At the same time, it provides us with many tools and angles to take on questions relating to fertility, mortality, migration and aggregate population development. It is the hope and aim of this study to exploit these tools and angles to the full to help understand demographic life and demographic developments in late Republican Italy. That said, the purpose of the remainder of this chapter is to give the reader a brief overview of what questions will be dealt with in this book, and how. Science is about standing on the shoulders of giants and trying to reach further by improving on their biases, mistakes and blank spots. The ‘what’ and ‘how’ of this book are accordingly determined in part by previous scholarship. We therefore start by taking a brief look at the historiography of ancient demography and traditional views of Roman population developments, and then proceed to set out the specific aims and organization of this book, and the sources and methods used. 1.1 ancient demography: a very short historiography Historical analyses of macro- and micro-demography add perspective to the findings of modern studies by situating the present in the context of the past. They identify, define and explicate processes of change and continuity. As noted, this study is located in the realm of historical demography and focuses more specifically on Roman Italy during the last two centuries bce. To facilitate understanding of the demographic developments during this period, historical data from the Imperial period relevant to the history of
Introduction
the Republic are also taken into account. This is true in particular for the census figures dating to the reign of the first emperor of Rome, Augustus. Notwithstanding the inclusion of a small chunk of Imperial history, I refer throughout this book to the period under study ( bce– ce) as the ‘late Republic’. In limiting its scope to a particular region and period, this monograph adds to the small collection of similar books on the demography of the Greco-Roman world. That these monographs are few in number is not a coincidence, but the product of two factors characteristic of ancient demography. The first is that this is a relatively young field. Even less than a decade ago, the introduction to a volume on ancient demography could begin by remarking that ‘ancient demography has finally arrived’. For Italy during the late Republican period, there have been monographs that connected views of the demographic developments during the last two centuries bce with the study of social and economic history. Most prominent among these is Peter Brunt’s Italian Manpower (; first edition ). But the emergence and development of ancient demography as a full-fledged subdiscipline of ancient history largely post-dates these projects, a fact that in itself justifies a new study. Although the demographic analyses pursued in these earlier works included demographic theory and archaeological evidence to some extent, they largely dealt with the interpretation of ancient literary sources. Attention focused on the macro-demographic level: population numbers, size and trends. In this, earlier students of the question followed in the footsteps of the pioneering work of Karl Julius Beloch at the end of the nineteenth century. More important, while these studies used the demography of Roman Italy to explain historical developments, they did not attempt to clarify the workings of the demographic system itself. Demographic theory beyond Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population () received little attention. This study aims to fill part of this gap by paying due attention to theories of demographic development and behaviour that derive from various behavioural sciences. It also draws on comparative evidence to a much larger extent than most earlier publications have done. The second reason why studies of ancient demography do not fill bookshelves is linked to the state of the evidence, which is, in a nutshell, plagued
So Scheidel in the introduction to Debating Ancient Demography (c). Note also Arnold Toynbee’s Hannibal’s Legacy (), and Keith Hopkins’ Conquerors and slaves (a). Hopkins’ Conquerors and slaves (a) occasionally builds on the author’s work on ancient demography, which introduced the findings and methods of modern demography into ancient history. But the book itself is ultimately a socio-political history of the Republican period.
Economic and ecological parameters
by lacunae and invariably problematic. This is characteristic of all ancient history. But it is a particular problem in population studies, because the quantitative aspects that are of pivotal importance to the discipline often require more than the ancient sources can give. Demography needs reliable numbers, and history tends to be bad at transmitting them. One of the more pessimistic accounts of Roman demography, Tim Parkin’s Demography and Roman Society, has made this all too clear. Even so, we are not entirely without quantifiable resources to explore. What we have for the Roman world are totals of census counts transmitted through a variety of literary sources, inscriptions (for example, gravestones), and papyri from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt that include mummy labels recording deaths and documents in which households were registered for the census. Of these, the census documents provide the richest source of evidence, and for this reason Egypt has been the centre of attention in the major demographic monographs with a regional orientation. The physical conditions required to preserve materials as perishable as papyri preclude their conservation in Italy. As far as textual material is concerned, the Italian Peninsula offers us only inscriptions and accounts by Roman and Greek authors. The use of funerary inscriptions as demographic evidence is notoriously problematic, because of a range of biases connected with what has been dubbed the ‘epigraphic habit’. Funerary records, even if their numbers are substantial, are unlikely to represent underlying populations faithfully because (a) not everyone was equally likely to be accorded a grave memorial in stone, and (b) the demographic information recorded on the stone may not reflect reality. The recording of ages is particularly vulnerable to distortion. Accounts of Roman and Greek authors pertaining to demographic conditions and developments have their own particular problems. But these accounts do include a quantitative source that is unique to the Republican and early Imperial periods and enables quantitative demographic study in a way impossible for other times and areas in the ancient world: most of the totals of the Roman census counts, which were held about every five years to register Roman citizens, have been preserved. Studies of the demography of Roman Italy are forced to make the best use possible of these sources – that is, to approach them critically and put them to the test with the aid of demographic models, theories and comparative evidence from later periods and neighbouring disciplines. This is the approach adopted here.
Parkin (). Bagnall and Frier () (nd edition; the first edition dates back to ); Scheidel (b).
Introduction
Archaeology, and in particular survey archaeology, has in recent years made increasingly important contributions to the historiography of late Republican Italy. The complex evidence of settlement trends uncovered by archaeological studies and their potential value to the study of demography deserves full-scale separate discussion and evaluation. In Chapter , however, I briefly discuss this type of evidence. 1.2 population history and late republican italy: the traditional view At this point, the traditional views challenged by this project deserve more detailed attention. In terms of demographic development, the main thesis of the long-accepted orthodoxy is that the free citizen population of Roman Italy declined over the last two centuries bce. This view is indissolubly linked to what is often called the ‘low count’ interpretation of the Augustan census figures. It postulates that the entire free citizen population consisted of around four million people in bce, about half a million less than roughly two centuries earlier. All three main demographic variables – mortality, fertility and migration – played a role in shaping this outcome. The argument may be summarized as follows. One factor in the demographic process at hand was the warfare that was an ineluctable part of the process of Rome’s conquest of an empire. In particular, the Second Punic War and the Civil War in the mid-first century bce inflicted heavy death tolls on the Roman population. But an even larger role is attributed to two other factors: a decline in fertility and the negative impact of migration and urbanization on the mortality and fertility rates of free citizens. These would have been the ultimate demographic effects of the military-political developments that transformed Rome from the dominant power in Italy into the core of an empire stretching over much of the Mediterranean and beyond. The processes of warfare and conquest wrought economic and social transformations in Italy. The influx of material wealth and slaves created opportunities that disproportionately favoured those who were better off to begin with. As wealth increased, inequality rose. The poorer members of society suffered not just from relative deprivation, but from absolute impoverishment. A major factor in this was that the rapidly (self-) enriching elite preferred land-ownership as a means of economic gain. In their search for more land, they evicted the poor from their small plots,
See now Pelgrom () and Launaro ().
Economic and ecological parameters
and established large estates. The high rates of military mobilization in the first half of the second century bce in particular facilitated and speeded up this process. They exacerbated the situation of many smallholder families. While the male heads of many smallholder households were waging war overseas, their wives and children faced insuperable difficulties in running their farms and often went ‘out of business’. In brief, the position of smallholders was undermined by warfare, and the rich seized the advantage. As Hopkins famously summarized the issue, Roman smallholders ‘fought for their own displacement’. They were not needed as labourers on these estates, because the large estate holders could man their landed property with enormous numbers of slaves who had entered Italy as the spoils of conquest. Under these circumstances, many farmers were no longer willing or able to start a family. Often they remained unmarried, and birth rates dropped. Consequently, a decline in fertility was a second major factor explaining the shrinking number of free citizens recorded in the census figures. Unemployment drove other former farmers to the cities, in particular to Rome, where they added to a growing group of proletarians who barely managed to survive. Among these urbanites too, marriage and fertility rates were low. Moreover, mortality rates in the (over)crowded cities were high, much higher than in the surrounding countryside. Increasing urbanization therefore also had a major impact on mortality rates. It consumed any natural growth still present. In recent years, scholars have begun to undermine some of the pillars of this model of late Republican history. There has been considerable discussion, and new views have emerged debating, for example, the number of slaves in Roman Italy, the impact of warfare on the sustainability of Italian smallholder households, and the prevalence of large villas. Focusing on the macro-demographic realm, Elio Lo Cascio added new vigour to the debate by offering a different interpretation of the Augustan census figures, which implies a population total approximately three times as high as that proposed by low counters. The implications of this revisionist view are substantial: they alter perceptions on issues such as urbanization, rates of political participation, the impact of soldier mobilization, the pace of population growth and the performance of the Roman economy. The low and the high count interpretations sketch demographic and socio-political scenarios that are worlds apart.
Lo Cascio in various publications, e.g. (), (a) and (b). Hopkins (a), p. . Scheidel (b) sets out the issues in detail.
Introduction
1.3 aims and organization My aim here is to adopt a critical stance towards both of these interpretations and to take a fresh look at the demographic history of Italy during the late Republic. I attempt to question the validity of the dichotomy in the debate, by approaching the problem of Italy’s population development and population size in two ways: analysis of the demographic variables that affect population size and population development is the first; the second is a reanalysis of the data on the macro-demography of late Republican Italy. Because of the nature of these data, which concern only those inhabitants of Italy who had citizen status, the focus of this project is on citizens. Other groups – slaves and foreigners – are discussed mainly in so far as their demographic fates elucidate, affect or interact with those of free Roman citizens. The organization of the book is as follows. Part i continues with a chapter that sets the stage, by offering an analysis of the economic and political framework that characterized late Republican Italy. Ever since Malthus posed his hypothesis, the economic framework of a society has been thought of as crucially important to demographic developments. Malthusian ideas have entered the debate on population size and growthrate potential in Roman Italy as well – in particular in the shape of the concept of ‘carrying capacity’ and in the discussion of living standards. The importance of debates on the Roman economy to the discussions on demography is the main reason to begin with a (necessarily brief ) analysis of the economy of Italy in the late Republican period. Chapter then considers prevailing climatic conditions and their importance to both economic and demographic developments. I argue that, because of their significance as a variable that affects and interacts with demographic and economic determinants, climate and climatic change deserve to be paid more attention than they have hitherto received. As long as in our final analysis we consider climate as just that – a factor to be taken into consideration as one variable in a system or ‘model’ of numerous interactions – the threat of determinism is kept at bay. Once the larger framework is set, we are in a better position to begin analysis of the proximate (or indirect) determinants of demographic development, many of which are affected by (changes in) these background conditions. The central question framing the subsequent chapters (Part ii) is how the proximate determinants of demographic variables can be expected to fluctuate under the economic, political and social circumstances prevalent in the late Republic. How should we expect human behaviour to
Economic and ecological parameters
respond to these circumstances on a macro-demographic level, and how did these conditions shape macro-demographic developments? This is a broad and complex question that can branch out in many directions. To focus discussion, a classic demographic structure that organizes the analysis along the three main determinants of demographic developments and demographic behaviour (mortality, fertility and migration) is adopted here. Each of these is in turn determined by the interplay of a range of factors that shape their so-called ‘proximate determinants’. Such proximate determinants include age at first marriage, the prevalence of certain diseases, birth intervals, sex ratios and incentives for migration. In other words, the proximate determinants are the basic parameters that shape fertility, mortality and migration outcomes – the quantifiable factors. At the same time, the underlying social, economic, political, climatic and cultural conditions and factors that affect these proximate determinants are also paid considerable attention. When quantitative data are missing, analysis of underlying variables can help narrow down plausible options. Two corollaries of this approach should be made explicit. As an unavoidable result of the interplay of variables, the reader will occasionally notice overlap between chapters. More important, as a direct consequence of this variable-oriented approach, demography is given a leading position in the historical narrative of late Republican Italy. This has obvious disadvantages, but the choice was made deliberately. My aim is to clarify which hypotheses related to the determinants of demographic variables underlie the various narratives that circulate for the Republic, and thus to encourage reflection and reconsideration. More insight into the workings of mortality, fertility and migration processes is informative in itself. But in the context of the debate regarding late Republican Italy, it may also provide us with arguments to support or undermine demographic scenarios better grounded in (ancient and comparative) evidence and behavioural theories. In the course of Parts i and ii, various traditional arguments adduced to support the idea of population decline are tested, to determine which are sapped of their vigour when scrutinized. Several economic and demographic conditions and circumstances seem to lend support to a scenario of moderate population growth rather than decline. In Chapter , the first chapter of Part iii, I demonstrate that these observations can be seen to conform to the primary extant source material, the census figures, if we allow for a reinterpretation of their meaning. This re-interpretation, I argue, tallies better with the purposes of census taking and with definitional clauses added to census figures that have not been given due attention so far. In Chapter , I venture into the findings of recent archaeological surveys to
Introduction
investigate whether or not this independent source material can be used as evidence to support arguments regarding population trends. 1.4 sources and methods Ancient . . . A few more words on the sources and methods used in this study are apposite here. As a result of the scarcity of demographic source material for the history of the late Republic, any investigation of its population history must necessarily be eclectic in its approaches. A mix of inductive and deductive approaches characterizes this book. The inductive approach is most prominent in Chapter , where the Republican census figures are analysed in depth. In quantitative terms, these figures are the most significant source available. They provide us with a series of aggregate numbers covering much of the Republican period over generally regular intervals. The controversy that has arisen over their interpretation was generated by their ambiguity. This ambiguity in its turn is a corollary of the fact that the contextual information provided in the literary sources that transmit the figures is minimal. In most cases, all we have as description is the terse statement that these represent the capita civium censa, the ‘heads of citizens counted’ – whatever that may mean. As I hope to demonstrate, a combination of traditional source scrutiny, historical contextualization and consideration of the logical implications of various interpretations can help resolve the dichotomy that has characterized the debate over this source and the discussion on the citizen population size of Roman Italy. Caution is warranted in such matters not only because the definitional labels added to the figures are subject to multiple interpretations. A further complication is that the figures themselves are thorny material. First and foremost, their transmission is more sensitive to distortions than that of words: numbers are easily confused. We can actually trace such confusion in the ancient sources. When two or more sources accidentally preserved the same census figure, the figures they mention sometimes diverge – even between Livy and his epitomists, as is shown in the figures transmitted for / bce: , in Livy ..–, but , in the Periochae of Book . Second, numbers generally are liable to manipulation. Any such manipulation would undermine the status of such numbers as evidence, and in all fairness we must concede that we have no guarantee that our Roman sources did not meddle with figures. With respect to war figures,
Economic and ecological parameters
which are particularly sensitive to misrepresentation, it is clear that the numbers mentioned by Roman authors are sometimes unreliable. Where the census figures are concerned, on the other hand, two observations inspire confidence. First, the figures for the late Republican period fluctuate, but not so erratically as to show no sensible patterns. Second, there is less reason to consider such figures suspect, because the Roman state had at least some stake in getting the numbers right, since it collected them to facilitate taxation, voting and military recruitment. This suggests that the figures at our disposal are not entirely random. Archaeological source material forms the basis for the inductive approach that takes central place in Chapter . This material consists largely of potsherds collected during surveys, when ploughed fields are systematically investigated at the surface level (i.e. without digging) for traces of historical occupation. Numerous factors affect the number of potsherds associated with a specific time-period, including visibility, the quality of the deposited material, the geography of the area and the material well-being of the original inhabitants of the area. As a result, getting from site trends to population trends requires numerous assumptions that deserve explicit reflection. Other source material provides glimpses of structural or episodic phenomena pertaining to the demography of Roman Italy and its economy. Alongside qualitative literary evidence, palaeo-demographic and palaeoclimatic indicators can be used to study the economy, climate and living standards in late Republican Italy. Because of their own specific problems in regard to representativeness, geographical and diachronic coverage, and dating, these sources of evidence must be used with caution. At times they raise more questions than they answer. Nonetheless, they are important proxies, which are helpful in approaching the questions asked, particularly when these concern developmental trends over time. Papyrological and inscriptional evidence – already mentioned above – also deserve more consideration. For Roman demography, such sources have provided key insights into e.g. patterns of death, life expectancy, fertility curves, age at first marriage, migration and household patterns. Without them, we would know little about the main demographic determinants and their proxies. As noted, the problem for a study of Republican Italy is that these sources mostly derive from other places and periods. Because it is a real possibility that demographic constituents varied over time and place, we cannot draw conclusions from this material for Republican Italy. It would
Cf. Henige ().
Introduction
nonetheless be foolish not to make sensible use of it by taking the available material as a starting point. In broad terms, this approach is defensible because there is good reason to assume that variation was limited in nature. That is, there can be no doubt that the ancient world as a whole belonged to what demographers define as ‘pre-transitional societies’: those in which the demographic regime is characterized by high mortality (and therefore low life expectancy) and high fertility. It is within this overall context that we must situate potential variation, which limits the options. Working within the framework created by material from later Roman Italy and the knowledge of the contours of ancient demographic regimes provided by the Egyptian desert, we must look for commonalities and differences in the circumstances, conditions and factors prevalent in the late Republic – in particular those that could have created ‘deviations’ from the general pattern. The main gains of this method lie in its potential to strengthen or undermine existing presumptions on demographic variation. Clearly, however, this methodology can only bring us so far: the fact that indications for divergent behaviour or differential circumstances are lacking does not mean that they were absent. We cannot assume demographic similarity between Italy and better known parts of the Roman Empire from arguments out of silence. This caveat must be borne in mind at all times. . . . and modern In contrast to the largely inductive chapters on the census figures and archaeological settlement trends, in the other chapters of this book the approach to questions regarding late Republican Italy has a stronger theoretical and comparative flavour. As noted, this is no coincidence. Compared to Roman Egypt and Imperial Rome, which offer census records and abundant inscriptional evidence, respectively, the evidential basis for the Republican period is meagre. Our knowledge of the economy and demography of Roman Republican Italy is so fragmentary that the sources we have are insufficient to construct a comprehensive picture of the economic and demographic history of Italy during the last two centuries bce. Here, theory and comparative evidence provide food for thought. They can reveal what factors are involved in the processes we wish to uncover, and can elucidate the ways in which these factors might interact, and under what conditions. As such, they can help distinguish between the plausible and the implausible, and delineate possible trajectories. This is not to say that either theory or comparative evidence can provide final answers about the history of late Republican Italy. Lack of empirical
Economic and ecological parameters
evidence cannot simply be compensated for by the random adoption of theories, comparisons or models. What we need is a critical and selective approach to and use of these heuristic tools. The contextual evidence and information we have for the Roman world is crucial to determining which theories or aspects of a certain theory are valuable for or applicable to the Roman Republican context, and which are not. Likewise, they set the margins of the possible for parameters in models, and illuminate both similarities and contrasts in comparisons with other times and places. Even our imperfect knowledge of e.g. the range of plausible life expectancies, the social position of Roman women, the types of labour opportunities available, colonization, urbanization processes and infant feeding practices is useful in this regard. In the course of this book, these and other characteristics of Roman Italian society will be examined in the light of comparative material, and will be considered within larger theoretical frameworks developed by neighbouring disciplines such as economics, sociology, anthropology and biology. These confrontations will both test and reinforce our knowledge of the demography of the late Republic. At times, ancient history too can contribute to the field of demography. A few random examples pertaining to issues involving fertility, migration and mortality exemplify this. Analysis of post-war recovery processes, for example, demonstrates how Roman age at first marriage might have been more variable over time than analyses of the inscriptional evidence tend to suggest. At the same time, the inscriptional evidence for the overall range of marriage ages delineates the boundaries of the plausible for Roman Italy. In so doing, it shows the limited value of previous studies. These derived the demographic effects of urbanization in Italy from comparative evidence on pre-industrial European cities (mainly London), without taking into account the fact that Roman women married much younger and more frequently than their London counterparts. Evidence regarding the social position of Roman women also suggests that, contrary to the view of some earlier scholars, large-scale avoidance of marriage and childbearing is unlikely in the late Republic outside elite circles. We can only draw this conclusion, however, after demographic theory has pointed out the relevance of socio-cultural factors and the impact of ‘female empowerment’ on fertility behaviour. In the same context of questions pertaining to fertility processes in the Roman Republic, our knowledge of the character of the Roman economy helps modify a major anthropological theory on childbearing in pre-industrial contexts. The Wealth Flows Theory has recently been introduced to ancient historians. But insofar as it seeks to support the view that fertility in
Introduction
pre-transitional societies was high because children were economically beneficial, this cannot hold true in the Roman agricultural context. By pointing this out, ancient history can modify demographic theory. Migration theory turns out to be helpful in assisting ancient historians in choosing between hypotheses about the age and sex composition of migration flows towards different destinations. Comparative evidence on migration processes in other pre-industrial societies calls into question previously constructed models of urbanization and sheds new light on the issue of urban–rural differences in life expectancy. What I hope to have demonstrated in this brief overview is that, whereas the extensive attention to abstract theories, models and developments in other times and places may sometimes seem to distract from the main theme, this is ultimately a valuable approach precisely because these theories, models and comparisons improve our understanding of the economy and demography of late Republican Italy. With the help of these approaches, we can put the snippets of evidence we have into a larger context and an interpretative cadre that allows us to validate or invalidate previous assumptions. Without demographic theory, models and comparative evidence, snippets would remain snippets. New methods can at least bring us a little further. With all that said, we are ready to begin.
c h ap t er 2
Framing the economic setting: structure and development
2.1 why economy? Beginning a book on demography with a chapter on economy demands some explanation. In a nutshell, my reason for doing this is that economic aspects pervade the debate over demographic developments during the late Republic that is central to this project. They do so to such an extent that the debate about the demography of Roman Italy cannot be understood without attention to theories of the relationship between population and economy in a pre-modern context, and to the structure, development and growth potential of the Roman economy during the late Republic. That demographic and economic debates are closely interwoven is not surprising. Demographic and economic development are interdependent variables, which are each affected separately by numerous partially interdependent variables (see Figure .). Importantly, some of these factors may create feedback effects affecting variables across categories. On the demographic side, population developments are affected by economic developments. Rising real wages push down mortality rates, can lead to fertility increases, and tend to increase net migration flows towards a region. Among the main non-demographic factors influencing the development of real wages are technological development and knowledge, institutional arrangements that facilitate or discourage efficiency in the economic sphere, and ecological factors that shape the quantity and quality of the natural resources available. These all affect the real wage rate through the intermediate variable of production capacity. Likewise, the three main demographic variables – mortality, fertility and migration – have a profound indirect impact on economic conditions. They determine the size of the population in a given area, as well as the shape of its population pyramid (i.e. its population structure). As such, demographic variables create and shape the labour force supply. Life expectancy, morbidity, fertility levels, household structures and the character and extent of migration all influence the supply side of the
Framing the economic setting Ecological factors +
Climate + Production capacity
+
Natural resources
+
Technology/ knowledge +
+ Labour force size -
+/-
Real wage rate
+ Population size/density
+
+ Population growth rate +
+
+
Fertility rate + +
+ Marriage rate
Net migration rate
Epidemiological hazards
+
Mortality rate
+
Marital fertility rate
+ + Morbidity
Figure . Causal interrelations between economy and demography Source: adapted and expanded from Scheidel (b), p. . Note: Causal relationships are indicated by arrows. Positive signs reflect positive correlations (i.e. a rise or improvement in the base variable leads to a rise in or improvement of the target variable). Negative signs reflect negative correlations (i.e. a rise/improvement in the base variable means a decrease/deterioration of the target variable). Institutional arrangements do not appear as a separate variable in the schedule, but have a mediating impact on certain variables (cf. text).
economy in a quantitative and qualitative sense. At the same time, the demand side of the economy is affected by demographic variables that shape the size and distribution of a population. Institutional arrangements can have a mediating effect on demographic variables, for example by facilitating or favouring childbirth, or because they curb migration flows (notably, but not exclusively, through colonization programmes). Consequently, a study of the economic structure and development of late Republican Italy is important both because of its connection with demographic variables and because of the nature of the scholarly debate on the late Republic. Hopkins and Brunt, connecting to the intellectual framework of Finley, ‘wrote’ the economic and demographic history of the late Republic in the s. While their position has won considerable
Finley (); Hopkins (a); Brunt ().
Economic and ecological parameters
support among a later generation of ancient historians, a novel stream of thought has cast doubt on the validity of their model of concurrent economic and demographic decline among the free peasantry who made up the overwhelming majority of the Roman population. In many ways, the ongoing debate among historians on the nature and performance of the Roman economy resembles and echoes efforts in other disciplines. Biologists, economists, historians and demographers – not to mention others – all have their own disputes about the relationship between population and resources, and about the potential and realization of growth. The subject in fact forms a minefield that encompasses both intellectual and political terrain. My aim is not to cover these debates in all their complexity. Instead, I focus on those elements and pick up those threads I consider important to providing an essential background perspective to the debate on population size and macro-demographic development during the late Republic. 2.2 economy and population from hannibal to augustus: the bleak scenario and the optimist view Two separate but interconnected issues are at stake in the debates about the economy of Roman Italy during roughly the last two centuries bce, from the defeat of Hannibal at the end of the Second Punic War in bce until the reign of Augustus. The first bone of contention is whether and, if so, how economic structures in the late Republic set a limit to population size in Roman Italy. Was the population of Italy already so high (however high that was in absolute numbers) in the second century bce that the Roman pre-industrial economy could not support or sustain further population growth? Or was it not? The traditional ‘low count’ holds that during the Republican period Italy had already hit, or nearly hit, the limits of its potential to feed an increasing population, pushing itself to the brink of disaster. This idea goes back to
I should begin by mentioning Malthus () and (), whose early work has affected virtually all subsequent discussion. The fierce debate between the economist Simon () and () and the biologist Ehrlich (e.g. ) is illustrative of the tight connection between intellectual views and political concerns. Particularly with regard to fertility, demographic scholarly literature sometimes also presents a mix of analysis and activism, swinging back and forth between concerns about demographic decline and about overpopulation. Among pre-modern historians, the centre of attention has been agricultural output. Boserup () and () and Brenner (, first published ) both added significant new perspectives, the former emphasizing the importance of technological innovation, the latter pointing out the role of socio-political configurations.
Framing the economic setting
Greco-Roman accounts of economic and social developments in Republican times. These accounts concentrate particularly on the mid-second century bce, around the time of the Gracchi, who were bent on trying to reform agriculture by redistributing land. According to several ancient authors, their attempts were driven by prevailing economic problems: the citizen population of free smallholders in Italy had become impoverished and was faced with hardships, because there was no more land for them. Plutarch and Appian provide classic accounts, which are worth quoting here, if only because they reflect the motivations the Gracchi highlighted to support their campaign. According to Plutarch’s Life of Tiberius Gracchus, the core of the political problems unsettling Italy during the second century bce was the impoverishment of free citizens: The dispossessed poor were no longer eager to perform military service, and did not care about raising children, so that soon all over Italy one could notice a shortage of free men. But it was filled with gangs of foreign slaves, whom the rich used to cultivate their lands after they had driven away the citizens.
Plutarch’s interpretation of historical events some two hundred years before his time is paralleled in Appian, who wrote on the history of Rome about a generation later, and who probably (but not undisputedly) drew on a common earlier source of information. Appian tells us that . . . the powerful were becoming very wealthy, and the race of slaves in the country multiplied, but depopulation and shortage of men seized the Italian people, worn down as they were by poverty and taxes and military service. And if they had any respite from these, they had no employment, because the rich owned the land and used slaves as farm workers instead of free men.
According to the low count interpretation of the Roman census (to which we return in Chapter ), the total population of Italy around the time of
Plutarch, The Life of Tiberius Gracchus .: xwsqntev o¬ pnhtev oÎte ta±v strate©aiv ti proqÅmouv pare±con autoÅv, mloun te pa©dwn natrojv, ãste tacÆ tn ìItal©an pasan ½ligandr©av leuqrwn a«sqsqai, desmwthr©wn d barbarikän mpeplsqai, d« æn geÛrgoun o¬ ploÅsioi t cwr©a toÆv pol©tav xelsantav. (Trans. S. H.) See Roselaar () – for a discussion of Plutarch and Appian, with further references to the discussion of their respective source materials. Appian, Bellum Civile .: p¼ d toÅtwn o¬ mn dunatoª pmpan ploÅtoun, kaª t¼ tän qerap»ntwn gnov n tn cÛran plque, toÆv d’ ìItaliÛtav ½lig»thv kaª dusandr©a katelmbane, trucomnouv pen©a te kaª sjora±v kaª strate©aiv. E« d kaª scolsein p¼ toÅtwn, pª rg©av diet©qento, tv gv Ëp¼ tän plous©wn comnhv kaª gewrgo±v crwmnwn qerpousin ntª leuqrwn. (Trans. S. H.). Note that the term dusandr©a is ambiguous and is interpreted by Lo Cascio () – as referring to a lack of healthy men capable of military service, rather than a general shortage of men. Cf. De Ligt (c) .
Economic and ecological parameters
the Gracchi was somewhere between . and . million people. At that population level already, competition for land was severe and large numbers of people suffered from impoverishment. This would suggest, according to low counters, that Italy’s number of inhabitants under Augustus could not have been much larger. Given that the data on the size of the Italian population under Augustus seem to force a choice of interpretations between a total of around six million people and a total of around fourteen to sixteen million people, the former must on this view be correct. This implies stagnation of the population resident in Italy. But new people did enter the country, mainly slaves brought in by Roman conquerors. On this view, the presence of slaves undermined the natural numerical growth of the original inhabitants of Italy. Slaves, or their owners, competed with free smallholders over land, and because the latter lost the battle over access to resources, their numbers dwindled. Between bce and bce, the free population had shrunk by around half a million, and the rural subpopulation of free citizens would even have declined by nearly %. Such is the direction the bleak sketch of the economic and demographic performance of late Republican Italy takes. Until recently, most historians accepted this ‘causal connection between imperial conquest, a vast enrichment of the Roman elite, a rapid increase in the number of urban and rural slaves, the gradual proletarianization of an ever-growing proportion of the Italian peasantry’ and a numerical decline of the free peasantry. Against this, revisionist scholarship has argued that the Italian economy, even if pre-industrial and largely agricultural, could produce enough to sustain many more people. The potential for agricultural production may have set a limit to population size, but that limit lay far beyond six million people. On this view, the Roman economy had ample means to support the population increase implied when we assume that Italy was inhabited by fourteen to sixteen million people under Augustus. Traditionalist
Beloch () – and , Table ; Brunt () , –; Hopkins (a) –; Cf. also Morley (); De Ligt () and Scheidel (b), – for overviews of the low count view. See Roselaar () – for a brief account. The scenario was laid out by Beloch () –; Brunt (), esp. and for his conclusions; and Hopkins (a), esp. –. The quote is taken from De Ligt and Northwood () . Elsewhere, De Ligt developed a revisionist interpretation (De Ligt ()) of the low count scenario that disconnects the model of low population size from the notion of a decline in the free peasantry, by proposing a lower initial population size for the early Republican period. See further Ch. , pp. – and n. . Lo Cascio and Malanima (), esp. Section . Frank () and () ; Lo Cascio in various publications (with slightly diverging tallies for ce), e.g. (), (a) and (b); Lo Cascio and Malanima () (– million). Kron () supports the ‘high count’ interpretation of the Augustan census figures (and thus a high population scenario), but does not provide an explicit numerical estimate for the number of inhabitants of Italy under Augustus.
Framing the economic setting
‘low counters’ find the revisionist population scenario virtually impossible, because so many people simply could not have been sustained by the predominantly agricultural economy of Roman Italy. Agriculture and access to land, then, indisputably play vital roles in this discussion, which revolves around the issue of the ‘carrying capacity’ of the Roman economy. Was ‘the end’ of the land that was central to the Roman peasant economy in sight during the last two centuries bce? In this chapter, we dive into questions about how much food Roman land could produce, the size of the Roman economy, and how much or how little other production or income contributed to its size. Better insight into the state of the Roman economy during the last two centuries bce is vital to determining the viability of different demographic histories. Put another way, we must establish the implications of the economic conditions in the late Republic for the various population scenarios derived from interpretations of the census figures. The second set of questions central to this chapter is closely related to the ‘carrying capacity’ issue. Economic growth is the keyword here: how did the Roman economy develop over time? Was it stagnant, in decline or growing? What are the implications of this in demographic terms? If there was growth, was it growth in volume only (aggregate growth), or can we speak of real growth (per capita growth)? These are notoriously difficult questions. But at least a general idea of the performance of the Roman economy over time is vital to understanding the dynamics of the late Republic, since it can provide an interpretative framework for historical developments after the Hannibalic Wars. If we know more about the economy, this can help us assess the relative likelihood of various demographic scenarios. In addressing this question, we must distinguish between aggregate and real growth. Absence of both would undermine the possibility of population growth. In a pre-industrial society where living standards overall are low, it is difficult to envisage population growth without any signs of aggregate economic growth. If the volume of the economy did not grow in step with population growth, after all, ‘new’ people would soon starve, because there was little reserve allowing the same cake to be split up among more people while still offering satisfying slices. By contrast, if we find evidence for aggregate economic growth, this suggests that the population could have
But see Hin () and Ch. for an alternative interpretation of the census data that allows for intermediate population scenarios, and takes some of the sting out of this debate. See e.g. Roselaar () – for the view that the Gracchi were ‘the first to realize that the amount of land in Italy was insufficient to provide for all inhabitants of the peninsula. There simply was not enough land, or at least not enough which could be used for distributions’ (to aid poor proletarians).
Economic and ecological parameters
increased (without proving that it did). More people certainly required that more of the productive potential of the land be put to work. Through rises and decreases in volumes of goods, we can trace whether aggregate economic growth occurred. Real growth, or per capita growth, must be distinguished from aggregate growth. Evidence of growing volume does not tell us if this rise exceeded potential population increases. But evidence of real growth does. It implies an overall improvement in living standards, or a disproportionately expanding cake. At a macro-level, signs of increasing productivity (as opposed to increasing production) are a main indicator. Because we are interested in only part of the Empire, namely Italy itself, geographical redistribution between provinces is also a significant factor. Although an influx of wealth from other provinces into Italy could, strictly speaking, be evidence only of redistribution (since we do not know if underlying growth occurred in the provinces), in Italy itself it would have been a source of per capita growth that could have sustained a larger population on the same territory – provided these additional resources did not end up exclusively in the hands of the elite. The latter considerations are what interest us here. 2.3 outline At this juncture, a few words about aims and organization are appropriate. After a brief sketch of relevant aspects of the main theoretical perspectives relating to the limits to economic and demographic growth (Section .), I argue (Sections . and .) that in fact all population estimates put forward – low, middle and high – fall within the theoretical range of sustainable population size. To demonstrate this, we must examine carrying capacity, or the ability of Roman Italy to feed its inhabitants, in detail. The conclusion that emerges, that all the suggested population sizes are possible, as such tells us little about the probability of any demographic scenario, and requires a re-evaluation of traditional interpretations of the ancient evidence (Section .). At the same time, it shows that there were ‘niches’ that could support population and/or economic growth. My survey moves on to investigate indications of the presence of a wider range of factors that have been associated with combined economic and demographic growth in pre-industrial societies, a phenomenon economic historians call ‘efflorescence’ (Sections .–.). Evaluating this evidence
Scheidel (b).
Framing the economic setting
enables us to ask whether theoretical room for growth was transformed into actual economic growth in late Republican Italy (Section .). 2.4 malthus and population ecologists on the limits to growth If the size of Italy’s population neared the limits of what its overwhelmingly agricultural economy could support, we might understand much of the information supplied by ancient authors in that light. In both demographic theory and population ecology, the concepts of ‘population ceilings’ and density-dependent constraints are paramount. These principles predict that carrying capacity sets limits on the ecological sustainability of a population within an area. In the field of demography, Thomas Malthus was the first to present a model that used this principle to explain the relationship between demographic conditions and economic performance. His Essay on the Principle of Population () had a fundamental impact on subsequent scholarship, and is intimately related to population ecology models. In these models, which reflect interactions in the natural world, population growth is initially exponential, but slows at later stages and ultimately levels off, displaying an (approximate) logistic growth curve. This implies that when populations have acquired a new habitat or territory where food is abundant and competitors are not (low population density), their numbers will tend to grow rapidly, until they reach a ‘point of saturation’ – that is, until population density has increased to a level where resources become limited and competition hardens. When a population nears the limits of the carrying capacity of its territory, population growth slows, and eventually birth rates equal death rates, and the population becomes stationary at maximum carrying capacity. Development is thus constrained by density-dependence. Bringing up animal population theory may lead a sceptical reader to object that this creates the impression that we are trying to reduce Romans to apes. But historical demographers looking into macro-developments have demonstrated that the pattern of demographic development of some historical populations in fact resembles the population ecologist model. Such is famously the case for the colonists who set foot in the New World: initially their population was characterized by rapid population growth,
Malthus (), esp. Book , Ch. , p. . That is, as long as no density-dependent constraints are felt. Cf. Rockwood () f. Campbell, Simon and Reece () –.
Economic and ecological parameters
especially in frontier agricultural zones, but this growth slowed as territories became more densely populated, and did so first in the agricultural zones settled earliest. Population ecology and the Malthusian model, in sum, are based on the view that growth is ultimately unsustainable, and share an emphasis on the limits of growth and prosperity. These are defined by a maximum carrying capacity that forms a ‘glass ceiling’ through which a population cannot break. Modern historians concerned with the issue of population size during the late Republic have tried to locate this socalled ‘ceiling’, in order to validate or invalidate competing demographic scenarios. Regardless of the actual size of Italy’s population during the last two centuries bce, if that size was close to the maximum conceivable under the prevailing conditions, this would provide a strong explanatory background to historical developments. Carrying capacity estimates, which yield absolute supportable population numbers, assume an even income distribution, under which all people consume an equal amount and live just above minimum subsistence. This is obviously not a realistic assumption in the case of late Republican Italy, where the conquest of empire led to the enrichment of some parts of the population more than others. Roman elites who profited from conquest could and did consume substantially more than what was needed for survival and a new pair of clothes twice a year or so. Skewed income distributions thus reduced overall carrying capacity, as a larger-than-average share of total available production was consumed by a smaller-than-average share of the population. It is easy to see how, if total carrying capacity were in the order of . million people (see below), with six million inhabitants the situation in Italy might have been precarious already in the second century bce. Appian’s and Plutarch’s description of the situation in late Republican Italy would also be strengthened in light of transportation conditions and land division under partible inheritance: if more than % of agricultural potential was needed to meet the production demands of the ordinary population, as well as those of the elite, it would have been difficult to meet the demand for land that was both situated close enough to cultivate and of sufficient quality. Furthermore,
Easterlin () –. Gabba (), esp. – cites many of the ancient sources on economic inequality, including the sumptuary laws intended to limit elite conspicuous consumption. Cf. Terrenato () for the expansion of luxury villas in late Republican Italy. For elite consumption in the Roman Republic, see also Shatzman (). Jongman () and () – addresses inequality in early Imperial times, concluding () that ‘senatorial fortunes and incomes . . . crowded out . . . ordinary citizens’.
Framing the economic setting
fluctuations in harvests would render people vulnerable, which might explain the depictions of hardship and poverty in the literature that refers to this period, when migration to the Roman provinces was, in the view of many (but not all) modern scholars, still in a pioneering phase and not yet a widespread phenomenon. But that Italian carrying capacity was as low as . million, excluding high count interpretations of Roman Republican population developments is, in my view, unconvincing. In what follows, I will demonstrate why. 2.5 the search for italy’s carrying capacity The most recent estimates of carrying capacity in Roman Italy, put forward by Neville Morley, combine a number of assumptions on production and consumption (partly drawn from earlier research) to establish plausible maxima for the number of people who could be supported on the Italian Peninsula. As a starting point, Morley combines the most acceptable conservative estimates, which he claims suggest that . million people could live on Italian soil. This total is obtained by combining a number of assumptions about the productivity of land and labour: (a) the amount of cultivated land (, km ); (b) the area under cereal cultivation (%); (c) net yields ( kg/ha for wheat); (d) the prevalent fallow system (biennial fallow); and (e) consumption in kilograms of cereal per person per year ( kg). Before going any farther in discussing the validity of the constraints on sustainable population size this calculation seems to imply, an initial correction is necessary. The carrying capacity outcome of this sum (factors a–e) should not be . million, but million. The reason for this correction involves Morley’s use of wheat as a proxy for both food consumption and productive potential. Because wheat is a convenient, straightforward proxy, it has been common practice to choose it ever since Keith Hopkins set calorific needs at the equivalent of about kg of wheat per person per year. In the simplified models
For ‘overseas’ migration from Italy to the provinces, see Brunt () with an estimate of , citizens overseas in bce. Crawford () – expresses a revisionist view, arguing that around million citizens could have lived in the provinces already in Augustan times. But see also Ch. , Section . for migration across the Alps and Ch. , p. , n. for criticism of Crawford’s argument. Hopkins () ; this equals a daily calorific intake of , kcal on average. Overall consumption needs (incl. housing, fuel, etc.) would increase this figure to , kcal per day.
Economic and ecological parameters
used for calculation purposes, Hopkins’ ‘consumption in wheat equivalent’ has become known as ‘wheat consumption’. This is not an irrelevant detail. When Morley reckons that (given biennial fallow and a net yield of kg/ha) . million people could be supported in Italy, this outcome rests on the idea that total food consumption per capita was in the order of kg of wheat per year. This would be fine, if the productive value of all productive land in Italy were estimated as if it produced a number of kilograms of wheat per year. But in Morley’s estimate such is not the case: for the production side of his equation, he counts only land that was sown with cereals, around % of cultivated land. This argumentative flaw turns his carrying capacity calculation into a miscalculation. It sets wheat equivalent consumption against wheat production, instead of against wheat equivalent production. By doing so, the % of cultivated land in Italy that produced products other than wheat is excluded from the land’s productive potential, as if it did not contribute to sustaining people. For a more realistic estimate of carrying capacity, all cultivated land should be included in the estimate. This means that, ceteris paribus, in a scenario that works with an equal calorific yield per hectare on all cultivated land, the estimated minimal carrying capacity of Italian agriculture should be adjusted upward by %, to million people. Still, if this estimate, based on the conservative assumptions set out above, were indicative of the number of people the Italian economy could support, the consequences for the population size debate would be immediate. Since the high count interpretation of the census figures posits a much higher population for Roman Italy, its plausibility would be severely undermined. It is difficult to see how some million free people, or million including slaves – to give ballpark figures – could have lived in Italy by ce . Minimum estimates of carrying capacity would have to be increased by –%. This would exceed the bounds of plausible range estimates. In the absence of alternative interpretations of the census figures, there would be little choice but to adopt the low count interpretation. But matters are not so simple.
The assumption that % of cultivated land was used to produce grain is probably based on the assumption that three-quarters of the Roman diet consisted of grain products – an assumption which seems to have spread as common knowledge after the explicitly tentative and provisional suggestion reluctantly made by Foxhall and Forbes () . If so, it fails to account for the fact that other products, notably olives and grapes, deliver far more calories per ha cultivated. This is obviously a highly unrealistic scenario. See below for more on caloric yields per ha of grain as compared to other dietary components. The range estimate in Lo Cascio and Malanima () is .–. million (inhabitants of Roman Italy), excluding slaves. Previously suggested totals were somewhat higher. See Ch. for a more detailed analysis of population data and competing interpretations.
Framing the economic setting
2.6 diversifying the story Italian agriculture, first of all, was not a monoculture. Morley, in fact, already emphasized that the reduction of carrying capacity parameters to the proxy of wheat biases the outcomes of carrying capacity calculations downward. He argued that the cultivation of barley in Roman Italy would have boosted production and the ‘feeding potential’ of the Roman peasant economy. This example is unconvincing, but the general notion that diets and production were diverse raises the question of how this affected carrying capacity. Several scholars have delved into the issue. Notably, Jongman emphasized the spread of agricultural products, such as grapes and olives, which have a much higher caloric yield per hectare than cereals. Jongman has recently argued that if oil, olives and wine provided half of the daily calories, as many as – million people could have been fed on the yield of Italian land. This seems over-optimistic, particularly because the assumption that a Roman would get kcal from drinking a litre of wine a day implies drinking heavy % port, rather than an average sweet white wine mixed with water, as was the Roman custom. Jongman’s overall point, however, is surely valid: the effect of adjusting estimates for the consumption of wine, olive oil and olives is a rise in carrying capacity, because these products produce more calories per cultivated hectare than cereals do. In any case, a large role for calories from alcohol in the ancient Mediterranean diet would not be out of line with the experience of other pre-modern countries, although our evidence for this tends to come from Northern Europe. That, in my judgement, is about as far as we can stretch the evidence. The caloric yield of a hectare of arable land could
Morley (). I am unconvinced by his argument that cultivation of barley had a notably positive effect on carrying capacity. Yield figures for barley are, despite Morley, far from consistently higher than those for wheat. Notably, in Italy itself in all years during the period – except , the yields per ha produced by land sown with wheat were slightly higher than those of barley-fields. See International Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 1909 to 1921 () –, Table (wheat) and –, Table (barley). Moreover, barley is less nutritious than wheat, which further dampens any comparative advantage of its cultivation in terms of carrying capacity: Wrigley () . A nutrition ratio of . (barley vs wheat) is currently used as a standard measure. Jongman () –. Olive products and alcohol are ‘calorie bombs’, but the caloric value of the average sweet white wine, which Jongman suggests would deliver as many as kcal per litre, in fact hovers around kcal. Romans, moreover, drank their wine mixed with water. While the amount added depended on the type of wine, and doubtless on personal taste, a / mix was considered reasonable: Tchernia and Brun () . It is well known that beer consumption figures in Northern Europe were fairly high during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Estimates of c. litres per person per year include the entire population (that is, many children); in some institutions, rations of litres per day were provided. See Unger () f. with Table .
Economic and ecological parameters
also be boosted through intercultivation of crops. Excavations in Pompeii and Boscoreale have shown that fruit trees and nut trees were planted among vines. Both diet and production by peasants, in other words, were diverse. In discussions of population sustainability, however, the productivity of land other than cultivated arable farmland is, for obscure reasons, ignored. While such land is arguably less productive per hectare than arable land, there is no justification for discounting c.–% (depending on the estimate) of all available land in Italy when considering total productivity. Woods, scrublands, pastures, lakes, rivers and seas may qualify as ‘marginal’, but they provided fuel, hunting grounds and fish as well as meat and other protein-rich products. Kron, for example, gathered archaeo-zoological evidence relating to the role of meat production on land that was not cultivated but still productive through its use as pasture. Taking such contributions to the provision of daily (caloric) needs into account fundamentally alters the discussion of the various population scenarios for Roman Italy. It shifts carrying capacity estimates upward. For the sake of argumentation, let us leave the production of seas, rivers and lakes out of consideration and assume that only woods and pastures were productive, and that these were on average only half as productive as arable land. In that case, nonagricultural land could account for another – million people. High count scenarios then arguably come within reach. Finally, climate and climatic change also affect carrying capacity, but have been generally ignored in discussion. This produces a static image
See Roth () . Note especially the new archaeological isotopic studies of bone remains from Isola Sacra (near Rome), which play down the role of cereals in the Roman diet: Prowse et al. () and Prowse et al. (). For an extensive analysis of the diversity of slave diets based on literary sources, see Roth (), Ch. . But a sample from the Molise (Quadrella, first–fourth century ce) suggests that the diet was poor there and did consist in large part of carbohydrates: Bonfiglioli, Brasili and Belcastro () . Horden and Purcell () – choose to ascribe this focus to ‘a cultural prejudice (among historians) that privileges, as being more civilized, tilling the soil over other productive activities’. The various estimates differ slightly in their assumptions about the share of land counting as productive. Lo Cascio and Malanima () : .%; Brunt () : %; Morley () : %. All are seemingly based on readjustment of nineteenth-century data on arable cultivation in Italy presented by Beloch () . During the late nineteenth century, c.% of the superficies of Italy was used for arable cultivation. But an additional % or so was used for pasture, .% was covered in woods, and only .% counted as unproductive. Many cattle simply grazed on land that was not or only marginally suitable to arable cultivation. In other cases, agriculture and animal husbandry were integrated in a ley-farming system: see Kron () and (), n. , Lirb () , and Spurr () for further references. Cf. also Kron () and () and MacKinnon (), for archaeo-zoological and textual evidence on meat production and consumption in Roman Italy.
Framing the economic setting
patently contrary to reality. Agricultural output trends are sensitive not just to ordinary weather, but to climatic conditions and climatic change as well. Climate change in Roman Italy, I will argue in Chapter , favoured agricultural output. It is hardly possible – or worth the trouble – to attempt to estimate the precise impact on carrying capacity of taking diversity and climate change into account. Our picture of Roman agriculture is simply not refined enough to attain such precision for the period in question. But our ignorance of such matters does not really affect the debate about the various population size hypotheses. On the basis of what we do know about agricultural yields and acreage, about diversification and about the availability of other food resources, we can conclude that Italian carrying capacity would have sufficed to feed the number of people implied by each hypothesis. ‘Low counters’ cannot shrug off the ‘high count’ interpretation of the Italian census figures – or for that matter, any range in between – by pointing to carrying capacity. This is all that matters, since arguments about carrying capacity can never be used to prove any actual population size. 2.7 implications for historical accounts of late republican italy How then are we to understand the dramatic stories of impoverishment and land shortage that the historiographic record offers? For those who adhere to a high population scenario, the accounts of Roman historians make sense, if we reckon with the fact that a population of approximately million people (including slaves) could be supported by what Italian land produced, but only just so: with million people, all of Italy would have been more densely populated than for most of its subsequent history. Under these conditions, economic inequality might well have led to the developments contemporary historians described across the peninsula. Under the alternative ‘low count’, as well as the ‘middle count’ developed in Chapter , Italy’s carrying capacity exceeded its actual population by a wide margin. This implies that the model of depopulation of
Scheidel (b); Lo Cascio and Malanima (). Fitting this number of people into Italy would require us either to defend urban population density estimates or town/countryside distributions that are historically anomalous, and seems hard to reconcile with the archaeological record on the surface area of cities in Roman Italy under Augustus: see De Ligt () on Gallia Cisalpina. The middle count scenario implies that at the onset of the Imperial period, Italy was reaching the range of population densities that historians believe were attained during the first major period of
Economic and ecological parameters
the countryside as a result of a lack of access to land is unlikely to be applicable to Italy as a whole. Instead, as others have suggested, it is far more plausible that the accounts refer to developments in central Italy, in regions close to Rome. Here, pressure on and competition for land gradually rose as a result of the increasing concentration of people and wealth around the city, which grew rapidly over the last two centuries bce. As a result, some smallholders, as Appian and Plutarch suggest, may have lost access to land they had been cultivating without receiving any compensation, because their land was so-called ager publicus. This was public land they did not own and from which they could simply be removed. Contrary to what earlier scholarship has sometimes assumed, however, we should not consider these cases of default. As Roselaar has demonstrated, during the second and first centuries bce the overwhelming majority of land in the wide surroundings of Rome was private rather than public. This implies that smallholders could not be so easily driven off their plots (although this may still have happened) without financial compensation. Literary sources in fact offer sporadic indications that smallholders sold their land to large investors: although Plutarch speaks only of forced eviction, Appian says that the rich also gained possession of large tracts of private land by using ‘persuasion or force to buy or seize property that adjoined their own’. In a slightly different context, the land surveyor Siculus Flaccus describes how owners of land distributed to veterans in the first century bce received a sum of money in compensation based on the value of their property as declared in the preceding census. Archaeological evidence, furthermore, suggests that most large-scale estates in Roman Italy were not established during the period that the historical evidence refers to as
efflorescence after the fall of the Roman Empire – that of the High Middle Ages (c.–): Bellettini and Tassinari (), esp. , Fig. . This implies that during late Republican times, Italy experienced moderate population growth, and most likely reached a population size of around . million (including slaves) in bce. See further Ch. . So Roselaar () . At , however, she does emphasize that such local pressures should not be overestimated for the second century bce, to which our qualitative evidence on poverty and land shortages relates. Cf. also Launaro (), Ch. .. For the size of Rome, see Ch. , Section .. Appian, Bellum Civile .–; Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus .–. See above p. for quotes. Roselaar (), e.g. and (‘most of the public land in central Italy – Latium, Etruria, Campania, and Sabinum – was privatized shortly after the Second Punic War at the latest’). Appian, Bellum Civile .: t mn ÝnoÅmenoi peiqo±, t d b© lambnontev. Siculus Flaccus, De condicionibus agrorum –: Sunt vero divisi nec assignati, ut etiam in aliquibus regionibus comperimus, quibus, ut supra diximus, redditi sunt agri: iussi professi sunt quantum quoque loco possiderent. Aliquibus vero ita contigit, ut iussi aestimatione facta profiterentur; quibus secundum aestimationem pecunia data est, pulsique agris suis sunt, veteranusque victor eo deductus est. Quoted in B. Campbell () –, l. –.
Framing the economic setting
a time of impoverishment and depopulation among smallholders. Most large farms were established after the Gracchi, not before. The extent of the problem should thus not be overestimated, and we should rather think of land concentration in the hands of elites as a regional phenomenon. The emphasis on this process in our literary evidence probably reflects the fact that developments around the city were highly visible to the political establishment and the cultural elite – including the Gracchi, as well as historians writing the socio-political history of Rome. Difficulties faced by ordinary citizen farmers in this region could therefore easily capture attention and find their way into the historical record. Regardless of why farmers lost access to land during the late Republic, the suggestion that this reduced them to dire poverty, because they had no means to support themselves, can only hold if the non-agricultural sectors (the military, the building sector and other activities concentrated in urban environments) and/or paid agricultural labour offered inadequate alternative employment opportunities. This may have been true for the decades preceding the activities of the Gracchi, from the s to the s. But given the cyclic nature of economies, it is unlikely that the Roman economy remained slack for the entire two centuries from the Second Punic War to the reign of Augustus. The partial shift from agricultural to non-agricultural occupations that historical accounts of the late Republic imply are closely connected with the tremendous growth of Rome as a political entity following the Second Punic War. The territory dominated by Rome increased vastly, from most of Italy at the start of the Second Punic War in bce, to all the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea, and large tracts of adjacent inland areas at the death of Augustus in ce. The two centuries encompassing the late Republican period were a time of immense conquests, which produced increasing socio-economic complexity and growing consumption demands as a result of various developments. The spoils of war were a distinct part of these processes. The economy of Roman Italy changed from reflecting the nature and capacity of an agricultural society comparable in size to modern European nation-states to being the centre of a vast, interconnected empire. Naturally, the size of the Roman economy expanded along with its
Cf. Launaro (), Ch. .. See Roselaar () –. See Scheidel (a), esp. , Table . His model of proxy indicators for the probability of economic growth suggests that during the period – bce, commercial development was strong. To the extent that this consisted of commercialization of farming, the assumption that this benefited citizens is problematic. But this commercialization coincided with increasing trade, manufacturing and building activities overall.
Economic and ecological parameters
increasing territory. This is relevant to the question of carrying capacity. But even more important is the question of the extent to which conquest and ‘the Impact of Empire’ might have led to intensive (and not only extensive) growth in Roman Italy. In the remainder of this chapter, I address this question. 2.8 the ‘impact of empire’ on the italian heartland: resource inflow Late Republican Italy was not a nation-state that had to enter bargaining processes on an equal footing with other independent players to obtain resources, but the heart of an emerging empire. As Map shows, the situation can be presented as a double-layered core-periphery model, in which Italy as a whole was the centre of a wide geographic area in the same way that Rome was the heart of Italy. Consequently, the Italian core where political and military power were concentrated could extract resources from (semi-)peripheral areas under its control. The positive impacts of a dominant position on the economy of the heartland have been well-established in comparative cases, including the British Commonwealth and the Dutch commercial empire during the Golden Age (seventeenth century). Recent studies of ancient Rome have emphasized that state activity and the expropriation of wealth from people outside Italy played a far more significant role in accounting for ‘the Roman achievement’ than the frequent focus on the role of trade in generating wealth tends to suggest. An economic model developed by Geraghty even proposes that wealth extraction was the main mechanism driving economic development in Italy. It was, so he suggests, responsible for % of the increase in wealth, whereas increasing trade accounted for
Wallerstein () sets out the theory of interactions between core, semi-periphery and periphery in a study of early-modern Europe. A more concise and wider-ranging extension of his theory is presented in Wallerstein (), Ch. . Cf. Chase-Dunn et al. () . Note that it need not necessarily be the case that a more densely populated and/or more complex core dominates or exploits a lesser developed periphery. The exploitation of China by the nomads of the Central Asian steppe is a counter-example. Cf. also Chase-Dunn and Hall (). See e.g. Van Zanden () on the large profits gained from the possibility of externalizing labour costs through the acquisition of slaves elsewhere at prices well below real market values. He points out that the marketprice of a slave in the British colonies varied between to pounds during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In , when overall price levels were not much higher, the intrinsic value of a slave (i.e. estimated reproduction costs) was estimated at between and pounds (Van Zanden () ). The market-prices of slaves, in other words, seem to have been far below their actual value. O’Brien () focuses on the comparative advantages and disadvantages of England and the Dutch Republic in the context of mercantilism and imperialism. Cf. Jongman (), esp. .
Conquered by Augustus
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The Empire by the Death of Augustus
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M e d
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i t
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Sicilia
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Asia Pamphylia Lycia
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e a Crete Cyprus n S e a
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Map The Roman Empire: a double-layered core-periphery model
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Economic and ecological parameters
only %. These percentages are obviously hypothetical, and Geraghty’s outcomes seem rather sensitive to adjustments to some of his parameters, e.g. those involving population size and the share of the population working in various sectors of the economy. Nonetheless, his modelling serves to remind us that we should conceive of late Republican Italy as the economic heartland of an empire rather than as an isolated, self-sufficient agricultural society. From an Empire-wide perspective, extraction should be classified as a transfer of wealth, not as a generator of real economic growth through value added. Whether imperialism and unification also led to economic growth in the Empire at large is a question beyond the scope of this book. For my perspective and purpose – assessing economic growth in the Imperial heartland – it suffices to look at the development of the net inflow of wealth into Italy itself. In fact, no more than a glance at Map is required to remind us that during the late Republican period following the Second Punic War, the flow of external wealth contributing to real incomes in Italy increased dramatically. There is no need to elaborate extensively here. Resource inflow took three predominant forms: seizure of human workforce through enslavement, booty and taxation, and I merely present a brief general review that gives an impression of the orders of magnitude of these phenomena. 2.8.1 Slaves and other types of booty As for the number of people taken captive during the process of conquest and brought to Italy as slaves, a recent attempt at quantification has argued that during the last two centuries bce, between and million slaves were imported from outside Italy. That estimate builds on optimist views of the number of births among slaves and their ability to reproduce that are not universally shared; the sex ratio of the slave population in particular is a matter of great uncertainty. Other scholars assume that most slaves were men, particularly in the countryside, and consequently hold that the number of enslaved persons brought to Italy to be exploited as labourers was even larger (since each generation of slaves had to be imported anew), although it remains unclear by how much. This discussion is of interest to the role of slavery as a source of economic gain within Italy, since net gains (‘per unit’) of slavery are greater when slaves are imported rather than
Geraghty (), esp. , focusing on the period from bce to ce. Harris (). Scheidel (a).
Framing the economic setting
home-bred. Notwithstanding the continuing discussion, it is probably safe to assume that over time a larger share of slaves were home-bred or drawn from within Italy, as large new territorial gains came to an end. For the first half of the second century bce, our sources report figures on the enslavement of conquered people that are at times hard to believe, but nonetheless indicate the general importance of the phenomenon: according to Livy, more than , Sardinians were killed or enslaved during the bce campaign of Tiberius Gracchus there; another , were allegedly enslaved ten years later on the west coast of Greece. After the sack of Corinth and Carthage in bce, there seem to have been fewer such influxes of massive numbers of slaves. Because it was not uncommon for slaves to be freed at a certain age or after a number of years of service, the actual enslaved population living and working in Italy at any point was considerably lower than the total influx. Estimates range from about . million to about million in the Augustan era, as summarized in Table . below. Around the time of the Second Punic War, the numbers have been estimated at , to ,. In general, more recent estimates of slave numbers tend to be lower, as scholars have scaled down assumptions about the number of slaves employed in agriculture. The estimate by Hopkins in particular has been criticized for drawing too heavily on slave ratios in the southern United States. Importantly, the genetic make-up of the current Italian population also pleads against the presence of large proportions of slaves in Roman Italy. Given the many uncertainties, the last word on this problem has likely not been spoken. For our purposes, however, it suffices to have a general impression of the scale of the phenomenon. On any account, the numbers of slaves who were transported into Italy and served as exploited and underpaid labourers for the benefit of their Italian owners was significant.
Note, however, the new contribution by Mouritsen () , and , who suggests that internal movements of slaves within the Empire, from the provinces to Rome and Italy, might have contributed to sustaining the slave population of Italy and Rome in Imperial times. Livy ..: ‘Ti. Semproni Gracchi consulis imperio auspicioque legio exercitusque populi Romani Sardiniam subegit. in ea prouincia hostium caesa aut capta supra octoginta milia’. Livy presents this as an actual quote from a victory inscription in the temple for Mater Matuta in Rome. Livy ..: ‘centum quinquaginta milia capitum humanorum abducerentur’. According to Livy, the captives were taken from cities or so. Dyson () . In the mid-first century bce, mass enslavements are again mentioned in the context of Caesar’s Gallic War: see Joshel () . ,: Scheidel (a) . ,: Brunt () ; Hopkins (a) –. Note that these figures are much closer to guesses than to estimates. De Ligt () –. See De Ligt () –, and Scheidel (a) f. As discussed in Rosenstein () , with further references.
Economic and ecological parameters
Table . Scholarly estimates of slave numbers in Italy (Augustan period) Author
Year
Estimate
Beloch Brunt Hopkins De Ligt Scheidel Lo Cascio
various
million million million lower than million . million . million
Sources: Beloch (), p. ; Hopkins (a), pp. –; Brunt (), p. ; De Ligt (), pp. –; Scheidel (a), p. with Table . For Lo Cascio: mean value as presented by Launaro (), p. . Note also Roth (), p. , who gives a cautious suggestion of . million rural slaves.
The majority of male slaves were employed in economically productive activities on agricultural estates and in mining. While female slaves have long been ignored in economic accounts of slavery, or relegated to the domain of unproductive, conspicuous consumption by the Roman elite, Ulrike Roth has recently made a case for viewing them as essential economic producers. It is difficult to validate such an argument: evidence of female slaves as workers in rural settings is extremely flimsy. This is not the place to dwell on the issue of Roman slavery, but it should be noted that Roth convincingly argues that the importance of textile production in Italy was likely underestimated by previous scholarship. The latter misguidedly relied heavily on material finds of looms as a proxy for the spread of cloth manufacturing. Roth hypothesizes that female slaves were engaged in producing textiles at agricultural estates, where their male counterparts performed agricultural tasks. If we accept her argument, the contribution of female slaves to the Roman economy was twofold: they provided a new generation of cheap workers by bearing offspring, and they created added
Mean value as presented in Launaro () . I have not been able to verify this. Roth (), especially Ch. . With the help of archaeological and textual evidence, Roth () – with Figs. – convincingly argues that we cannot expect archaeological evidence of looms to be representative, since many consisted solely of wooden materials that leave no traces. Evidence seems to suggest that female slaves were generally manumitted later than male slaves, and frequently only after they had completed their childbearing years. Their offspring would then be slaves. See on this Scheidel (), esp. –; Bagnall and Frier () (Egypt) and Scheidel (a) .
Framing the economic setting
value by turning wool into cloth or garments. Even if one does not accept Roth’s revisionist view of the economic contributions of female slaves, the overall point as to the importance of slavery for the Roman economy remains: the system as a whole benefited Italy economically. Nor can there be any doubt that over the course of the Republican period, increasing numbers of people were enslaved as Rome conquered more and more land. Booty provided another important contribution to the expanding size of the Italian economy, at least during some periods of Republican history, most notably during the second century bce. Between bce and bce, Rome conquered some of the richest regions of the Mediterranean, including Spain, Africa, Macedonia and Greece. Generally, profits were one-off windfalls: coined and un-coined gold and silver, precious objects and the like. 2.8.2 War indemnities Warfare was to Rome’s net financial advantage. War indemnities imposed on conquered societies brought in additional money, although the extent to which we can categorize these as a structural source of income is debatable. Only one instalment covered a significant stretch of time: after the Second Punic War, Carthage had to sign a treaty that forced her to pay indemnities in fifty yearly instalments. The next most extended punishment, imposed on Syria in bce ( million sestercies or HS), seems to have lasted for only years. Moreover, indemnities officially demanded were not always collected, either because Rome cancelled the obligation, or because it tolerated the failure of subject populations to meet such demands. But the control of certain production sectors achieved by conquest did provide a structural flow of resources into the Italian heartland. Direct property ownership by the Roman state during the Republican period was
Champion () reprints a range of (sections of ) seminal articles on Roman imperialism (e.g. by Hopkins, Gruen, Harris and Rich) that include references to booty. The topic is addressed in the context of the dominant debate about the driving factors behind imperialism, and the question of the extent to which the prospect of plunder played a role. For (a limited number of ) figures on resource extraction in the provinces during the first century bce, cf. Scheidel (a) . See also Maddison () and Jones () –. See Harris () –. Gruen () . On Carthage see Hoyos () f. The Carthaginians offered to pay off their indemnities in a single lump sum in bce, when Rome could have used money, grain and ships for its war against Antiochus III in the East. But the Senate, which had no wish to accept any payments before they fell due, rejected the offer, according to Livy ..–. Scholars disagree over the reason for this refusal. Cf. Gruen () and the Loeb edition by Sage. Gruen () . Maddison () , based on Jones () .
Economic and ecological parameters
limited to mines and quarries; under the Empire, only the gold mines were state-owned, according to Strabo. Other property and businesses were in private hands. The Spanish mines were the largest; Polybius’ figure of , workers (preserved in Strabo) gives at least some idea of the order of magnitude the industry attained there. Mines were not limited to Spain. The Roman state also profited from the exploitation of mines and stone (mostly marble) quarries in other areas of the Empire, but the scale was much smaller. Early on, exploitation of the silver-mines of Carthago Nova (Carthage˜na) primarily benefited the economy of the Italian heartland. Polybius claims that the Roman people gained , drachmae per day from them. This amounts to a surplus revenue of approximately million drachmae or HS million per year, or HS . per worker per day. Those who leased and exploited the mines surely also took a share of the profits generated. Just how far gains from the sale of silver trickled down to the Italian economy and created additional economic multiplier effects (i.e. jobs for other people) through the private route depended on who the mine exploiters were and where they lived. Insofar as those involved in exploiting the mines were ‘Industriels Italo-Romains’, we may expect them to have spent at least part of their gains in Italy. At least some of them were, if we may believe the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus. In the first century bce, he writes that after the Romans conquered Spain, numerous Italians ‘swarmed to the mines and took great wealth away with them’. He claims that they did so by buying as many slaves as possible and turning them over to the overseers of the mines to bring up the (silver) ore and to produce ‘revenues in sums defying belief’. Indeed, lead bars stamped with the names of a number of operators of mines in Carthago Nova and Sierra Morena have allowed them to be identified as equestrians or members of senatorial families in Rome. These individuals date predominantly to the late Republican period (second and first centuries bce). Some of these men may have operated their businesses in Spain while living and spending in Rome, but we also know of others who invested their profits in the
Strabo ... Leveau () –. Polybius’ description of the mines in Spain, originally in Histories Book , is known only through Strabo’s summary (Strabo ..). Alcock () –. In the Egyptian quarries, slaves and free labourers were both employed: Rathbone () . Slave labour is also documented for the copper-mines of Soli on Cyprus, and seems to have been common in the ore-producing mines of the Greek East (Alcock () ). Polybius, as cited in Strabo ..: najrontav t»te t dm tän ëRwma©wn kaq ksthn ¡mran dismur©av kaª pentakiscil©av dracmv. drachma ≈ denarius = HS . Diodorus Siculus v.. (plqov ìItalän pep»lase to±v metlloiv, kaª meglouv pejronto ploÅtouv di tn jilokerd©an) and V. (O¬ d’ oÔn ta±v rgas©aiv tän metllwn ndiatr©bontev to±v mn kur©oiv p©stouv to±v plqesi pros»douv peripoioÓsin).
Framing the economic setting
Spanish province itself. And there were also Iberian mine operators. In other words, in the case of non-state mine operators, extraction gains flowed in several geographic directions, including but not merely towards the core of the Empire. 2.8.3 Taxes and rents A third source of income produced further benefits for the Italian economy: taxes and rent inflows, both in cash and in kind. The ratio between cash payments and payments in kind has been the subject of recurrent debate. This is a result of the fact that specifics about taxation are notoriously elusive. After bce, the combination of booty, indemnities and taxation amounted to a sufficiently large sum to allow the Roman state to release its citizens in Italy from the obligation to pay tributum, as we will see in Chapter . Consequently, from then on the increasing number of nonRoman populations subjected to taxation funded the Roman state treasury and augmented the benefits to Italian citizens. Discussing tax-inflows, Hopkins estimates that total revenues increased a hundredfold between the middle of the third century bce and c. bce, rising from about HS – million to over HS million at roughly constant prices. But in evaluating the importance of this tax inflow, we must take account of the fact that the acquisition of Egypt as a province, for example, dates to the very end of this period, and that (according to some scholars) most tax impositions on Greece post-dated Augustan reforms. During most of the preceding Republican period, tax inflows into Italy were significantly lower than HS million. Plutarch claims that under Pompey, annual
Domergue () –. See – and – for lists of the lead bars. A debate mainly conducted between Hopkins () and (/) and Duncan-Jones () and (). For further references, see Hopkins (), n.. More recently, De Ligt () and Alcock () claim that in the eastern provinces, taxation often took the form of money payments. Morley (b) seems to suggest a development over time. Hopkins () . The model is set out in Hopkins (). A later version of the model ((/ ) = ()) takes ce rather than bce as a measurement point. This produces a higher tax influx estimate: a minimum of HS million. Tax revenues thus increased somewhere between a -fold and -fold. Note that the population subject to Roman rule increased ‘only’ about -fold during the same period, if we reckon using the roughest estimates of and million respectively. Alternative population estimates do not significantly alter Hopkins’ thesis of tax growth disproportionate to population growth during the late Republic. The huge net increase in tax flow in Hopkins’ model must result from an assumption that per capita tax rates in the provinces were higher than they had been in Italy, although this is not spelled out. For criticism of Hopkins’ model, see Lo Cascio () and Rathbone () . For an alternative estimate (based on inductive rather than deductive reasoning, but of the same order of magnitude): Duncan-Jones () –. For the discussion of taxation in Greece: Alcock () –. Pausanias .. is at the core of the dispute. Alcock argues that at the very least, the areas defeated in bce were taxed from that time, but that the rest of Greece was taxed when it became a province. For a similar discussion regarding
Economic and ecological parameters
tax incomes amounted to HS million, most of them from Syria. In other words, for much of the period under review tax inflows were far lower than they were at the beginning of the Imperial period, but still they surpassed the state income just before the Second Punic War by a multiple of between and , on a very rough estimate. That is hardly insignificant. In addition to tributum, a number of other taxes were levied by the Roman state: ‘poll’ or ‘head’ taxes, trade taxes in the form of annual sums to be paid by urban craftsmen and traders (at least in Egypt, for which we have documentation), and imperial customs dues. The latter were high – perhaps % – on goods that crossed the external borders of the Empire from the outside, but relatively low, scholars assume, for goods transported within a province or between provinces. In origin, these portoria included fees for the use of harbour facilities. Portoria were temporarily abolished in Italy between bce and Caesar’s dictatorship. A letter by Cicero shows that in the meantime, the remaining inhabitants of the Empire continued to be obliged to pay customs and harbour dues. Losses from the abolition of portoria in Italy were thus compensated for by the influx of portoria from the provinces. The transfer of wheat from various provinces also added to the well-being of Italy. These imports are difficult to categorize in economic terms, because they were an amalgamation of taxation, trade and forced redistribution (that is, trade whose terms and conditions were dictated by Rome). As a tax in kind, grain fed part of Rome’s population, as well as soldiers serving in the army. For the provision of the latter, Sicily and Sardinia already had to pay tithes on their yields to Rome during the second century bce.
˜ the commencement of taxation in Spain: Naco del Hoyo (), esp. –, in whose view taxation did not take a regular form before bce. Plutarch, Pompeius .. He states that the initial amount was HS million, and that Pompey added HS million to this by his conquests. Cf. Duncan-Jones () . Goods for personal use were exempted from customs tax. The Monumentum Ephesenum defines precisely (§–) which goods fell under this heading and which did not. Items carried ‘for the Roman people’ and items carried by people trying to escape the depredations of invading armies were also exempted from customs taxes. Rathbone () . Brunt () . Evidence for rates is scarce: the % frontier-tax is known only for the East. But insofar as they are attested, internal rates were of a different order of magnitude, varying between % and %. Morley (a) . The portoria were originally a tax levied in Italian harbours. Later these customs dues were extended to the provinces and levied on roads as well. Cicero, Letters to Quintus I... See Laet () –, whose account is still the standard work on portoria. Erdkamp () –. According to Livy, Sicily and Sardinia both also paid tithes to Rome in the years preceding the Second Punic War (– bce): Erdkamp () .
Framing the economic setting
Later, the province of Africa provided another source of grain for Italy. While the tax grain initially served the troops on an ad hoc basis, after the Second Punic War measures directed at the provisioning of armies were made more structural. The scope of the policy of imposing payment of grain-shares on provinces during the first half of the second century bce is currently under discussion. But with the passing of the Gracchan corn law of bce, the amount of grain redirected to Rome became large enough to widen the scope of the provision of grain to Roman citizens by the state. It now came to include civilian food supply, by establishing monthly sales of grain at a reduced price. From bce on, citizens received a free ration of grain. The number of citizens fed by spoils of grain fluctuated. In bce, it reached a temporary acme of , eligible men, but it was reduced to between , and , men under Caesar and Augustus. Given that a ration was sufficient to feed . or perhaps people, on average about a third of the inhabitants of the city seem to have been fed by the corn-dole. In addition, some , soldiers were fed by tax grain. That the population of the Italian heartland benefited from this free grain is undisputed. On the other hand, the rise in well-being due to the availability of tax grain should not be overstated. Only a limited group of citizens lived off it. In a recent attempt to estimate the effects of tax payments on the economy of Roman Italy, Maddison estimates that tribute grain added .% to the disposable income of peninsular Italy in Augustan times. At times, moreover, the system was subject to dysfunction because one or more factors or structures on which it depended failed. Adverse weather conditions and lack of protection against piracy in particular caused grain shortages in Rome, leading to increases in market prices. Politicians were well aware of the value of such imports, and took advantage of it in their bickering. That is, at least if we believe Cicero, who wrote in a letter to his friend Atticus that the political strategy adopted by Pompey and the optimates to defeat their enemies was to starve Italy by cutting
Cf. the Lex Agraria § and (Crawford ()) on tithes due on yields of land in Africa by citizens and non-citizens alike. Aldrete and Mattingly () . Erdkamp () –. Rickman () – and . Erdkamp () –. He argues () that in normal years a sufficient amount of tax grain arrived in Rome to feed another third of the city on the produce of the provinces. This grain, however, was sold to the people through market channels. The benefits of this tax grain to individual Roman citizens are therefore disputable, but it did add to the ‘carrying capacity’ of Italy, and cushioned to some extent the vagaries of the weather and agricultural yield there. Maddison () . Hopkins (/) = () .
Economic and ecological parameters
off its access to the grain provinces. But there is also evidence of the opposite situation: for the year bce, Livy records that grain from Sicily and Sardinia lowered the price so much that a merchant would leave his grain to the mariners to cover the freight, because it was no longer worth selling. Supposedly, it was the preceding extra inflow of tax grain from besieged Carthage that caused the glut in Italy. On a more general note, one may agree with Erdkamp in saying that ‘the volumes and distances involved in the distribution of corn in the Roman world may indeed have been unsurpassed in the Mediterranean region until the seventeenth or eighteenth century’. The situation in bce described by Livy must have been recorded because it was exceptional. But it shows the relevance of the argument: Italy was not an isolated entity dependent on internal production and an internal market. It could use its political supremacy to employ connectivity to the benefit of its economy. During the Imperial period, rents from the ownership of estates in the provinces also provided an important source of revenue for the Italian heartland. The profits made by the small elite who owned large tracts of land in the provinces indirectly generated wealth among a larger group of Italian citizens through rising demand. But most scholars agree that the late Republican elite did not yet own much private land in the provinces. As the core of an emerging empire that could impose taxation and enforce other types of wealth transfer via political and military domination, late Republican Italy thus certainly meets one of the criteria that contribute to rising living standards. Exploitation could have led to real growth in the Italian heartland. But it is a misconception to think that connectivity was a factor conducive to growth only insofar as it took the form of pure exploitation. Trade, for example, can be a mix of exchange and exploitation: a powerful customer may pay, but nonetheless underpay. It is well-known that Rome, as the most powerful player, could oblige provincial producers to deliver grain under trade agreements in which they did not receive a fair market price for their goods. This is surely a case that demonstrates that ‘redistribution does not take place by some ecological magic’ and that exploitative control can play a major role in shaping it. Whether the actual transactions were performed by the state or by individuals is irrelevant to my argument. The benefits for Italian citizens were ineluctably the result
Livy ... As observed by Erdkamp () . Erdkamp () . Herz () . See e.g. Rawson () –, and Hopkins (a) . Only toward the end of the Republican period do we find evidence of estates owned by Roman nobles in the provinces. Horden and Purcell () . Rickman () (Provincia Africa).
Framing the economic setting
of prevailing structures of power and political control. From the third century bce on, and especially after its victory in the Second Punic War, Rome increasingly found itself in a position to enforce redistribution to ensure the provision of the Italian heartland. 2.9 economic growth and population growth in a pre-industrial context: synergy or paradox? Exploitation is merely redistribution of wealth. Ceteris paribus, it improved living conditions in Italy, as wealth flowed in from other Mediterranean regions. But this is not evidence of endogenous growth or real growth – of productivity increases within Italy itself that surpassed population increase. For many years, scholarly doctrine was that pre-industrial populations could achieve real growth, but only when population declined. The occurrence of population growth and economic growth at the same time, or ‘efflorescence’, was thought to represent an impossible paradox. Heavily influenced by the view that technological growth was by definition arithmetic, while population growth was exponential, scholars have often treated preindustrial societies as virtually interchangeable in regard to demographic and economic development. Malthusian concepts have deeply influenced academic work and continue to do so, not least in debates between economists and population ecologists over the extent to which human ingenuity is capable of overcoming the problem of limited resources. In the field of ancient history, optimist and pessimist answers to this question are reflected in the famous ‘primitivist’ vs ‘modernist’ debate, which has
For historians working on the ancient economy, the evaluation of the nature of organization of trade has long been core business, as they considered it a main indicator of the level of development of the economy. Finley and Rostovtzeff initiated the debate. The former’s (putative) contention that the Roman economy was a ‘command economy’ has been criticized by many who stress the role of the market and private trade. Lo Cascio () , for example, argues that imperial interventions (in the context of the annona) ‘were no more than a stimulus to private activity conducted within a market situation’. Erdkamp () takes the opposite stance, concluding that private trade did not contribute significantly to the grain provision. Previously, Rostovtzeff had argued that the annona was the largest consumer of imperial trade: Rostovtzeff () f. See also Saller () . Cf. Hilton () and Brenner () . A nice example are the recent attempts to explain the collapse of Easter Island society: Diamond (), Ch. ; Decker and Reuveny (); Hunt (). Note especially the harsh debate between Julien Simon () and () and Paul Ehrlich (). The debate continues to bring forth masses of literature on population and carrying capacity by a range of behavioural scientists. I note only a few recent contributions: Keyfitz (); Linn´er (); Huggins and Skandera (); Balkin (); Rockwood ().
Economic and ecological parameters
focused inter alia on the question of how sophisticated Roman agriculture was. Only in recent years have historians really begun to challenge the doctrine of the mutual exclusiveness of demographic and economic growth in preindustrial economies. While in many cases, population growth did use up or outstrip increases in resources, in some periods and places both living standards and population size increased. Classical Athens was perhaps one society that succeeded in achieving ‘efflorescence’ , like the High Middle Ages in north-western Europe (c.–) and the High Qing period in China (eighteenth century). New insights into the possibility of ‘efflorescence’ in pre-industrial societies prompt the question of what variables affected the relationship between population growth and resource development. 2.10 generating real economic growth: theories and mechanisms As regards agriculture, Esther Boserup has played a key role in showing that population size is not a dependent variable in a ‘production output’ calculation determined purely by exogenous variables. That is, we cannot hold that (change in) the number of people who inhabit a region depends on and is driven by (developments in) the economy or ‘carrying capacity’ of that region. The essence of Boserup’s theory is that population size in itself is a driving factor: demographic growth generates labour intensification, specialization and technological innovation – endogenous economic growth, in other words. She argues that such increases in productivity occur before existing technology falls short of supporting a population. The limits of productivity can be pushed upward even in pre-industrial contexts, and there is no ‘fixed ceiling height’. Furthermore, population size has an independent effect on the potential for economic development: the larger the population, the greater the chance of economic development. This is purely a result of numbers and statistics: the larger the pool of people to draw upon, the better the chance that the pool contains the type of individual who produces innovations. Ceteris paribus, therefore,
For a brief historiographical overview of the primitivist–modernist debate, with a focus on analytical shortcomings and new directions, see Jongman (). More recent: Morris, Saller, and Scheidel (). Morris () collects evidence suggesting such efflorescence. Boserup (). Cf. e.g. Goldstone () –. Harris () makes a similar argument for the late Republic.
Framing the economic setting
the growth rate of technology tends to be proportional to total population. Several scholars have pointed out this principle. Population density may likewise contribute positively to economic performance. A rise in population density may remove barriers to communication and lead to increased contacts between people. This facilitates the spread of new ideas and encourages innovation. In pointing to these counter-forces, we should of course be wary of demographic determinism: multiple factors and conditions interact and influence the outcome of each target variable. While population growth, size and density can have positive effects on economic development, this is not necessarily the case. The extent to which technological innovation and intensification occur is also influenced by the extent to which people expect to profit from capital and/or labour investments. The extent to which freedom of thought and competition are discouraged or encouraged play important roles as well. Normative living standards and their alteration similarly affect inclinations towards innovation and investment. When they rise, individuals become more willing to invest to attain the new normative level of economic wellbeing. More important, the emphasis on the concept of ‘technological innovation’ in the neo-classical growth model disguises the significance of other factors in driving or curtailing real economic growth. Growth in market integration and trade is sometimes regarded as merely describing what growth is, not as a factor stimulating real growth. But others regard trade and market integration as causative mechanisms behind real growth, since they allow for the specialization and intensification that in turn lead to increases in productivity. Alongside these endogenous stimuli to growth, institutional arrangements also affect economic development. This is a somewhat vague umbrella term, which covers a number of factors and characteristics that pertain to the legal, political, social and ideological realms. They are sometimes referred to as part of the ‘superstructure’ or ‘structure’ of society. Favourable institutional arrangements may be thought of as those that facilitate security and lower transaction costs, and include property laws and property relations, receipts, measures undertaken to protect travellers, and the presence of favourable rent and taxation regimes, to name but a few.
Simon () , who refers to Kuznets and William Petty. Kremer () observes that historically the growth rates of populations have been proportional to their sizes on large time – and geographical scales. Simon () f.; Kremer () . On the role of normative living standards, cf. e.g. Lee () f. For an attempt to apply this approach to the Roman world see Kehoe ().
Economic and ecological parameters 2.11 real growth: the roman evidence
For Roman Italy, we can only adduce arguments about the plausibility of simultaneous economic and population growth or ‘efflorescence’ based on circumstantial and lacunose evidence. Inevitably, the imperfect state of the quantifiable evidence imposes itself on any attempt to analyse the key indicators of efflorescence. Some of these must fall out of the equation simply because there is too little evidence, as for example the question of normative living standards. Nonetheless, a broad approach is preferable to a narrow focus on the Malthusian carrying-capacity model, which is tailored to fit closed economies in limited territories unaffected by exogenous change, and which therefore does not fit the character of late Republican Italian society. 2.11.1 Innovation, specialization and urbanization Since agriculture played a central role in Roman society, innovation and specialization in this sector are key to understanding economic dynamics in the late Republic. There is certainly evidence for productivity enhancing change in this sector. The rise in the number of villas indicates increasing specialization in production in the countryside – although it must be noted that even on slave-staffed villas owned by the Roman elite, the food needed for workers was produced on the estate itself, so that full specialization was never achieved. That specialization in accord with Von Th¨unen’s propositions on the organization of production in concentric zones took place, is well known: the most perishable goods were produced closest to the centres of demand, because these goods (e.g. flowers) could not be transported over long distances. Products that required relatively little land to cultivate were particularly attractive in the most densely populated agricultural zones, where land prices were highest. Within Italy, Rome provided a definite stimulus to agricultural production in its hinterland, by providing a vast market for perishable goods. More easily transportable goods could be cultivated further away. Regional specialization in relatively remote areas (Lucania; Bruttium in the south) is also attested. This kind of specialization, often in cattle breeding, has frequently been regarded as evidence of low levels of economic
See e.g. De Ligt () . Cf. De Neeve (b) for extensive discussion of Von Th¨unen’s location theory (, esp. –). Morley (), esp. –, and Morley ().
Framing the economic setting
development, and regions that turned to extensive forms of cultivation have often been regarded as declining. But this need not be true: an increasing specialization in flocks might be driven by rising market demand for their products, notably meat and wool. In the Roman case, the growing needs of the army and the swelling urban population without direct access to cattle drove market demand for wool and other animal products upward. The growth of flocks and pasture lands in the Republican South may thus be considered a sign of intensification. Capital investments directed at agricultural expansion were also made: the drainage of the vast Podelta, as described by Strabo, is an instructive example of the scale such projects could take. As we will see in Chapter , climatic change also facilitated exploitation of previously uncultivable lands, and increased the profitability of marginal lands. As for the production side, one phenomenon that has been taken to indicate that Roman agriculture performed comparatively well among preindustrial societies is the relatively large size of Roman cattle. The height of the animals at the withers exceeded that of most Bronze and Iron Age and medieval cattle by over centimetres, and they were up to twice their predecessors’ and descendants’ weight. This may point to a system of ley-farming that integrated cattle breeding and crop cultivation, with higher productivity as a result. This hypothesis, however, requires some qualification. At the moment, archaeo-zoological evidence allows for only a limited number of empirical assessments of animal bone size, and most finds are from urban settings (sanctuaries) and villa contexts.
See Roselaar () – on animal husbandry in Italy during the late Republic. Cornell () –; Roth () . Livy provides a good impression of the scale of demand for wool generated by the army: in bce, pounds of gold were earmarked to be spent on clothing for the troops in Spain (Livy ..–); in bce, , togas and , tunics were ordered for troops in Macedonia (Livy ..). Strabo ..: polÆ d kaª tv nt¼v toÓ Pdou kate©ceto Ëp¼ län, di’ æn %nnibav calepäv dilqe pro·Ün pª Turrhn©aná ll’ nyuxe t ped©a ¾ SkaÓrov diÛrugav plwtv p¼ toÓ Pdou mcri Prmhv gwn, ‘A large part also of what lay within Cispadana was covered by marshes, through which Hannibal passed with difficulty when he was moving forward into Tyrrhenia. But Scaurus drained the plains by creating navigable canals from the Po to the country of the Parmesans’. (Trans. S. H.) On marginal lands and their economic importance, see Boserup () and (). Cf. also Horden and Purcell () –. Kron (), () – and (). See also Lirb () f. The increases in agricultural yields and the greater productivity of animal husbandry during the ‘Agricultural Revolution’ of the Dutch Golden Age and that of early-modern England are largely attributed to the spread of ley-farming: Pleket () – and –. The system introduced a (partial) transition from natural grazing to produced fodder as a result of growing population pressure: Boserup () –. Kron () points to accompanying reproductive benefits and the reduced vulnerability to disease of well-fed livestock as further contributions to the productivity of livestock farming. Kron ().
Economic and ecological parameters
As a consequence, the large bones may be unrepresentative of average cattle size: perhaps what we have found are the best of the league, owned by the rich and offered to the gods. Bone finds in the Biferno Valley Project in Samnium do, however, confirm the presence of large cattle in a comparatively poor Italian region. But the phenomenon may still have been regional in character. The question of technological innovation raises further difficulties, because what matters most to the story of economic development is the extent to which innovations were adopted and spread across the population. If they are not adopted, or not adopted widely enough, money does not flow. And while we can collect evidence pointing to the invention of various new devices and methods to do things quicker and better, how many people made use of them is something we do not (yet) know. The role of urbanization in spurring economic development deserves attention as well. There is no consensus on the overall role the ancient city played: whereas scholarship has few issues with the notion that the concentration of people in urban settings spurred demand and could thus function as an engine driving agricultural productivity, sharp debates have split those same scholars regarding the supply-side (how productive was Rome?) and the rate of urbanization. This is not the place to review this discussion. Accepting the thesis that urbanization rates tell us much about the economic development of a society, many scholars have persisted in attempting to identify urbanization rates in the ancient world.
Kron () –. Details on the bone finds can be found in the survey publication: Barker (), Ch. , esp. f. Potential bias: Jeremia Pelgrom, personal communication. Another problem is that bone size may reflect age and sex. The latter cannot always be reconstructed and are therefore confounding variables in interpreting the significance of reconstructed animal size. Note that Lo Cascio and Malanima () allow for the presence of regional variation in the degree of agricultural intensification in their carrying capacity estimate. See Harris () , Table . for a schedule summing up late Republican innovations in various domains. The current Oxford Roman Economy Project aims to elucidate these issues by adopting quantitative archaeological approaches: Bowman and Wilson (). Finley () in particular saw technology as virtually irrelevant in the Roman Empire; Harris () is sceptical as well. A lucid and concise introduction to the ‘consumer vs producer city’ debate may be found in Wilson (). Note also the contributions by Morley () –; Morris (); Jongman (); Andreau () –; Erdkamp (); Morris et al. (); Bagnall () and Lo Cascio (). It was Finley () who argued, following in the footsteps of Sombart and Weber, that Roman (or other ancient) cities were ‘consumer cities’, on the ground that their elites were not involved in trade and/or manufacturing, a characterization that produced the subsequent massive debate. Recently e.g. De Ligt () on urbanization rates in Republican Italy.
Framing the economic setting
The exceptional size of the city of Rome is impressive, given that increased urbanization requires increased agricultural output: no agricultural society can sustain urbanization without increases in agricultural productivity (read: surplus), because cities must be fed. Even in the case of Rome, which was partially sustained by imports from outside Italy, this much is clear. At the same time, it is easy to forget that Rome was the capital not only of Italy, but of an empire. This fact, as well as definitional issues and uncertainty about population size, considerably muddles comparisons with urbanization rates in other times and places. We must also recognize that urbanization may be a socio-political phenomenon rather than evidence of agricultural ‘overproduction’ that paves the way for nucleation. In other words, the size of Rome may tell us more about socio-political developments than about the productivity of the Italian economy. The focus must therefore be on the trend rather than on the absolute rate of urbanization. Increasing urbanization is positively correlated with specialization, as high population density ensures that specialists in other skills and products are available for any need that may arise. Specialization in turn facilitates economic growth, so that urbanization can be regarded as a proxy for growth. In addition, people can take advantage of the opportunities of proximity, diversity and marketplace competition when population density rises, increasing efficiency and productivity. From this point of view, the pace of Rome’s growth is suggestive. During the late Republic, the city was booming, increasing in size from perhaps , to , at the beginning of the second century bce to an estimated , to million inhabitants under Augustus. This implies a roughly -fold increase in years, a growth rate that exceeds those of all postulated population scenarios for Italy as a whole. The rate of urbanization, in other words, unquestionably increased over the course of the late Republican period. What about specialization in urban contexts? The one comparison that can place Roman Italy in a larger context is that between the number of occupations recorded in inscriptions from Rome and those found in mid-eighteenth-century London, just before industrialization. For Rome,
Cf. Bagnall (). Definitional issues continue to plague comparisons assessing urbanization partly because different studies (and different countries) employ different criteria, so that e.g. in some cases towns with over , inhabitants are counted as cities, whereas in other cases places with , inhabitants are already considered urban. E.g. Morley () f. Cf. also Ch. on migration and urbanization for estimates.
Economic and ecological parameters
c. different occupations are recorded; for London, . On this indicator, specialization in Rome seems to have lagged a bit behind, but not dramatically so. We should also note that the list of trades, professions and arts (both mechanical and liberal) practised in London around is comprehensive, whereas the number of occupations known through inscriptions from Rome (N = ,) is a product of more or less random finds, and is therefore most likely an underestimate. In addition, the inscriptions were not studied with the aim of determining the total range of professions attested, and some were deliberately left out of the dataset for various reasons. Substantial groups were excluded: men serving as public administrative officials; those who worked in the theatre, circus and arena; and soldiers and military support staff. The downward bias in the attested number of occupations for Rome thus suggests that levels of economic specialization in the two cities were in fact of similar scale. But this conclusion can only hold for the Imperial period, to which most inscriptions date; the Republican period remains out of scope. All that may be inferred is that the level of specialization observed during the Empire implies expansion of specialization during Republican times. Specialization in occupations can only exist where there are clusters of demand, or in situations where there is market exchange. The seemingly high levels of specialization might thus be taken to indicate economic growth. But the validity of using labour-differentiation as an indicator of economic development and broadening demand on a wider societal scale in the case of Roman Italy depends in part on the extent to which occupations performed by slaves are responsible for the seemingly high levels of specialization observed. Money invested in slaves would not as easily bring out the kind of multiplier-effects that generate sustainable economic growth, as their servile status undermined their power to consume. It is also doubtful whether professions performed by slaves reflect added value in economic terms, or whether they merely reflect conspicuous consumption. Examples of slaves who had similar professions as ‘Psamate, slave of Furia, hairdresser’ (CIL .) come to mind. Occupations such as these, performed by slaves in elite households, were arguably not very productive and thus distort comparisons. Among the inscriptions from Rome studied by Joshel, % relate to slaves (% if possible slaves are included), and her
London: Campbell (); Hopkins (b) . Rome: research into the inscriptions by Treggiari () and Joshel () replaces Hopkins (b). Joshel () counts different occupations; Hopkins (b) counts . Cf. also Saller (). London and Rome: Hopkins () . N = , equals the number of occupational inscriptions studied by Joshel (). Cf. Joshel (). On jobs performed by slaves: Bradley (), Ch. .
Framing the economic setting
database excludes all slaves and freedmen of the emperor and his family. Of all professionals, .% were employed in the field of domestic services. If, on the ground of their limited added value, we discount these domestic service professionals from equations that use labour-differentiation as an indicator of economic development and broadening demand on a wider societal scale, estimates for Rome must be lowered by a good %. This suggests that London may in fact have been ahead in terms of occupational specialization, but still implies that any gap between the two was not dramatic. 2.11.2 Building a network of connections: trade Specialization is dependent on successful redistribution of goods between locations. While forced redistribution played a role, the majority of total trade flows was the result of private reciprocal interactions from which both sides benefited. Trade is important to economic development because the specialization it allows enables producers and traders to profit from comparative advantages. As such, trade facilitates endogenous growth. Unfortunately, the absolute scale of trade and specialization during the late Republican period remains opaque. Much would have depended on the extent of market integration, since the better the connections between markets, the more comparative advantages could be exploited. The traditional view was that market exchange was limited to small amounts of luxury products, for which demand was low because of the limited size of elite circles. But for some time now it has been recognized that the redistribution of goods was in fact to a certain extent a necessity driven by environmental variation. Moreover, even if individual peasants were poor and their surplus production and demand for market goods small, their aggregate demand was still considerable: low individual purchasing power was to some extent offset by the fact that peasants formed the overwhelming majority in society. The role of market
Joshel () , Table .. The largest category (.%) of professions relates to manufacturing; administrative professions rank third (.). Professional service (.%), building (.%) and sales (.%) follow at a considerable distance. Note that this internal distribution reflects that of attested inscriptions only. On markets and fairs in the Roman Empire: De Ligt (). Cf. De Ligt (), esp. –. See also Morley (b) and Horden and Purcell () –. So Hopkins (b) . Cf. also Morley (b) . But it can rightly be objected that demand outside of the major city centres was too dispersed to form an attractive market for which to produce: De Ligt () f. and – and Erdkamp () .
Economic and ecological parameters
exchange has thus been downplayed to an unrealistic extent by ancient historians. Although all this leaves nothing but a vague impression of the absolute scale of trade (allowing for deadlock in the infamous debate among ancient historians over ‘primitivism’ vs ‘modernism’), traces in the archaeological record do give a better idea of developments over time. The evidence is now well known. Parker’s study of the distribution of Mediterranean shipwrecks revealed a steep increase in numbers from the third century bce onwards. Recent re-evaluations of his research have emphasized potential biases in the distribution over time. But these affect the observed frequency of distribution for the Imperial rather than the Republican period, and do not undermine the conclusion that trade expanded rapidly during late Republican times. Although regional biases also undermine the solidity of general inferences, there can be no doubt that with the spread of the Empire, the volume of trade increased substantially in the regions of Spain and France, where the majority of wrecks were found. The shipwrecks provide evidence for expansion of wine and oil trade in particular. The dominance of remains of such shipments results from the fact that the amphorae in which these goods were packed for transport are easily recognizable indicators of the presence of an underwater wreck. Evidence for a growing production of metal products and coins has also been interpreted as indicating improvements in economic performance through increased trade. Arctic ice cores display traces of metal pollution, implying that during the late Republic lead and copper smelting increased rapidly. The evidence is relatively straightforward, because emission rates are dependent on copper-smelting procedures, which remained uncontrolled (and consequently relatively wasteful) in ways that did not change throughout our period and indeed until the Industrial Revolution. This means that lead and copper pollution records can be taken as a proxy for the production of metal products and coins. But although increasing monetization may result from economic growth through increases in trade
On this, cf. De Ligt () f. Temin () argues that markets were common in the ancient world. Parker () , Fig. (with an index of ships on pp. –), reprinted in Callata¨y () . For more details on the biases affecting the Imperial period in particular, see Morley (b) –; Scheidel (b); and especially Wilson () who produces adjusted probability distributions of shipwrecks. Harris () comments on Wilson (). Note that the traces of pollution recorded in the Arctic ice signify air pollution: Callata¨y (). Capasso () summarizes evidence of lead poisoning in Roman bone finds. Levels of lead peak in bone finds dated to the first through third centuries ce (see esp. –), at – mg per gram of bone-ash, a quantity eight to nine times as high as during earlier and later periods. Hong et al. () –.
Framing the economic setting
and production, it may also signify increased state spending rather than real growth in the economy at large. The situation remains so opaque that William Harris described Roman demand for metals as ‘a real mystery’. In considering trade, it should be borne in mind that the intensity of connections was extremely variable. Markets could be more important in some years than in others, depending on local yields. Bad harvests would create opportunities for economic gain by traders when demand for basic foods could not be met locally. Usurious profits were possible in such cases. But demand and turnover were probably larger in years when good yields spawned demand for ‘luxury’, i.e. a bit more than bare subsistence. Location also mattered: the extent to which Italian communities could have expected to import bulk foodstuffs depended on their geographical position. Distance to Rome and its ports, the major transportation hubs of Italy, must have had a direct impact on the cost of transport. Other coastal towns could perhaps import grain and other goods directly from other regions in the Mediterranean, but for inland towns and cities, the situation was more difficult. In principle, the longer the trip, the more expensive, and, by implication, the more surplus one needed to produce to meet the comparatively high costs of imported goods. For inland communities located on the banks of navigable rivers, import was perhaps still affordable. But dependence on land transport rapidly increased the price of imported goods for every kilometre travelled. By how much remains unclear. But there can be no question that the cost of land transportation was an order of magnitude higher than that by sea or other navigable waters. We find echoes of the phenomenon in Pliny, who in Imperial times suggested that the Emperor Trajan organize the building of a canal between a lake and the sea. Pliny explains that he brings the suggestion forward because in the current situation, products had to be transported
Hong et al. (). The question of whether increased lead pollution indicates economic progress or merely reflects increased state power is raised in Scheidel (b). Mystery: Harris () . Cf. Morley (a) . I add the qualifier in principle here because the costs of transportation over land were variable too, influenced by the quality of the road network, and depending on altitude differences along the route. Another factor affecting the real cost of transportation was the density and size of trading posts along the way. Because of these confounding variables, some longer routes over land may ultimately have been cheaper than shorter routes. See Greene () – with Fig. b. For archaeological evidence on sea and riverborne trade in Italy, e.g. along the Po River, cf. Pasquinucci and Weski (). Jones () estimated that transport over land cost about times as much as transport by sea (on the basis of the Diocletian price-edict). Despite criticism of the precise figures (cf. Jongman () –, who points at the relevance of the weight of yield per ha; and Laurence ()), the underlying theory remains valid: Jongman () –.
Economic and ecological parameters
by cart across the area in between, which could only be done ‘with great difficulty and increased expense’. Logic – now under empirical investigation by the Oxford Roman Economy Project – suggests that, as a result, those who lived both far away from Rome and at a considerable distance from major waterways needed to organize local or (inter)regional trade over fairly limited distances to keep costs and prices manageable. In remote places, few could have afforded to pay for imports originating beyond the Italian Peninsula. In other words, the extent to which imports from other provinces of the Empire penetrated a community decreased with rising real distance (see also Chapter ). Opportunities for economic gain by selling to markets were likewise inversely correlated with distance to Rome and waterways. In short, for levels of economic development during the Republican period, regional differentiation deeply affects outcomes. On the other hand, especially before piracy was suppressed around the mid-first century bce, overland transport had some advantages over sea transport, when it came to security costs. Transit costs for overland transport were also lower, and the quality and density of the road network in Italy improved substantially over the last two centuries bce. 2.11.3 Institutions: legal and socio-political settings Legal, social and political institutions can contribute to economic development and real economic growth in two ways: by lowering risk through providing security, and by promoting and facilitating efficiency in production and distribution. In so doing, constitutions, laws and property rights remove formal (but not informal) constraints on economic interaction, and shape the profitability and feasibility of engaging in economic activity. They function as an exogenous factor affecting economic development. For these reasons, the study of the economic performance of Roman Italy can profit from the analysis of institutions and their development. Efforts in this direction have gained momentum in recent years as
Letter exchange between Trajan and Pliny, quoted in Greene (). See Bowman and Wilson () –. Laurence (), Ch. . High transport costs did not necessarily prevent the movement of goods. In considering this, it should be taken into account that market price levels of products were not uniform, so that despite higher transport costs, it could still pay to buy a product somewhere further away, or to transport it there to sell it for a higher price. Much attention has been given to the existence of such informal constraints in the ancient world by historians ever since Finley’s The Ancient Economy. Note that informal constraints are generally considered part of the institutional setting as well: e.g. North () . Frier and Kehoe () . North () .
Framing the economic setting
more attention is paid to the political economy of the ancient world from the perspective of New Institutional Economics. There is no room here to go into detail, and I will merely offer some examples pointed out elsewhere of cases in which institutional arrangements were beneficial to economic exchange. These cannot of course be taken to imply that institutions are by definition positive factors. Dysfunctional institutional arrangements may instead curtail economic growth and discourage production or participation in exchanges in which these institutions play a role. They can also make the adoption of more efficient alternatives too costly, or place them beyond conceptual reach. On the informal level, the infamous Roman ‘rentier mentality’ is a well-known example. The presence of labour markets is an elusive but important question. Well-developed labour markets can couple demand and supply smoothly, rendering production more efficient. This facilitates real economic growth. In their valuation of the Roman labour market, historians, following Sir Moses Finley, have generally emphasized its underdevelopment, by pointing to slavery and the agricultural nature of the economy. Both characteristics can be understood as ‘contra-indications’ against the presence of a well-developed labour market. To a certain extent, that is true. The growing availability of slaves curbed the market for free wage labour. In addition, the low population densities of agricultural societies indeed do not spur market integration. As Peter Temin pointed out in a seminal article, however, there are caveats to add to both observations. First, with regard to slavery: by contrast with other slave systems, Roman slavery was relatively open. On the basis of admittedly anecdotal literary sources, Temin argues that slave and free labour were not distinct categories. There is evidence of mobility among slaves, and of slaves participating in the labour market. Second, although the Roman economy was predominantly agricultural in nature, the late Republican period, as we have seen, was also characterized by substantial increases in levels of urbanization. The region around Rome in particular became exceptionally urbanized by pre-industrial standards. Conditions were thus relatively favourable to the development of a unified labour market.
For the Roman Empire e.g. by Frier and Kehoe (); Kehoe (). North () –. His argument that economic change and concomitant performance are ‘path dependent’ ascribes a large role to structural constraints and frameworks that shape adaptive processes to changing circumstances. To the detriment of ancient economic history, according to Jongman () . Temin (). See on this Temin ().
Economic and ecological parameters
Another indicator of the presence of a functioning labour market is tenancy. Columella’s De Re Rustica integrates tenants so casually into its discussion of agricultural labour that, on the face of it, we would be led to believe that the practice of using ‘country-bred’ free tenant-farmers was common in the early Empire and based on a longer tradition. One reason large landholders might have preferred to work with tenants rather than slaves, it has been suggested, was that they could benefit from the support of tenants in local politics. As clients with citizenship, tenants could back their landlord with their vote, while slaves could not. But before the first century bce, tenancy (a form of contract labour) is badly attested in the Roman Republic. It is difficult to explain the silence. Nevertheless, many scholars have supported the idea that the institution was important already in the second century bce. It certainly was in the first. Finally, attention should be paid to the phenomenon of migration, which facilitates the workings of a labour market. On a positive note, we may observe that there seem to have been few constraints on the migration of individuals in our period. But here too silence may be misleading. Positive contributions to the economic climate were made by the Roman legal framework, which was well-developed by comparative standards. The Roman legal system certainly had deficiencies. More important for our purposes, however, is the fact that some positive legal instruments that defined property rights and reduced the cost of enforcing them can be dated to the late Republic. Contracts could now be formalized systematically, which gave parties involved in business greater security. Roman law now established, for example, the rights of contracting parties when they had involved mediating agents. Security for traders (and travellers) was significantly improved during the late Republic by the suppression of piracy by Pompey in bce. The victory was a result of the Lex Gabinia, which conferred immense power on the commander to deal with
On tenancy as a mode of economic organization, see Erdkamp () – with further references. Thus Dyson () f. Columella, De Re Rustica .. De Neeve (a), esp. – argued that it only became significant in Italy during the late second or early first century bce. But see for criticism on this view Brunt () , n. and De Ligt (). Roselaar () – provides further references to other scholars who espouse the view that tenancy was already a factor in the second century bce. In the absence of clear evidence, all arguments put forward are derivative. For limitation of mobility as a major constraint on development in later Europe, see Brenner () (especially in the context of serfdom in agriculture). Frier and Kehoe () –. Garnsey () raises the question. De Ligt ().
Framing the economic setting
pirates in the Mediterranean. As a result, trade in the Roman world benefited from the availability of a large area where transactions could be performed in relative security. The expansion of the road network, although largely embarked upon for military reasons, increasingly facilitated travel, communication and economic integration. We know of other legal and political efforts to constrain transaction costs and risks, but because we cannot date them precisely, it remains unclear how much such improvements contributed to better conditions for real economic growth during the late Republican period. Finally, in thinking about real economic growth during the late Republican period, arguments about security of and entitlement to land under cultivation should not be overlooked. Because the security of the return on investments is enhanced by stronger property rights, ‘entrepreneurs’ – in the Roman case, farmers – may have been encouraged to put more effort into production, with higher productivity as a result. The late Republican period seems to have witnessed privatization of this sort. Privatization of land should therefore not be ignored as a factor stimulating innovation and intensification in agriculture. However, ancient historians have instead emphasized a perceived disinclination to invest among Roman smallholders. The underlying reasoning, in brief, was that the goal of a subsistence farmer was subsistence and no more; a farmer-owner would only have been induced to work harder when external factors, such as heavier taxation, required this. Paul Erdkamp has already attempted to undermine this amateur psychology, pointing out that it may just as easily be argued that a ‘subsistence’ farmer wanted subsistence and a little more. A ‘mentality’ explanation is therefore unsatisfying, and in principle there is no reason to think that Roman farmers were disinclined to intensify
During the preceding year, they had sacked Rome’s harbour town Ostia. See e.g. Rost (), Ch. ‘Der Seer¨auberkrieg’ and Seager () –. Temin () . E.g. legal procedures for suing people who were de facto agents, and mechanisms for money transfers (Harris ()), and the possibility of buying insurance on shipments (Temin () –). The Lex Agraria of bce refers to the sale of public land to private individuals in Roman Africa. It describes the main rules governing such sales: De Ligt (a). For comparative evidence on privatization of land, see Roselaar () –. Erdkamp () f. I would like to add to this, by observing that an explanation put forward to elucidate the slackening performance of French agriculture in the seventeenth century is precisely that the state levied arbitrary taxes on land owned, which created insecurity among land-owners. This suggests that private ownership by smallholders per se is not an argument for a lack of desire to invest. It was rather the arbitrariness of the taxation system that worked as a disincentive. See Brenner () .
Economic and ecological parameters
production. Instead, the abolition of taxation in Italy itself should be taken as a factor that not only increased real income by removing a burden, but was conducive to investment by freeing income previously creamed off by the state. That said, it should be stressed that private ownership of small plots also curtailed opportunities for generating wealth, because of the overall limited financial reserves available to a smallholder for investment. 2.12 windows of opportunity: warfare and real incomes Warfare created economic windows of opportunity for individual citizens as well. Soldiers were always relatively well-compensated, so that the high recruitment levels needed to maintain the Roman army (see also Chapter ) meant that many fairly well-paid jobs were available. But at times, scarcity of candidates for army service enabled citizens to rapidly improve their real incomes and economic situation – for example when few people were willing to serve in the army (for whatever reason), and army commanders were desperate to recruit troops because the stakes were high. One such episode took place during the civil wars in the first century bce. Competition for men willing to fight was so high that the military bonuses handed out rose to unprecedented levels. The evidence regarding bonuses offers a useful insight into what Roman generals were willing and able to offer citizens for their military support during the Civil War. Whereas in the second century bce the median bonus had been denarii (just over one-fifth of a year’s pay), in bce it had increased to the equivalent of seven years’ pay, and in bce it amounted to the equivalent of twenty-two years’ pay. Because base salaries had only doubled in the meantime, there can be little doubt that these increases surpassed inflation. The situation implies that Roman soldiers in this period profited from substantial increases in real wages. Given the number of Roman citizens involved in warfare in this stage of late Republican history, the impact of their bonuses on the purchasing power of the body of Roman families must have been considerable. Scheidel calculates that up to . million people may have received a direct share of this money because a family member received such a bonus. Others must have profited indirectly through the injection of money into the Italian economy by their expenditure (i.e. from the multiplier effect). But this exceptionally profitable episode was short-lived and came to an end with the advent of peacetime and the transition to a professional army.
Scheidel (b) and , n. . From that time on, we hear nothing of increases in bonuses. Base wages did rise from around denarii (or HS ) per year between c. to bce to denarii (or HS ) per year
Framing the economic setting
Needless to say, opportunities to raise one’s income by enrolling in the army also came at a potentially high cost in terms of demographic living standards. Health and mortality risks were high, especially at times when army legions were frequently involved in active fighting, as for example during the Civil Wars. These issues will be discussed in Chapter . 2.13 conclusion Economic conditions are tightly interwoven with demographic developments. Whether migration, life expectancy, opportunities for marriage and establishing an independent household, or aggregate population trends are in question, individual prospects of gaining a living and improving living conditions make a difference to demographic outcomes. For these reasons, this chapter has focused on the general economic performance of late Republican Italy to set a framework for the demographic analyses that follow. Many historians have already delved into the question in recent decades, which is why much of this chapter has relied on their analyses and findings. When it comes to drawing conclusions from the diverse evidence for Roman economic performance, the point of comparison is crucial. One frequently adopted approach has been to rate Roman economic performance on a scale encompassing all world history up to the present day. From this perspective, the Roman economy can only score badly. Annual rates of growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) did not, as far as we can tell, rise above .% before the Industrial Revolution, while rates of real growth of over % per year, and at times well above that, are observed thereafter. Modern economic growth is of a different order of magnitude. In retrospect, Rome, as a pre-industrial society, was far from an ‘Economic Tiger’. Indeed, it might instead be designated an ‘Economic Snail’. That this approach is not the most fruitful perspective is among the main lessons learnt from the extensive ‘primitivist–modernist’ debate. At any rate, it does not help us assess the performance of late Republican Rome compared to other pre-industrial societies, or to earlier or later periods of that society’s own history.
under Augustus: Von Freyberg () . But since we have no information about inflation rates, it remains difficult to tell what this meant for real wages. Cf. Duncan-Jones () f. for the suggestion that inflation rates were low (but not non-existent) before Diocletian. In any case, the nominal wage increase certainly lagged far behind the rate of increases in bonuses during the Civil Wars. Ray () . On types of economic growth: Goldstone () –. For an insightful analysis that integrates these concepts into the ‘primitivist’ and ‘modernist’ debate on the ancient economy: Saller ((), and again as ()).
Economic and ecological parameters
The focus on the contrasts between pre-industrial and modern growth, and on the limited performance of pre-industrial economies, has tended to obscure the presence of variety and development (positive or negative) in ancient and/or pre-modern economies. In this chapter, I have focused on the analysis of factors and proxies that offer insight into Rome’s economic development in the late Republic. This analysis makes it evident that aggregate or ‘volume’ growth can be posited with reasonable certainty from merely theoretical inferences. This conclusion is confirmed by archaeological indicators such as increases in the number of shipwrecks and in the amount of lead pollution in the atmosphere. Establishing whether the increased volume of goods merely reflects the increasing geographical size of the Roman Empire, or whether we can speak of real growth and, if so, how much, poses more substantial problems. The answers to these questions are partially dependent on population development trends, which, as already noted, are much debated. Income distribution is a further concern, as real growth may end up in the hands of a limited share of the population when increasing stratification undercuts any positive effects that real growth might have on the real incomes of ordinary citizens. Despite the fact that economists tend to use per capita growth as a synonym for real growth, the presence of real growth therefore did not necessarily mean improvement for every ‘caput’ in Italy. At the very least, the evidence analysed above makes it clear that the configuration of conditions in late Republican Italy includes several characteristics connected with real economic growth in other pre-industrial societies. This suggests that we may conclude that theoretically – i.e. under a stationary population – Italy was capable of achieving limited real growth during the last two centuries bce. The most important of these characteristics and changes was the fact that Rome and Italy were at the centre of an expanding empire. Concurrent with this development, changes and developments in the institutional sphere created a favourable framework for the economy, for example by enhancing trust in transactions and providing increasingly secure transportation. To these factors should be added the increased opportunities for trade created by the integration of ever-larger geographical spaces. To some degree at least, this must have encouraged specialization of the kind we can identify on large estates in Italy. Moreover, there is a positive correlation between imperialism and an influx of wealth into the Empire’s core. There is certainly little reason to doubt that
Cf. Scheidel (a), esp. , who suggests that preconditions for and indices of real income growth were mixed during the second century bce, and good during the first.
Framing the economic setting
Roman imperialism led to an influx of assets into Italy. War booty, taxes, rents and war indemnities would ceteris paribus have led to real economic growth in the heartland, especially during the late Republic. During that period expenditures for army provisioning were also concentrated within the region, since the vast majority of soldiers were Italian. Consequently, state expenditure on warfare (financed largely by external funds) benefited citizens who lived in Italy, as well as their dependents. Others gained indirectly as a result of the multiplier effect. Economic opportunities outside the realm of agriculture were expanding and would open up increasingly diverse means to earn a living for Italian citizens. The economic situation of others improved because free or subsidized grain freed up income that could be spent on other commodities. Several groups, in other words, benefited economically from the expansion of Roman power. But evidence for the ancient economy leaves numerous aspects of economic life and social groups out of scope, making it impossible to draw conclusions about per capita growth covering all of Italian society. Despite the expansion of non-agricultural activities, the agricultural sector itself remained overwhelmingly dominant. For economic historians, the centrality of agriculture in pre-industrial societies has been a prime reason for scepticism about economic performance and population sustainability. Natural resources are not infinite, and without modern machinery agricultural output could be pushed up only so much by more intensive and efficient use of available resources. Indeed, the growth potential of Roman Italy was constrained by the lack of technological innovations leading to reliance on mechanical power rather than on human or animal power or watermills (or other devices, the use of which is geographically bound). But the mere fact that there was a limit to the number of people which could be fed on the production of Italian agriculture (even combined with imports), does not mean that the population of the country could not increase. In this chapter, I have sought to demonstrate that Rome did not in fact hit a ‘carrying capacity ceiling’ on any of the population estimates put forward so far, whether low, middle or high. Previous work underestimated Italy’s potential through inadequate incorporation of the productive potential of non-agricultural lands, miscalculation and insufficient consideration of the diversity of production. When these factors are taken into account, it is evident that the carrying capacity of the Roman economy left room for population increase in Italy. This conclusion has important implications for subsequent chapters. From a theoretical perspective, a wide range of
See Cornell ().
Economic and ecological parameters
population size and population development scenarios remains possible. But the various scenarios have different implications for the overall level of the population’s economic well-being, since the larger the population and the more rapid its growth, the more this would have reduced real (per capita) economic growth. The subsequent historical experience of Italian population development should also be taken into account when we consider the plausibility of different demographic scenarios. This history shows that the highest population scenario proposed for late Republican and early Imperial times presupposes extraordinary demographic achievement for Roman Italy. Economic conditions form an important part of the general background setting for demographic dynamics. A further major part of that framework is climate and climatic change, which had a direct impact on demographic conditions, as well as indirect effects on Italy’s population through the way they shaped economic conditions. The climate of Roman Italy during late Republican times and its relationship with economy and demography are accordingly the subject of the next chapter.
That is: even if within Italy population and agricultural output were to have grown in harmony at similar rates, the size of wealth inflows from other regions of the Empire would have remained unaffected – and would have needed to be redistributed among a larger pool of people.
c h a p te r 3
Climate and climatic change
Mars, Father, I beg and ask you to be benevolent toward me, and toward my house and family . . . I beg that you protect and shield us against visible and invisible illnesses, dearth and destruction, disasters, and bad weather, and that you ward them off; and that you please let my crops, my grains, my vineyards and plantations grow great, and ripen well. Cato the Elder, On Farming (De Agricultura)
3.1 introduction Weather conditions, good or bad, affect daily life. Romans, at least those as conservative as the third/second-century bce politician and writer Cato the Elder, thought it wise to invoke one of the most powerful and forceful Roman gods to shield them from bad weather: Mars. The recourse to the god of war for protection against natural phenomena might seem unexpected, but it is hardly surprising that temperature, wind and precipitation play a large role in ancient accounts of farming such as Cato’s De Agricultura. Historians of later times as well have often pointed to the importance of the variability of the weather and the vulnerability of smallholders to weather conditions, which could change suddenly and undermine their ability to support themselves. This estimation of the importance of the weather is certainly correct. Climate, by contrast, is often treated as a static background condition or simply overlooked. Historical work investigating climatic issues and their
(Translation S. H.) Original text (Loeb edition): ‘Mars pater, te precor quaesoque uti sies volens propitius mihi domo familiaeque nostrae . . . uti tu morbos visos invisosque, viduertatem vastitudinemque, calamitates intemperiasque prohibessis defendas averruncesque; utique tu fruges, frumenta, vineta virgultaque grandire beneque evenire siris’. As exemplified most vividly in Garnsey (). I.e. the long-run average conditions (measured over a minimum of years).
Economic and ecological parameters
impact on the Roman world has focused primarily on the late Empire. Famously, Gibbon in the eighteenth century assigned climate a role in his discussion of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. The theme of the interrelationship between climatic and historical development has subsequently been taken up by other scholars. But for the late Republican period, little work has been done, and no systematic, synoptic account of climate change in the Roman world exists. The assumption underlying such neglect seems to be that the climate of Roman Italy was more or less as it is now, and therefore unworthy of attention in historical enquiry. Climate, from this perspective, seems connected to Fernand Braudel’s history of the longue dur´ee and hardly relevant to the relatively short-term developments that took place during the time spans described by written sources. But this approach is misguided. The Little Ice Age, for example, the importance of which was in fact briefly stressed by Braudel in his longue dur´ee framework of historical analysis, is generally thought to have lasted from c. to c. in Europe. This was a ‘cold snap’ from the perspective of climate history, and an oscillation beyond the scope of the
See Shaw () – for a historiography, which brings to the fore how climate change enters the arguments of ancient historians mostly when explanations for the collapse or downfall of ancient civilizations are sought. Gibbon in particular believed that the cold in the Germanic areas contributed to the ability of the Germanic tribes to attack the Roman Empire. In his view, the climate in Germania had been much cooler in the Roman period than it was in his own day. See Gibbon (), Ch. . For a recent effort toward an integrative approach to historical and climatic developments, likewise focused on the late Roman Empire, see Brown (), esp. Ch. . For criticism of his effort, e.g. the review by Endfield (). The only exception of which I am aware is the attempt by Neumann () to relate Hannibal’s initial success to favourable climatic conditions in the Alps. See Greene () . Braudel’s () -page first volume on ecology and the role of the environment in shaping Mediterranean history has only five pages on climate. This, as well as the cautious manner in which he proceeds, suggesting that the climate may not have been stable across history, is revealing of the spirit of the time of the book’s first publication in . He notes that ‘In the past . . . all the books and studies were agreed on the immutability of the climate’, and continues with the cautious remark: ‘we cannot regard their arguments as absolutely convincing’, suggesting that one should try ‘to establish whether or not there has been periodicity, and recent writings incline towards the hypothesis that there was’. In the edition, the section has a four page supplementary note (–) in which he explains his own previous prudence to ‘the reader (who) may be surprised’, reflecting on the controversy and criticism his standpoint invoked when it was first published and the rapid scientific progress that had changed the communis opinio in the meantime. But he gives the issue no further consideration in the central argument of his book. Braudel () –. Because the Little Ice Age was not a globally synchronous event, there is considerable discussion about its exact duration and timing. For Europe, to are endorsed by e.g. the NASA Earth Observatory see under http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Glossary (accessed January ). Lamb (), Ch. and Ch. places the last part of that period already in a separate phase of ‘improving tendency’, and defines the second half of the sixteenth, the seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries as the climax of the Little Ice Age. Conversely, the centuries preceding the s already displayed a cooling trend.
Climate and climatic change
magnifying lens of an early modern historian studying the history of a few years within the period. But the climatic conditions of the Little Ice Age are important to those interested in uncovering the dynamics of these centuries as a unit distinguishable from the preceding centuries and those that followed. Rapid climate change, in other words, is a phenomenon with a long history, not a modern process that only occurs as a result of human action. In the present study, our focus is not on l’histoire ´ev´enementielle, on an event, a person, a year or a decade. The time span covered, from Hannibal to Augustus, is a little over years, a period long enough to witness and encompass a distinct climatic trend. Precisely because of the time frame adopted, therefore, climate and climatic change are relevant to the developments in Italy that are our subject. If we are to understand economic and demographic developments in late Republican Italy in their time and place-specific setting, it is vital to establish how climatic conditions prevalent during this period related to those immediately before and after. As we shall see, the years between bce and ce belonged to the core period of a trend that set in between and bce and reversed again under the late Empire. What did it look like, and how did the weather conditions people in late Republican Italy experienced differ from the climate when their predecessors and ancestors lived? Was it warmer or cooler, drier or wetter? And what impact might this have had on supplies, the possibility of travel, and health? The aim of this chapter is to investigate these questions. By drawing attention to climatic background conditions, we will also reveal the trap of viewing ‘the Mediterranean’ as characterized by a stable ecology over time, as a landscape through which modern scholars can take a virtual history tour by evoking photographic memories of contemporary travel through the region. 3.2 a triad: climate, economy and demography Historical investigations into climate change, needless to say, are susceptible to the criticism of climatic determinism. It is therefore best to be as clear and upfront as possible about the perspective of this chapter. The relevance
Mayewski et al. () offer extensive evidence undermining the conventional wisdom that climate during the era of human civilization has been relatively stable. Cf. also Martineau () for glacier evidence, and Lamb () – on various rapid climate changes in the past, as well as on the causes driving them. Cf. Hulme (), reviewing Behringer (). Note also Pfister () who links the reluctance of historians to tackle climate as a factor in history to ‘the persistence of the two different scientific cultures of natural sciences and the humanities’, and to the supposition that climate studies are qualitate qua products of open or latent climatic determinism.
Economic and ecological parameters
of climate and climatic change to the demographic history of Roman Italy should, in my view, be seen primarily in its direct physical effects on two factors widely recognized as proximate or indirect determinants of demographic outcomes across macro-demographic studies: economic conditions (agriculture and travel conditions) and health. These two proximate determinants have an impact on mortality, fertility and migration. But economy and health alone do not determine demography, nor are they themselves exclusively shaped by climatic conditions. In other words, the relationship between climate and demography – births, deaths and migration – must be understood as indirect. Their interaction is mediated by other factors, and is contingent on societal structures and human responses. ‘Climate’ in itself can hardly answer the central question of this book, which is how to evaluate the relative merits of competing scholarly assessments of population development in Italy at the time of the expansion of Roman power. But given its impact on some proximate determinants of demographic variables, it has a contribution to make. By gaining deeper insights into ‘long-term weather trends’, we can develop a better understanding of how easy or difficult it would have been for an increasingly complex but still overwhelmingly agricultural society to sustain the population sizes and trends about which Roman historians argue. An improving or worsening climate has a direct bearing on the quality and quantity of crop yields. What makes this variable interesting to the question of the occurrence of real growth is that it does not require the mediation of human actors to take effect. Roman farmers would not need to alter their behaviour fundamentally to seize the opportunities offered by an improving climate. Especially in predominantly agricultural societies such as Roman Italy and its provinces, climate therefore has a relatively large positive or negative share in economic outcomes. Correspondingly, climatic development may be regarded as a relatively pure indicator of economic development. Because previous scholarship on Roman population issues has attributed a large role to the agricultural economy, but without giving much thought to climate and climatic change, the selective character of this chapter has a certain bias towards these interactions in particular.
Cf. e.g. Behringer () on the importance of climatic conditions for the (agricultural) economy and (long-distance) trade and interconnections. For the debate over Roman population size and trends, cf. Ch. and Ch. of this book. DeMenocal () provides concise and nuanced insights into the challenges posed by environmental stress to complex agricultural societies. Cf. Post () in a review of the volume Climate and History. Studies in past climates and their impact on man (eds. Wigley et al. ()): ‘in the case of the impact of climate on economic history, the causal relationship is relatively clear’.
Climate and climatic change
In investigating the economic impacts of climate and climatic change, however, we also briefly consider its relevance to trade, a second important economic realm in Republican Rome. Investigating the exact effects of climate and climatic change on the three main demographic determinants is a far more complex challenge. Behavioural responses to climatic change are, in social science terminology, ‘confounding variables’. Since there is no denying the fact, however banal, that human responses tend to be divergent, we would need far more contextual information than we have to say anything sensible about the nature of these interactions. This holds true in particular with regard to fertility and migration, where human contingency plays a crucial role. Given the latter, it is easy to understand why historians choose to be on the safe side and avoid attributing any role to climate change in overall population development, for fear of being accused of determinism. But this approach fails to recognize the importance of the third demographic determinant, mortality. Mortality may be last, but it is not least. Just as demography tends to attribute greater importance to the study of women (rather than men) as drivers of demographic rates, historical demographers tend to view mortality as the most important factor explaining variations in population growth rates in pre-transitional societies. This is important, because the negative and positive effects of climate change on morbidity and mortality are more direct. At the very least, pathogen pools can alter as a result of altered temperature and weather conditions, and exposure to such pathogens could be avoided only to a limited extent. Because the means to cure infected individuals were even more restricted, if not altogether absent, greater exposure to disease pools would imply higher rates of contagion and death. The difficulty here is to establish what ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ changes in weather conditions are. Whether a change to warmer, cooler, wetter or drier would be better, is context-specific. Before turning to the interactions between climate, economy and demography in the second part of this chapter (Sections . and .), we must first briefly analyse the data available for climate in the Roman period. The synopsis that follows serves two modest goals: first, it provides an introduction into the functioning of climatic processes and the type of evidence available; second, it gives a broad trend overview of climatic developments during the late Republican period in Italy. The analysis in Sections . and . obscures variation at a micro-level. It does so not only because we study the topic macroscopically, but also because only patchy data are available so far for the period preceding Imperial times. Although (partially because of its interest to modern issues) the field of
Economic and ecological parameters
palaeo-climatology is forging ahead, we are still far from having a refined climatic grid for Italy during the Roman period. This is in part due also to the unfortunate tendency among climatologists to break off their investigations once the year ‘ bp’ is reached, leaving what was going on in the Republican period open to question. Other studies focus on the very long run, so that measure-points are insufficiently fine-grained to isolate developments on a centennial (let alone smaller) scale. The nature of the evidence, to which we turn now, plays a role in this as well. 3.3 climate: evidence and dynamics A principal reason why our evidence on climate and climatic processes in the Roman world is not as fine-grained as it is for later periods is that we lack measurements provided by direct instrumental observation. Romans used mercury for many things, but not for thermometers. Systematic documentary evidence is scarce as well. Astro-meteorological parapegmata provide what comes closest to a systematic record of weather conditions for the ancient Mediterranean world, but few remain. Parapegmata were ‘instruments’ or ‘tools’ used to track cyclical phenomena, mostly by means of a movable peg or pegs. Most were inscriptional, but some have been preserved as literary texts. Best known is Ptolemaeus’ Phaseis, which dates to around ce. It attributes statements on weather conditions to various Greek astronomers (who also practised astrometeorology), and functioned as a tool to predict such conditions. These predictions rested on general or previous observations. Ptolemaeus’ work is therefore not a true ‘weather diary’, in contrast to what some modern palaeo-climatic publications assume, but provides ‘predictive inferences’. The Phaseis and other textual parapegmata are probably best described as ‘weather calendars’. In providing us with an instrument to (tentatively) reconstruct distributional patterns, for example, of the occurrence of winds and precipitation, they are valuable records. What mainly interest us here, however, are changes in climatic conditions over time. The parapegmata do not specify exact times and places of observations, and cover only a limited time. For these reasons, they do not
Note that climatologists reckon in years ‘bp’, ‘Before Present’. Long-run studies count in thousands of years, rendering the year as ka bp, etc. Throughout the rest of this chapter, I recalculate these dates to bce/ce dates for convenience’s sake. See Lehoux (). Or, for Dutch readers, as a ‘look-alike’ of the ‘Enkhuizer Almanak’ (first edition supposedly dating back to ), in which year-round weather predictions are made on the basis of previous observations.
Climate and climatic change
meet the conditions required for tracking climatic change, which can only be done with the help of uninterrupted time series of at least thirty years. With other literary sources, we face even greater limitations. We cannot always be certain if weather conditions described in historical narratives, such as the works of Livy and Caesar, reflect reality. To give but one example: Caesar offers a vivid description of terrible storms in Gaul in the late s bce: Quae cum adpropinquarent Britanniae et ex castris viderentur, tanta tempestas subito coorta est ut nulla earum cursum tenere posset, sed aliae eodem unde erant profectae referrentur, aliae ad inferiorem partem insulae, quae est propius solis occasum, magno suo cum periculo deicerentur . . . et onerarias, quae ad ancoras erant deligatae, tempestas adflictabat, neque ulla nostris facultas aut administrandi aut auxiliandi dabatur. Compluribus navibus fractis . . . When these [i.e. Caesar’s warships] were approaching Britain and were seen from the camp, suddenly a storm arose that was so strong that none of them could maintain their course, and some were carried back to the place from which they had departed; others were driven to the lower part of the island, which is closer to where the sun sets – to their great danger. . . . And the storm swept over the cargo ships that were anchored, and we had no opportunity to keep them under control or to do anything. A large number of ships were wrecked . . . (Caesar, De Bello Gallico .– [Transl. S. H.])
Should we conclude from this account that these storms were really so horrific? Or is Caesar merely trying to add another heroic element to his achievements, emphasizing the misfortunes through which he guided his army to glorious victory? Apart from such potential intentional distortions, there seems to have been a tendency to record ‘Extreme Weather’ rather than normal conditions. This seriously limits the possibility of drawing overall conclusions about climate and climatic development from timetrends in ancient literary sources. Severe weather was a topos. At the same time, what survives of ancient literature is spread unevenly over time, so that the frequency distribution of references to specific phenomena or ‘Extreme Weather’ events can easily create distorted impressions. Reconstruction of the climate during Roman times is therefore mostly dependent on indirect indicators or proxy evidence relating to the two
So Heide () . On the use of historical documentary records for climate reconstruction in general, see Jones and Mann (), who point to their limitations (pp. –). For ancient sources, see Heide () f. Cf. also Aldrete () – for the inaptness of the flooding record of the Tiber as a proxy for climatic change. See on this Haas () , who emphasizes the symbolism of ‘culture’ vs ‘barbarism’ embedded in geographical or climatological descriptions.
Economic and ecological parameters
primary indicators: temperature and precipitation levels. A wide range of proxies is used to retrieve such evidence on climate in the ancient world, including solar activity, tree rings, glaciers, pollen, oxygen isotopes, seasurface temperatures and a range of (unicellular) planktonic fossils. While some of these sources come from the Italian mainland and yield annual data series, most are from elsewhere and are on a time-scale in which a century is the smallest unit. Another complication in evaluating the evidence is that proxies are proxies. There is not necessarily a one-to-one relationship between the pattern a proxy shows and the pattern a temperature or precipitation record would have shown, if we had one. The biggest problem is that what we see is often the outcome of a combination of temperature and precipitation levels – and sometimes of other factors in addition. If glaciers are expanding, for example, to what extent is that the result of decreasing temperatures, and to what extent does increased snowfall play a role? The effect of each individual factor in the proxy cannot easily be isolated, and this is the case for other proxies as well. The actual processes underlying climate and climatic change evidenced by proxies may be the result of natural variability, or may be induced by anthropogenic impact on the environment that triggers changes in one or more so-called ‘climatic forcings’. As can be seen in Figure ., there are various causes of natural variation in climatic conditions. How these variations can occur is lucidly described by others, and we have no time to dwell on all the complexities involved. But a few basics are important. First, a major factor in causing differential responses to global developments at a regional level is the earth’s heat circulation. The way heat circulates over the earth forms the link between global-scale developments and the regional level, as it regulates the distribution of warmth and cold. Several factors affect patterns of heat redistribution. Winds, which vary according to the intensity and location of high- and low-pressure zones (which can shift, e.g. depending on the Earth’s orbit) form one main factor in this redistributive process. The other main warmth redistribution mechanism is driven by (deep) water flows in the oceans. Oscillations in ocean streams and changes in the temperature and chemical composition of the water can lead to changing sea-surface temperatures (SSTs). If these change,
On the problems concerning glaciers, cf. Heide () – and Haas () . For a good introduction, see e.g. Lamb (), Ch. , esp. – (offering a clear basic introduction to the forcings and interactions that produce climate), and Ch. (on how climate comes to fluctuate and change).
Climate and climatic change
Sun-factors Solar activity (observational proxies: e.g. sunspots) ↓ Total solar irradiance and spectral solar irradiance
Sun/Earth relationship factors Orbital parameters (i.e. the Earth’s position relative to the Sun)
Earth-factors Albedo (i.e. cloud cover, vegetation cover, and ice and snow cover of the earth) Greenhouse gases (natural + human-forced amount of CO etc. in the atmosphere) Aerosol and dust content of the atmosphere (i.e. matter ‘floating’ in air, e.g. volcanic ash, soot, sulphur ) Internal variability in energy transport on earth (e.g. changes in wind and ocean circulation)
Figure . The earth’s climate system and potential causes (forcings) of climate change Source: adapted from Beer, Vonmoos, and Muscheler ().
alterations in the strength and/or location of high- and low-pressure zones affect weather on the mainland. Although the earth’s climate system and redistributive system form a single system of interacting factors, the redistributive forces that affect specific locations on the planet can be very different in nature. A peculiarity of the Mediterranean that adds to the complexity of the processes at work here is that it is situated in an area exposed to many different redistributive forces and the effects of a range of pressure zones whose cores are located elsewhere. It is at the geographical transition between
On sulphur spewed into the atmosphere after volcanic eruptions: Haas () –. Note that as a result, the southern hemisphere generally responds very differently from the northern hemisphere to climatic changes in atmosphere trends. Glaciers around Mt Cook in New Zealand displayed a peak during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period. By contrast, they receded when Europe in the Northern Hemisphere went through the Little Ice Age. See Martineau ().
Economic and ecological parameters
the middle latitudes subject to the influences of the tropical zone, which has teleconnections with the Indian/South-Asian monsoon system, and of the so-called North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) originating further west, above open ocean waters. The NAO is created by an interaction between a high- and a low-pressure zone over the Atlantic Ocean. Each of these pressure zones can shift slightly and change in intensity over time, which affects the way (and the strength with which) the winds blow. The western Mediterranean is more exposed to these influences than the eastern and south-eastern Mediterranean are. By contrast, the eastern half of the Mediterranean, including Egypt, the Levant and Greece, is more affected by the (indirect) influence of the monsoon system. Other oscillating pressure zones and redistributive systems from elsewhere outside the Mediterranean proper also affect weather and climatic developments within parts of the Mediterranean. The Hadley cell that moves northward and southward over Africa and affects the southern half of the Mediterranean is one example. The (indirect) exposure of the Mediterranean to different climatic processes across the globe explains why we may expect some pronounced differences between local or regional proxies for temperatures and precipitation within the area. Italy, positioned in the middle of the Mediterranean basin, is at what is sometimes identified as a dividing line between the western and the eastern Mediterranean. As a result, it is not free from the impact of ‘Eastern influences’, although the impact of mid-latitude and Atlantic weather variability is greater. Second, the role played by atmospheric circulation also makes it clear how changes in wind circulation can bring about fairly rapid changes of climate, and thus why we indicated above that ‘rapid climate change’ is not a modern phenomenon. Warming or cooling of the atmosphere causes shifts in the jet streams in the atmosphere that can, simply put, make the difference between warm or cold winds blowing over a region. A further, equally important characteristic of climatic dynamics is that temperature and precipitation levels or changes are not always correlated, or not correlated consistently. That is, it is incorrect to assume that warmer always means drier, or that colder periods coincide with larger amounts of rainfall or snowfall. A good example of an unexpected pattern is the period of climatic cooling that affected the Mediterranean from to bce and peaked around bce. It is known as the ‘cold spell’ in the Adriatic Sea and the Aegean Sea. This cooling was caused by a higher intensity of
Trigo et al. (). Jalut et al. () – and Lionello et al. () . See Rohling et al. () on the Aegean and Sangiorgi et al. () on the Adriatic.
Climate and climatic change
high-pressure zones over Siberia, which sent cold, dry winter winds over at least the eastern half of the Mediterranean, so that in this case cooling coincided with a decline in precipitation. Changes in prevailing winds effectively bring about changes in how frequently and intensely water, hail or snow fall from the sky. From what we can tell now, changes in the hydrological cycles that to a considerable extent determine humidity levels in a place appear to be related to orbitally driven changes in the seasonal cycle of solar radiation. That is, when the position of the Earth in relation to the Sun changes, precipitation patterns may change. In evaluating the evidence for climate trends in Roman Italy, we must distinguish between temperature patterns and precipitation developments, which is why these are treated separately in the next section. Finally, of the ‘earth-factors’ related to climatic change in Figure ., anthropogenic ones were arguably less important during Roman times than many believe they are now in driving climate change. Still, they were not irrelevant, and they affected the patterns that some of our proxies for various areas in the Roman Empire show – notably those relating to vegetation and air pollution. Since our interests lie in the relationship between climate and climatic change and population dynamics rather than in the inverse correlation, we can to a considerable extent ignore the heated discussion on the relative role of anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic factors. But the debate over the effects and ‘proofs’ of contemporary rapid climate change point to the need to consider the evidence for and importance of climate to economic and demographic life in late Republican Italy, as well as potential changes in these conditions. 3.4 climate under the romans 3.4.1 Temperature Plotted below in Figure . is one type of proxy evidence for climatic conditions over time. It depicts the development of solar activity, which shows a general peak around bp, around the year ce. The extent of solar activity has been derived from analyses of a Greenland ice core in which traces (radionuclides) indicating the level of solar magnetic activity are conserved. As yet, there is no absolute consensus on the role heightened solar activity plays in contributing to a warmer climate. But palaeo-climatic records revealing evidence of a positive relationship between the two are
Rohling et al. ().
Mayewski et al. () .
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800 600 Φ [MeV] 400 200
8000
6000 4000 Age [year BP]
2000
0
Figure . ‘F’ graphed over time Source: Beer, Vonmoos and Muscheler (). Explanatory note: F is an entity that expresses the influence of solar activity on the energy spectrum of galactic cosmic rays (MeV: energy). The higher the level of F, the higher the solar activity.
rapidly accumulating. Consequently, this can with reasonable reliability be used as a proxy indicator of climatic change. As can be inferred from the trends in Figure ., Greenland ice cores suggest that the climate may have been, broadly speaking, relatively warm during the late Republic and early Empire. From these and other records (on which more below), palaeoclimatologists have derived enough of a converging, distinctive trend to define and identify the period as the ‘Roman Climate Optimum’, or – a more widely used term – the ‘Roman Warm Period’. Since the borders of the Mediterranean climatic zone shift within Europe, this general warming may have been shifting the Mediterranean ecological zone northward from c.– bce to c. ce, as some scholars suggest. Climate change on a global scale thus affected regional climates in the middle latitude zone. But the complexity of climatic dynamics set out above warns against drawing conclusions on actual circumstances during the late Republican
See Maasch et al. (). Cf. Emeis and Dawson () ; Beer, Vonmoos, and Muscheler (). See also Greene (), esp. , Fig. . Cf. e.g. Crumley () –; Desprat et al. (); Frisia et al. (); Vollweiler et al. (); Van Dorland () (Report of the Royal Netherlands Meteorology Institute (KNMI)/Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ, now KNIZ)); Rasmussen, Petersen and Ryves (). Over the last , years, these boundaries or ‘ecotones’ between climates have altered dramatically owing to shifts in the jet streams in the atmosphere. Cf. Jones and Mann (); Fagan () ; Crumley () –. Crumley’s line drawing suggests a higher level of precision than can reasonably be achieved: we cannot tell precisely which latitude would have constituted the Mediterranean climatic boundary during Roman times.
Climate and climatic change
period in specific parts of the Empire on the basis of general observations. Countering criticism that the concept of the ‘Roman Warm Period’ clouds interregional variation, palaeo-climatologists have emphasized that ‘not all sites respond synchronously or equally during RCC [Rapid Climate Change] events, despite their global extent’. Divergent outcomes emerging from the analysis of various proxy-data that at first sight seem to point to temporal variation are in some cases attributable to measurement methods or confounding variables. But this is not always the explanation. The Roman Warm Period, like the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and other periods of rapid climate change, did not cover the same time periods in every geographic region, and whether the northern fringes of Europe experienced a favourable climate at the same time as the Mediterranean went through a warmer phase is not immediately clear. Having widely distributed site-specific palaeo-climatic data to avoid the risk of using data series from one area to extrapolate to others is thus important. If we are interested in the potential effects of climatic conditions on the demography and agricultural economy of Roman Italy, we will need to address these questions on the basis of data on Italy itself. But to the extent that we wish to understand, along the lines of Chapter , how trade and travel opportunities and the availability of agricultural surpluses for redistribution between Roman provinces were affected by climatic conditions and climate change, data about other parts of the Mediterranean, for example Egypt and the Greek East, are relevant as well. As for the question of whether climatic proxies from Italy itself provide evidence of a warming trend, we are lucky. Research in the field of palaeoclimatology is rapidly evolving and expanding, and studies that include coverage of the Roman period are increasing at the same time. Even if the number of studies focusing on Italy is comparatively small, there is far more
Jones and Mann (); Taricco et al. (). Brown () – also provides critical notes in a section focusing on the contribution of climate to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Note, however, that the section confusingly and misleadingly lumps together evidence dating from between bce to about ce. Mayewski et al. () . As we have already seen, translating the relative chronology of a climatic proxy into an absolute timescale via calibration poses a notoriously difficult challenge in palaeoclimate studies. Such a problem might underlie the discrepancies between two studies on north-west Roman Spain that focused on nearby locations and seemingly suggest temporal variation. While the first study concludes that a warm phase did not begin in Spain until the first century bce (Mart´ınez-Cortizas et al. (), esp. Fig. ), the second placed the development about years earlier, around bce (Desprat et al. (), esp. Table and Figs. and , with Nunn () ). These contradictory results might reflect either temporal variation in the occurrence of the Roman Warm Period, or the effects of confounding variables, e.g. human activity, on the pollen record and mercury-isotope levels. In this case, the latter seems more likely. Cf. Weninger et al. () .
Economic and ecological parameters
data available than there was a decade or so ago. Recently, the evidence of rising temperatures in Italy in the ‘Roman Warm Period’ has found support in a study of the Po river delta and a study of fossilized plankton in the Adriatic Sea. Because different aquatic species flourish under discrete ecological conditions (relating, among others, to water temperature and water salinity), changes in the frequency of specific species can be related to palaeo-environmental conditions. During Roman Republican times, the increased prevalence of G. sacculifer (a tiny plankton creature) in deep-water sediment cores indicates warmer climatic conditions relative to the preceding period. G. sacculifer numbers continue to rise until about the mid-third century ce, after which a sharp reduction occurs, and a corresponding rise in creatures that benefit from colder, wetter climatic conditions takes place. Up to now, however, the bulk of the evidence confirming the hypothesis with data from the Italian Peninsula itself comes from northern Italy. Alpine records in particular have been popular sources of evidence to study variations in vegetation, glacier extension, timberline and tree-ring width, as well as alternations between periods of soil fluction (solifluction) and soil formation (pedogenesis). On the whole, these tend to indicate that the period between c. bce and ce was comparatively warm in the Alps. Recently, researchers who performed isotopic analyses on a stalagmite from the south-eastern margin of the Italian Alps (Grotta Savi) have suggested that the warmest temperatures were probably reached specifically between c. bce and ce. This time framework, however, has not been corroborated by others. Heide suggests that the first century ce was even warmer than the first century bce, so the peak should be located later. Since stalagmite data are high-resolution and can be dated precisely, here we are faced with an example of the problem of regional variation in the timing of trends. Several other currently available proxy indicators cannot help us in this respect, because they do not allow for this level of fine-tuning in dating developments. The timescale to which they are calibrated is simply too wide. The dating of changes in glacier extension, for example, is dependent on radiocarbon dating methods in some cases. Where this is so, the confidence interval falls below % for
Po river delta: Simeoni and Corbau (). Adriatic: Piva et al. (). Their analysis focused on sediment cores taken from several locations at latitudes between those corresponding to Ancona in the north and Bari in the south. Vollweiler et al. (), with further references. Cf. also Veit () for a general overview of the evidence. For subsequently mentioned places and lakes in Italy, see Map . Heide () . Frisia et al. () –.
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estimates narrowed down to a time span of less than years. Without minimizing the relevance of such problems, we may nonetheless conclude that overall the late Republican period was comparatively warm. To evaluate the impact of rising temperatures on the Italian population, it is important to know how warm ‘comparatively warm’ was. Climatologists have given mutually exclusive answers to this question. Difficulties arise from the fact that all climatic proxies need to be calibrated against instrumental climate data to establish a quantitative scale for the difference. To establish an absolute difference expressed in ◦ C from relative data is thus not an easy, straightforward process. The inferences drawn may be somewhat wide of the mark. Moreover, each climate proxy type has its own limitations and potential biases. As was noted above, natural phenomena that serve as proxy evidence for climatic change display developmental patterns that may result from temperature change, precipitation change, or a combination of the two. The example of the expanding glacier can be supplemented by others. Did a tree grow less, for example, because it was a colder year, or did lack of water hinder its growth? These kinds of questions are not always answerable. Sometimes reactions to changes in the climate may become visible only after a delay of an unknown or vaguely known length. Interpretation of observed patterns is therefore not always easy, making it arguably advisable to employ a multi-proxy approach to climate reconstruction. The Roman Warm Period is visible in the records of the one recent overview study of which I am aware that compiles a broad range of proxy data. But it is much less pronounced than the current warm period, and proxies show a more heterogeneous pattern. The Medieval Warm Period, the other period in recent history characterized by rising temperatures, moreover leaves stronger and more uniform traces in the climatic proxy data. We may therefore reasonably infer that the Italian climate during late Republican times, although relatively warm, was not as warm as the modern climate is. That conclusion is even stronger in regard to the Republican period. That is, the diachronic overview study that shows that Romanperiod warming was less pronounced than Medieval or current warming refers to studies involving the beginning of the Common Era, and as far we can tell for now, the Roman Warm Period was characterized by increasing
Cf. Haas () . In other words, the chance that the time-estimate is erroneous exceeds %. Jones and Mann () f. set out the technical details of the two main methods by which to do so. Jones and Mann () . Thus Ljungqvist () in a compilation of graphs with proxy data covering the last , years.
Economic and ecological parameters
warmth up to at least the first century ce. In other words, the peak of the warming does not yet seem to have been reached in Republican times. The wider relevance of previous statements made in local studies that temperatures in the Mediterranean region were on average equal to or up to ◦ C warmer than today during the Roman Warm Period has, in other words, been substantially undermined by a multi-proxy approach. Studies based on single proxies from one location or area may tell us something about developments in a particular place, but general conclusions cannot be drawn on that basis. Reconstructions of the range of temperature variability over the last , years in the northern hemisphere also deserve notice. They indicate that the warmest and coldest years differed less than .◦ C in average temperature, while decades differed less than ◦ C. This is less than observed over the last few decades, and suggests that the late-twentiethcentury climate anomaly, or relative warmth, is greater than that during at least the second half of the Roman Warm Period. (The studies again do not cover the preceding centuries bce.) These qualifications to ‘warm’ put our discussion of climate in perspective. Warm was relatively warm only, and by no means a guaranteed safeguard against frost, storms or other adverse weather conditions. Roman literature provides many descriptions of such events. But the overall picture that emerges from the accumulation of proxy evidence is a pattern of warming compared to the preceding period. For an historical analysis, this is what matters most: sometime between c. and bce, according to various indicators, Romans in Italy began to profit from warmer climatic conditions. All the same, this long-term warm cycle, which lasted well into the Imperial period, encapsulated less pronounced short-term cycles – much as in the case of economic cycles. There were, in other words, both deviant years and shorter periods of relatively cool weather during the Roman Warm Period. Heide identified the period of c. to bce as one such period, on the basis of an exceptionally good literary record and a distinct
The suggestion that the Roman climate was c.◦ C warmer than today is made by Mart´ınez-Cortizas et al. () in a local study of mercury isotopes in a peat bog in Spain during Roman Imperial times. Frisia et al. () conclude that ‘in the RWP [i.e. the Roman Warm Period] temperatures were similar to those of today or even slightly warmer’ on the basis of data relating to one stalagmite in the Alps, although they admit that the accuracy of the temperature estimates does not inspire full confidence. See for an overview of earlier studies on temperatures Heide () with n. . Jones and Mann () . So e.g. Jones and Mann () and Zhang et al. () . Cf. also Kerr () on the ‘the hockey stick vs the boomerang’ battle (both symbolizing the perceived shape of the temperature curve over time), from which it becomes evident that the ‘boomerang’ interpretation is a minority standpoint.
Climate and climatic change
causation pattern (one or more volcanic eruptions). Unfortunately, our evidence is, for the moment at least, insufficiently detailed to reconstruct such fluctuations over the Roman Warm Period in full colour. This is an obstacle to historical research wishing to connect particular historical events to time- and place-specific climatic evidence. As noted earlier, however, contrary to the beliefs of some, this does not relegate the issue of climate and climatic change to a realm or time-frame irrelevant to ancient historians. The climate in Roman Republican times differed from that in the preceding period. Considering the period between the end of the Second Punic War and the death of Augustus as a whole, the climatic trend was a positive one, in the sense that the cold spell that lasted until c. bce had given way to rising, but not scorching temperatures. Before we turn to the potential economic and demographic effects of this, however, we must first consider whether warmer also meant drier, as precipitation is arguably a matter of vital importance to any population, and especially to an agricultural society. 3.4.2 Precipitation and humidity Today, drought, loss of vegetation and ensuing desertification are major problems in large parts of the Mediterranean. At first sight, the finding that Italy experienced a gradual warming during the Roman period might seem to suggest that it was also dry. As we have seen, however, temperature and precipitation levels are not negatively correlated by default. Warmer, in other words, did not necessarily mean less rain. The actual evidence on precipitation and (soil) humidity requires scrutiny. Modern scholarship tends to offer confusing, impressionistic pictures of the actual conditions prevailing in ancient Italy. This is so because the evidence is sketchy, and because often only one or two of the relevant triad of questions (trend, starting point and scale) is answered in individual studies. But aggregating the findings of studies that look into specific proxies for – or aspects of – humidity level changes elucidates the issue at hand. Vegetation changes, lake water tables and deforestation provide indications that a gradual drying took place. This trend, however, should be situated in the Imperial period rather than during Republican times, as is apparent from a more detailed evaluation of the three types of evidence.
Heide () –. There is a strong statistical correlation between the level of sulphur emitted into the atmosphere and changes in surface temperatures. Haas () and argues that whereas the cooling effect of individual volcanic eruptions is short-lived, during a period of elevated volcanic activity the accumulation of sulphur may cause longer-lasting climatic deterioration. On the eruptions of Mt Etna on Sicily in – bce, cf. Stothers and Rampino ().
Economic and ecological parameters
This means that farmers in the second and first centuries bce were in a better position than their Imperial counterparts to get good harvests from their Italian plots, at least as regards the risk of crop (quality) loss through drought. To demonstrate this point, we will look at vegetation change first, followed by the development of Italian lake water tables and the process of deforestation. That Roman Italy underwent a process of gradual drying is borne out by the fact that during the late Holocene, broad-leaved evergreen/warm mixed forest expanded considerably, replacing temperate deciduous forest. In other words, drought-tolerant vegetation increased. On the basis of the results of climate modelling performed with the help of empirical (pollen) data and ancient literary sources, it has been argued that ‘starting conditions’ in the early Roman period were moister than they are today. Desiccation did not set in until the first century ce – after Augustan times. Our most important source on Roman climatic conditions, Columella’s weather ‘calendar’ from the first century ce, paints a similar picture. The ‘calendar’ suggests that precipitation in southern Italy (Rome/Campania) occurred more often during the summer months than it does now, and that the air was more humid. The reliance of this ‘calendar’ on an amalgam of previous observations implies that periods of drought were shorter and less significant until at least the first century ce. The frequent occurrence of inundations of the Tiber may perhaps corroborate this notion, because the high water tables of the river may indicate higher precipitation levels. But this is a problematic proxy, since erosion is a confounding variable. Human-induced erosion also enhances sedimentation processes in rivers. It may have been the case, in other words, that anthropogenic forcing led to erosion of land adjacent to the river, and thus to higher water levels. Still, this would not exclude the possibility that relatively high levels of precipitation also played a role and partially explain the story.
Huntley () –. Study of the homogeneity of tree-ring growth over a period might be a means to ascertain the phenomenon of drying and study it(s timing) in greater detail. ‘Wuchshomogenit¨atsanalyse’ can reveal the occurrence of drought, because during dry periods the growth of trees is more variable. The cause of this is that the precise location of a tree (and the soil conditions in situ) becomes more important to its growth when there is little rainfall. Hence, a tree-sample will show larger intra-group variation. Cf. Haas () f. Reale and Dirmeyer () and Reale and Shukla (). They attribute the development to a combination of deforestation and changing agricultural methods (intensification on latifundia), and conclude that serious drought did not set in until after the early Empire. Initially wetter conditions, in so far as they are related with forest cover, would match the claim in Meiggs () , that there was initially too much forest in Italy rather than too little. Heide () –. On erosion, river sedimentation, precipitation and water tables in rivers, see Haas () f.
Climate and climatic change
Perhaps the best evidence for humidity and precipitation levels is provided by the development of the water tables of various lakes in Central Italy over time. In an important article on hydrology, Walter Dragoni collected data from bce and thereafter for a number of Italian lakes: Lake Castel Gandolfo (or Lake Albano, close to Rome), Lake Bracciano, Lake Martignano, Lakes Bolsena, Mezzano and Fucino (all north of Rome), and Lake Trasimene. Unfortunately, only Lake Castel Gandolfo, Lake Martignano and Lake Fucino yield data for the period between bce and the beginning of the first century ce. But, interestingly, all three had high water tables at data points falling within this period. For Lake Castel Gandolfo, this high water table dates to around bce, which precedes our period and could be taken to relate to the relatively cooler weather at that time. Data after bce cannot be related to natural variability, because an artificial outlet was constructed. This lake is therefore of limited use for the late Republican period. The high water levels in the other two lakes are dated to the first century bce. In both cases, artificial drainage post-dated the first century bce, and the lake water levels for the Republican period are therefore taken to correlate with annual levels of rainfall (or other precipitation). Their relatively high levels may therefore suggest that the end of the Republican period was comparatively wet – at least at these locations. Deforestation in Italy is harder to grasp. But it deserves detailed consideration, because it affects moisture cycles, causes erosion and leads to desiccation or, at a further stage, desertification. Consequently, we may expect that in a period when deforestation occurs, a trend towards drier conditions will set in. Such a development could nullify the positive effects of rising temperatures on agriculture. There is agreement that during the Roman period, deforestation took place. But in order to put the trend into perspective and assess its effects on the agricultural economy of late Republican Italy, it would be necessary to know the scale of this deforestation, when it began, and how much forest was left afterwards. This cluster of questions forms perhaps the hottest issue under debate in Mediterranean
Dragoni () , Fig. .. Dragoni (). In bce, an aqueduct was built that drew water from Lake Martignano. Lake Fucino received an artificial outlet in ce. Originally planned by Caesar, it did not function well, and Dragoni concludes that until the end of the first century ce, when the outlet was improved, lake levels were still primarily determined by natural variability. Note that water levels and temperature are also linked, but that this correlation is weaker, leaving more room for divergent trends. Cf. Dragoni () , Fig. ., indicators B and D (for an explanation of the symbols in D, cf. Fig. .). Note that the implied Republican trend of warm/wet runs counter to what is considered by Dragoni to be the general trend derived from all data and periods in the figure (‘warm = dry’ and ‘cool = wet’).
Economic and ecological parameters
environmental history. It has received far more attention than lake water tables, and opinions among ancient historians are divided. Roman literary sources mention deforestation more than once. Among authors describing Roman Italy, the idea seems to prevail that in the (mythical) past, woodlands dominated, and that deforestation spread with civilization. Lucretius, for example, states very generally in his first-century bce De Rerum Naturae that ‘every day they forced the woods to climb higher up the mountain, and to make space below for cultivation’. Simply lumping such statements on deforestation together easily produces an impression of environmental degradation. Pollen data provided an opportunity for an external check in one case: that of Livy’s statements on deforestation. Livy claims that in bce the Ciminian Forest in Etruria had been ‘more impenetrable and frightening than were, until recently, the forests of Germany; until that day, not even traders had entered it’. It makes sense to suppose that the region around Rome was much less wooded in Livy’s time than it had been earlier. Deforestation, after all, is a function of demand for land to cultivate and for wood. Meiggs claims that the First and Second Punic Wars in the third century bce probably signalled the first instances of major incursions into the Apennine forests by the Romans. With increasing wealth inflows, upsurges in building activity and rising fuel needs, deforestation must have increased over time. Because Rome was a large and growing centre of demand, the need for wood would have been concentrated there, and regions near to the city were presumably the most affected by environmental degradation such as soil erosion. Sediment cores from four nearby lakes containing pollen data confirm the trend towards deforestation in the region. But they also warn against an overestimation of its extent. In fact, none of the cores confirms the story of dense wildwood persisting into the Roman period and being transformed into a landscape of woods, vineyards, chestnut groves and farmland, according to Grove and Rackham. The wildwood seems to have already been distinctly patchy , years earlier, and we should rather envisage a gradual decline from dense savannah to farmland with plenty of
Cf. the most recent contribution by Hughes () in response to Horden and Purcell () and Grove and Rackham (). Lucretius, De rerum naturae .–: ‘inque dies magis in montem succedere silvas cogebant infraque locum concedere cultis’. (Trans. S. H.) For a general overview, cf. Hughes () –. Livy ..: ‘Silua erat Ciminia magis tum inuia atque horrenda quam nuper fuere Germanici saltus, nulli ad eam diem ne mercatorum quidem adita’. (Trans. S. H.). Cf. also Meiggs () . Grove and Rackham () . Meiggs () .
Climate and climatic change
trees. For other regions of the Roman Empire, the role of ‘Roman impact’ on the landscape has recently been nuanced as well. Deforestation in Germania, for example, did not begin with Roman occupation. Likewise in Roman Britain, there was no breach in the degree to which humans impacted on the environment after Roman troops left the zone around the Hadrianic Wall. General deforestation theories therefore need to be scaled down. But not dismissed. It is vital to take into account regional and local variability, with the greatest negative impacts occurring in places where human density was highest, and where agricultural use of the land was most intense, as around Rome. These areas, in all likelihood, were the first to encounter the negative effects of environmental degradation associated with drying. Unfortunately, we cannot transfer findings from regions that have yielded more precipitation data to late Republican Italy in order to move beyond the limited insights that data on Italy alone provide regarding humidity in Roman times and its consequences for agriculture. There were times when the conditions observed in the eastern and western Mediterranean correlate. The previously discussed relatively dry conditions during the Dark Age ‘cold spell’ were observed both in the eastern Mediterranean and along the coast of Italy during the period preceding Republican times. At that point, it seems, Italy lay under the same high-pressure zone as the eastern portion of the Mediterranean. But such was not always the case, and precipitation conditions in Italy were therefore not necessarily the same as in better documented parts of the Mediterranean. Nonetheless, knowledge of the prevailing conditions in other Mediterranean regions is to some extent relevant to the history of late Republican Italy in its own right. They affected travel conditions and the availability of agricultural surpluses for trade. We know more about various parts of the eastern Mediterranean. In the late Holocene, a gradual process of drying related to a reduction of vegetation cover and/or orbital changes began to affect Egypt. At the same time, climatic modelling studies that combine pollen records from Roman times with information on how much precipitation such plants would have
Idem. Cf. Meiggs () , on Lake Monterosi in Latium, emphasizing deforestation. Haas (). Langdon et al. () . The research he quotes contrasts with earlier findings. Note the mixed nature of the evidence cited in Sallares () –. Rohling et al. (). Cf. Section above. Schilman et al. () f. Monsoonal activity that impacts precipitation in the eastern Mediterranean weakened already from around bce onward, and seems to have been caused by orbital changes.
Economic and ecological parameters
needed to succeed in Egypt, suggest that the climate there was significantly cooler and wetter than it is today. The suggestion that Egypt was relatively humid in Roman times is confirmed by qualitative evidence provided by the parapegma of Claudius Ptolemaeus compiled in Alexandria around ce. According to his ‘forecasts’, thunderstorms should be common during the summer months (and during other months as well), and rain should fall frequently in every month but August. The atmospheric humidity was higher, there were more cyclonic disturbances, and the water table was higher. A comparatively wetter climate during Roman times would explain why and how Egypt could play such an important role as a provider of grain to Rome. Strabo’s Geography also describes the cultivation of grain, olives and vines during the first centuries bce and ce in places where this is now impossible. These findings from Egypt illustrate the importance of distinguishing conceptually between the notion of ‘drying’ and ‘drought’. The latter indicates a lack of precipitation or soil moisture harmful to agriculture, whereas the former only refers to a decline in humidity or precipitation compared to the preceding period. Palaeo-climatic evidence indicates that Egypt became drier during the late Holocene, but also that prevailing conditions facilitated agricultural production. In Spain, the Roman period has recently been described as the ‘Iberian– Roman Humid Period’ by palaeo-climatologists, because precipitation levels over the past , years were the highest during the period between c. bce and ce. A study investigating conditions in south-western Asia Minor showed that temperatures in the region were high compared to later periods, but also concluded that ‘the environment was much more verdant then than it is today’ and that ‘there are strong indications that the volume of water produced by springs was considerably larger’ during Roman times. It was not until the late Roman Empire that drought began to have increasingly negative effects on living conditions here.
Reale and Dirmeyer () and Reale and Shukla (). A study by Gates and Liess (), which used a different model created by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and is applicable only to summer conditions, produced similar results (esp. p. ). Lamb () and Reale and Dirmeyer () . For the text of the parapegma: Lehoux () and – (Greek and English trans.). So Heide () . Contra Shaw (), who argues that the more favourable climatic conditions said to prevail in Africa during the Roman Empire constitute ‘a myth resultant from colonial biases’. His conclusion fails to pay due attention to the fact that anthropogenic forcing is only one cause of climate change. See e.g. Reale and Dirmeyer () , with further references, and Issar and Yakir () – (contra Sallares () ). Waelkens (), esp. –. Mart´ın-Puertas et al. ().
Climate and climatic change
Relatively humid conditions may also have characterized the Levant during the Roman period, although this is more debatable. On the basis of archaeological evidence, for example on water levels in the Dead Sea, it has been suggested that between around bce and at least the first century ce the Near East was more humid than it is now and than it was before. This development would have had favourable implications for the economic performance of the region. It allowed the cultivation of olive trees, for example, in areas where this is now impossible, improving human living conditions as well as the economy. At the same time, other studies emphasize the longer-term process of aridification that took place in the Levant from around bce onward, and do not single out the period between bce and ce as countering this trend. To conclude, there is much more to investigate about climatic and environmental conditions and their bearing on Republican agriculture and carrying capacity. At a time where environmental studies into Roman Italy are a relatively new phenomenon, and data gathering is in a process of rapid accumulation, we have much to look forward to. 3.5 economic effects It is not too early to draw conclusions, even if somewhat preliminary ones, about the impact of climate on the Roman agricultural economy during the late Republic. From the currently available evidence, we can conclude that the zone encompassing Italy, sometimes described as the north-western Mediterranean, warmed up during the late Republican and the early Imperial periods. Bearing in mind that this trend followed a relatively cold and wet cycle that peaked during the ‘cold spells’ in the Adriatic around bce, and that temperatures were likely to have been lower than today’s, this development arguably had positive effects on agriculture in Italy. In agricultural societies, living standards depend to a considerable extent on the quality and quantity of harvests. The most obvious way in which a favourable climate contributed to Italian economic performance was thus
A climate during the Hellenistic and Roman period that is more humid than it was before and than it is now: Issar and Zohar () , Fig. a and f. Rohling et al. () observe that the preceding colder period (c. to bce) was dry, and that annual rainfall amounts over Israel were at perhaps only % of modern values during this -year period. Roman climate more humid than the current climate in Israel: Issar () . Issar and Yakir () and Issar and Zohar () –. Schilman et al. (). They do, however – for what this is worth, given the potentially divergent causes underlying warming trends – suggest that the Medieval Warm Period coincided with high levels of, among others, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea (p. ).
Economic and ecological parameters
through agriculture. Yields are an obvious case. With increasing warmth, plants grow faster. The process of tree-ring dating as a proxy indicator for temperature development and crop growth illustrates the case in a simple, straightforward manner: the wider the rings, the more pronounced the annual growth of the tree, hence the warmer the climate. Crop growth in Italy would have been facilitated by the fading of the preceding cold spell and the warming of the local climate during the Republican period. The expansion of Rome into Northern Italy, the massive land reclamation projects, the conversion of large tracts of this land to agriculture, and the centuriations and distributions of it to citizens for farming all took place at the end of the Republican period, in the first century bce. In this light, the question arises, to what extent did higher temperatures and a reduction in the risk of detrimental frosts enable cultivation at higher altitudes and more northerly latitudes? Ancient sources refer to increasingly favourable conditions for agriculture as a result of changing climate conditions. Roman agronomists in the first centuries bce and ce observe that the vine and olive could then be cultivated farther north in Italy than had been the custom in earlier centuries. Columella, for example, noted that: quod quae regiones antea propter hiemis assiduam violentiam nullam stirpem vitis aut oleae depositam custodire potuerint, nunc mitigato [iam] et intepescente pristino frigore largissimis olivitatibus Liberique vindemiis exuberent. Those regions that formerly, because of the incessant harshness of the winter, could not safeguard any shoot of the vine or the olive that were planted in them, can produce the most abundant olive harvests and vintages of Bacchus, now the earlier coldness has mitigated and the climate is warming up. (Columella, De re rustica i..– [Trans. S. H.])
We cannot, of course, ascribe the phenomenon of agricultural expansion entirely to climatic change. But the evidence from Roman literary and palaeo-climatic sources does suggest that human expansion was at least facilitated by the warming of the climate, which made marginal land less
For an affirmative answer to this question in the context of historical China, see Lee, Fok and Zhang () f. See e.g. Pliny, Naturalis Historiae . (vines) and .– (olives). Pliny’s ‘northern frontier’ for grapes lies further north than the one mentioned by Strabo (Auvergne and Cevennes; ..). Varro mentions how, when he had to lead a military force through Gaul to the Rhine, he entered the region where vines and olives reached their northern limit: In Gallia transalpina intus, ad Rhenum cum exercitum ducerem, aliquot regiones accessi, ubi nec vitis nec olea nec poma nascerentur. In the first century bce, therefore, their cultivation limits had certainly extended north: Varro, Res Rusticae ... Cf. Lamb () and Neumann () .
Climate and climatic change
marginal. Given that historians have argued that in central Italy, particularly closer to Rome, population pressure became intense from the second century bce on, the relationship between climatic change and the ‘demarginalization’ of marginal lands is particularly relevant to the development of Roman Italy during the late Republic. We know that warming may induce atmospheric changes, and that on a local level actual temperature changes may be larger than those observed on a hemispheric scale. As a result, some micro-regions may have profited more, while others may simultaneously have lost out to a certain extent. To my knowledge, current studies do not allow us refined insights into questions such as how much temperature and rainfall in the Po river delta changed, or how much extra land in mountainous or hilly regions became available as reliable farming or pasture land as a result. All we can say is that even temperature variations that might seem small to a historian can make a significant difference. A temperature increase of ◦ C, for example, may not sound impressive, but shifts the maximum cultivation altitude in mountainous regions in Europe upward by about metres. Answers to such questions would fundamentally affect discussions of ‘the carrying capacity of Roman Italy’ considered in Chapter . Future specialist research faces the task of widening our knowledge on that front, not least for the Italian Peninsula. It also remains unclear whether rising temperatures induce a stabilizing trend. But it has been suggested that when climatic warming is not too abrupt and extreme, week-to-week and year-by-year weather tends to be less variable than during cooler periods. If this is true, chances of crop failure as a consequence of suddenly fluctuating weather conditions would have been reduced under the more stable conditions of a warmer climate. At the same time, we must be careful not to assume too optimistic a standpoint. If warmth turns into heat and drought, positive effects turn negative. But as indications are that the negative effects of drying on agriculture largely post-dated our period of interest, farmers in Italy likely benefited from conditions that were on average relatively favourable as compared to those faced by both their predecessors and their successors. This
See e.g. Roselaar () –. Lo Cascio and Malanima () emphasize the importance of climate change to agricultural carrying capacity in Italy. They hypothesize that a long-lasting temperature decrease of ◦ C would have entailed a loss of agricultural products from the hilly areas of Italy capable of feeding – million people. Parker and Smith () . For a graph displaying the shifts of tree- and snow-boundaries in the (Swiss) Alps, see Veit () , Fig. . Galloway () –. Cf. Huntley () for this interpretation of the effect of a fluctuation toward warmer and drier conditions during the period of expansion of the Roman Empire.
Economic and ecological parameters
situation was arguably conducive to economic growth – whether expansive growth into parts of the Italian landscape previously unsuitable (or only marginally suitable) to cultivation, or simply higher or better-quality yields on land already cultivated. This brings us back to the scepticism of historians and economists about the ability of pre-industrial societies to generate efflorescence, and to the criticism of Boserupian growth models that require behavioural changes discussed in the previous chapter. However valid these doubts may be with regard to certain aspects and sectors of the Roman economy, it is hard to see how they apply in the case of climatic change. Climatic change had a positive feedback effect on carrying capacity. Exploiting favourable climatic conditions to the full would certainly require human investment. But even without any (additional) innovations or investments on the part of Roman farmers, improving weather conditions in the Roman Warm Period would have led to higher average yields, and the economy at large would have profited. This demonstrates the relevance of the investigations undertaken in this chapter. As higher average yields per hectare characterize favourable weather conditions, real economic growth at the micro-level may also have occurred – provided, of course, that population did not grow faster. Interestingly also, it has been argued that climate estimates have significant explanatory power for real wages: the better the climate, the better the real wages. We have no opportunity to test empirically if this correlation holds in the Roman context, but the suggestion calls for consideration. The effect of climatic conditions on the Italian agricultural sector in late Republican Italy was not the only impact on the Roman economy of ‘better weather’. A second effect of the warming climate can be seen in better opportunities for trade and travel, via reductions in transport risks and costs. This may seem of minor relevance, but a cold and unstable climate can be particularly detrimental to travel by sea and through mountainous regions – the types of journeys Romans needed to make to move themselves and their goods around within Italy and across the Mediterranean. Indeed, transportation risks and costs are regarded as one of the main factors inhibiting real economic growth in pre-modern economies, since they produce a strong disincentive to the movement of goods and to market integration. Progress on this point generated by relatively good weather conditions does not eliminate the crucial divergence between ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ economies in general, which is the lack of engine-driven transportation. Nonetheless, it was certainly an incentive to the expansion
E.g. Campbell ().
Climate and climatic change
of trade and travel. These phenomena by themselves generate revenue, but are also, as noted, important drivers of other processes that generate economic growth, namely specialization and urbanization. In other cases, climatic change could constitute the difference not between more or less frequent or comfortable travel, but between travel and no travel at all. This is most clearly exemplified by the Great Silk Road, the trade route that facilitated the transport of goods between China and the Roman Empire. We know that from about bce until c. ce, caravans of camels used the route to trade luxuries. By the fourth century ce, however, drought developed on such a scale that it brought this traffic to a halt. This can be inferred from lake and river levels that indicate serious drying and from archaeological evidence that points to the abandonment of settlements. Although perhaps an unhappy example in the context of a section on trade and travel opportunities enhancing money-generating interconnectivity, the crossing of the Alps by Hannibal and his army in the winter of bce was likewise facilitated by the mildness of the local climate in these years. This has been established by Neumann on the basis of tree-ring and glacier data. 3.6 demographic effects Through its (indirect) effects on the mediating factors of mortality, fertility and migration, climatic change may also impact the demographics of a population. The idea that climate might have had a profound influence on population development in pre-industrial societies was first developed seriously in the s, when historical climatology began a renaissance following the early investigations of scholars such as Edward Gibbon. Subsequent analysis of historical climatic and demographic data has revealed that the developmental patterns of temperatures and population are indeed significantly correlated. During warming periods, population has tended to grow; during cooling periods, it has tended to stagnate or decline. In other words, climatic cycles and population cycles tend to coincide. Galloway’s collection of data from Europe and China, as represented in Figure ., shows these
See Chapter , Section . Lamb () –. Cf. also Issar and Zohar () f. The level of the Dead Sea dropped sharply (its changes in level in response to climatic change stand in inverse relationship to those of the oceans). Further evidence is provided by tree-rings, which show a series of further drought years from around ce to ce. Lopez (). Neumann (). Galloway (). For China: cf. also Elvin () with further references.
Economic and ecological parameters
Ch.
Population (millions) 200 China
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Figure . Population and climate trends, c.– ce C J. Wiley and Sons Ltd. Source: Galloway (), p. .
trends. The patterns are strikingly simultaneous. They certainly justify the recent identification of climatic trends and their possible effects on ancient population developments by Sallares as an important question for ancient history, and one asked only surprisingly recently. It bears repeating that in trying to answer this question, we must be wary of ecologic determinism, for ‘history’ is the result of many interacting factors, and demographic developments are no less so. The influence of (changes in) climatic trends is a matter of degree, and while climatic conditions may create increasing or decreasing pressure or difficulties, they generally leave human societies with a range of possible responses. In other words, even under similar climatic trends human reactions and outcomes may differ widely. When considering the coinciding trends displayed in Figure ., it is vital to distinguish between correlation and causation, and to consider the importance of what is left out of the picture, but would
Sallares () .
Climate and climatic change Food per capita
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Figure . Climate and demographic developments
still have affected the shape of the curves: factors such as politics, warfare and industrialization. Nonetheless, direct dependence on the natural world in Roman times meant that the impact of climate on daily life was omnipresent, and by no means limited to the effects of short episodes of ‘Extreme Weather’, such as the eruption of Vesuvius. At the very least, this deserves due consideration from urbanized Western scholars. It is possible to adduce several underlying causative patterns that may explain why population tends to decrease or stagnate during cooling phases and to rise during warming phases. Space here is too limited to discuss the details. But Figure . visually depicts the mechanisms by which these climatic changes can affect all three basic demographic variables (mortality, fertility and migration). I will pay the most attention to mortality rates because, as noted, I believe that the association with climatic change is strongest here, since patterns of human
Cf. also Lamb (), Ch. for a nuanced account of the interaction between climatic trends and population developments, in which he distinguishes between first-, second-, third- and fourth-order impacts of climatic conditions on human societies. Lee et al. () qualify this observation in a case-study on China. Variability in the extent of social instability, in the presence of social buffers, and in human adaptive response modified demographic reactions to climatic cooling. Geographical location and aridity levels also influenced demographic responses to decreases in temperature. Overall, however, they agree with the conclusions in Galloway () and hold that their study further verifies the synchronistic relationship between climatic and population cycles: Lee et al. () and . Cf. also Zhang et al. () for further references to literature on human population increase and collapse and their connection with climatic phases.
Economic and ecological parameters
behaviour interfere less. The greater complexity of interactions involved in fertility and migration patterns complicates efforts to recover the impact and effect of climatic change on these factors. Infectious diseases were one main cause of death in Roman Italy. As regards epidemic and endemic diseases and deaths overall, it is unclear what inferences we should draw about the relationship between climatic change and fluctuations in mortality rates. A change in climate can have heterogeneous impacts on this category of causes of death, because the interactions are specific to each contagious disease. While the climatic optimum of Roman Italy may have kept some diseases out, others may have reached the area because increasing warmth created favourable conditions for their spread. Malaria is an important example of how the emergence of the Roman Warm Period had a negative effect on mortality. While many uncertainties about the spread of the disease remain, there can be no doubt that malaria-carrying mosquitoes profited from relatively warm and moist conditions. There is some disagreement as to whether malaria had been endemic in some localities from the early Republic or reached the mainland only by around bce. Nonetheless, with the climatic change occurring during the late Republic, mosquitoes were surely more likely to transmit the disease, because the developmental process facilitating infection was shorter. Deforestation provided the insects with an increasing number of breeding grounds in Italy. This may seem puzzling and paradoxical, given that I emphasized in the preceding section that deforestation tends to lead to a drier climate. For most locations, this is true. Soil erosion follows deforestation, and is one cause of a drying climate. But the same soil erosion can lead to landslides, which in turn facilitate the formation or growth of marshy zones. These can take shape on the surface and flanks of landslide bodies. Such ephemeral ponds or small lakes can also develop as a result of river blockage caused by erosion, or, to a lesser extent, in badlands areas. An increase in the amount of debris transported by rivers or smaller streams may also result in the formation of alluvial fans, where malaria mosquitoes flourish. Coastal plains like those around Rome are
Sallares () against Carter and Mendis () . Brown () and f. suggests that malaria first appeared in Sardinia around the fifth century bce, although there is no direct evidence for it. Cf. Sallares () . See Sallares () f. on the role of climatic change in spreading malaria. Issar and Zohar () suggest that deforestation was a major factor in the spread of malaria, as the erosion it caused led to higher ground-water levels. In this way, they argue, deforestation ultimately created the swamps that are instrumental in the diffusion of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Sallares () – and Heide () also point out the influence of deforestation. Idem . Antronico et al. () .
Climate and climatic change
especially vulnerable to a spread of malaria when erosion occurs. Ancient medical writers indicate the presence of the disease and suggest that quartian fevers, the most dangerous manifestation of Falciparian malaria, were common in Rome. Among these sources is Asclepiades of Bithynia, a doctor in Rome supposedly during the late Republican period (first century bce). Mosquitoes infested with malaria parasites would have been present in areas along the Tiber (which moreover flooded at times due to their low-lying position), as well as on the lower slopes of the hills and in the valleys. Early modern Roman city archives indicate a death rate of . per , for the year , a bad year for malaria. During the preceding year, when ‘the summer heat and the autumn brought a great crop of malignant fevers’, the death toll was . per ,. Those rates were respectively % and % higher than death rates attested for Florence, which did not suffer from malaria. Given a more favourable climate for the spread of mosquitoes that could infect people with Falciparian malaria during the late Republican period than during the ‘Little Ice Age’ of the s, we can assume that the impact of malaria upon death rates was larger. The increasing average temperature in Italy combined with deforestation and erosion provided a win–win situation for malarial mosquitoes. The effects of the disease could be detrimental, but were confined to marshy, lowland areas (< m above sea level) in river valleys, to deltas, and to areas around coastal wetlands where malaria was endemic. Potential natural growth effects in the Roman Warm Period would therefore have been reduced by the counteracting force of increasing malaria prevalence. But, if this counter-effect washed away all positive effects on population development completely, Roman Italy would be a notable exception in history. This seems unlikely, because malaria was endemic not to Italy alone, but to other regions as well – regions where the correlation between climate
Cf. Sallares () f. Aldrete () estimates that a serious inundation occurred about every years, and that lesser but still significant flooding of the Tiber could be expected every to years. Note that water left behind after flooding could have led to steep increases in the number of mosquitoes. Malaria-prone areas included e.g. the Forum Romanum (perhaps referred to by Horace in Epistulae ., l.–, where he notes that in late summer, work at the Forum brings fevers and leads to the opening of wills) and the area currently known as Trastevere. Heide () is mistaken on this point. Sallares () –; quote at his n. . Sallares (). Sallares (), Ch. and Ch. places considerable emphasis on geographic contrasts and demographic variation in mortality rates and life expectancy, with a focus on the impact of malaria. Cf. Brown (), p. : malaria mortality on Sardinia in was fifteen times the national average, according to the Italian National Malaria Survey for that year.
Economic and ecological parameters
and population growth rates was nonetheless still positive: in China (see Figure .), for example. What positive, mortality-reducing effects, then, may have been induced by warming? In the realm of infectious diseases, the negative impact of expanding malaria may have been countered by a reduction in deaths caused by other infectious diseases. Scarcity of evidence prevents us from investigating the matter. But several historical outbreaks of infectious disease have been linked to cooling climate and adverse weather conditions. This suggests that the possibility remains that the Roman Warm Climate had favourable effects on the frequency of certain ‘mortality spikes’. Classic examples of a massive increase in mortality brought about by a cooling of the climate are the episodic plague outbreaks in medieval Europe and their final upsurges in the seventeenth century. It was long thought that the migration of rats that spread diseases to new areas played a role in this elevated mortality. Deteriorating weather conditions drove these migrations, because they hit the species with food shortages in their natural habitats. Recently, scientific and historical investigations have raised some doubts about the validity of the long-held belief that the disease in question was bubonic plague and consequently that migrating rats functioned as the vectors in spreading the epidemic. But even if these investigations end in a paradigm shift, which is far from certain, this would not undermine the validity of the general principle: cooling climates may lead to geographic displacements, spreading diseases over previously virgin populations. In the case of the sixth-century Justinian Plague, it is now argued that the exceptional cold related to the Dust-Veil event of ce may have played a role in transforming localized epidemics into a massive epidemic that affected a wide range of humans. But it is not only mortality from infectious diseases that would be impacted by altering climatic conditions. Interestingly, a recent study of the relationship between temperature and mortality over the past years
On the prevalence of malaria in historical China, see Poser and Bruyn () and Elvin () . The disease is attested from at least the Shang Dynasty (c.– bce) on: Shengsheng (), contra Bello () . The latter describes the influence of malaria on the administrative policy of the Qing. So e.g. Utterstr¨om () and Galloway (). Poos () points out that even if the plague was not bubonic but pneumonic, and therefore spread by humans, there must have been initial rodent vectors that introduced it to the region. Pneumonic plague starts with a clinical bubonic case that develops secondary pneumonic complications. These allow the bacillus to be transmitted among humans by direct droplet infection without animal vectors (p. ). Sallares () .
Climate and climatic change
in the Netherlands showed that infant mortality was responsible for a considerable share of the correlation between temperatures and death rates. Since it is generally accepted among Roman historians that infant mortality played a prominent role in shaping ancient mortality profiles, this is an important finding. The Netherlands study showed that babies and very young children are most vulnerable to extreme heat and extreme cold. In the latter case, they easily catch a fatal cold or respiratory infection, whereas during hot summers children who are not breastfed are susceptible to gastro-intestinal infections leading to death, since food safety is undermined. At first sight, it may seem that these effects would have cancelled each other out in the Italian setting – with fewer infant deaths during winter, but more during summer, producing an end-effect zero. But on further consideration, the Roman Warm Period probably reduced the infant mortality rate. Babies are only at higher risk when temperatures rise when they are ‘artificially’ fed and exposed to e.g. animal milk and other food products easily contaminated by bacteria when the weather is hot. Breastfeeding, however, was highly valued in antiquity. This raises questions about the vulnerability to gastro-intestinal diseases of Roman babies in comparison to infants in other times and places in historical Europe, where breastfeeding was not always so popular. It is also true that excess mortality related to temperature conditions peaks under different conditions in different geographic zones: generally speaking, northern European people die more rapidly of summer heat, to which they are less well-adapted, whereas in Europe’s warmer climatic zones people are less able to tolerate cold. These combined facts may alter the outcome of the equation for late Republican Italy: the implication is that the positive effects of warming would have surpassed negative consequences, resulting in a positive effect on infant mortality overall. Through its impact on the food chain, the favourable climate of the late Republic may also have reduced mortality. Per capita food availability is partly determined by preceding weather conditions and may have an impact on nutritional status, which in turn influences susceptibility to disease. In extremely adverse cases, when massive food shortages occur, not the occurrence of a disease but starvation itself may be the direct cause of death. We should not overestimate, however, the impact of variation in famine frequency (as induced by altered climatic conditions) on Roman
Ekamper et al. (). On breastfeeding in Roman Italy and early modern Western Europe, see Fildes (), () and (). See Ekamper et al. () with further references.
Economic and ecological parameters
mortality. First of all, we hear little in general of famine in the Roman world. Second, except during extremely bad and long-lasting phases of drought (primarily) or flooding, population developments are generally speaking not driven by the demographic impact of hunger events. But weather conditions do not require the intermediary of food availability to influence mortality rates. They can also affect them more directly: exposure to cold or to extreme heat in and of itself can make the human immune system less efficient, as do abrupt changes in weather conditions. Such extreme conditions increase susceptibility to disease. Such relationships between climate and the transformation of disease epidemiology teach us that even if we can identify historical events that underlie the periods of population stagnation or decrease depicted in Figure ., such as the Black Death for the Medieval population decline, these need not be the sole or ultimate cause. Demographic developments could be connected with or aggravated by climatic change. All in all, from the correlation between climatic and population developments observed for a large number of historical populations, we can infer (if anything) that the Roman Warm Period likely had a positive effect on population levels in Roman Italy. These observations, of course, must all be considered within a pre-modern context of high overall mortality. From a modern perspective, this may make the arguments seem futile. The point to bear in mind, however, is that gains or losses in mortality rates – even if relatively small – were crucial to developmental patterns in a pre-modern population. A slightly rising or falling life expectancy could make the difference between slow population growth and decline. This is precisely what Galloway’s graph on population development in pre-modern societies shows. If we were forced to judge solely on the basis of climatic data, the conclusion to be drawn from the available evidence would be that the population of Italy during the late Republic and early Empire is more likely to have grown than to have declined. This, of course, ignores all behavioural aspects impacting on aggregate demographic developments. The point of this chapter has been to show
Garnsey (), Ch. and Ch. . Food crises were common, but their demographic impact is limited. Herlihy () maintains that the role of famines in affecting population movements is also problematic. He argues that the frequent famines preceding the Black Death, even the ‘Great Hunger’ of –, did not result in any appreciable reduction in population levels. See also the conclusion in Piva et al. () , that ‘a general correspondence between the observed climatic oscillations and recognized archaeological intervals confirms the major role exerted by climate change in determining rises and declines of civilizations’. Such a conclusion, of course, offers little help in understanding the comparative advantages that some civilizations gained over neighbouring populations, if the latter experienced similar climatic conditions.
Climate and climatic change
that beneficial climatic circumstances could enlarge the scope of human action, and should be counted among the conditions that are significant for the history of late Republican Italy. Behavioural factors were at least equally important, and it is to these that I turn in the ensuing three chapters, which are organized according to the three main demographic variables: mortality, fertility and migration.
part ii
The demographic parameters: Mortality, fertility and migration
c h ap t er 4
Mortality
War is the father of all things Heracleitus, Fragment
4.1 introduction Republican Rome was a conquest society. Its expansion and consolidation of power depended on military investment. This investment was made by ordinary Italian citizens in an era in which life expectancy was generally low, and mortality regularly spiked during crises. As we will see below, casualty figures reported by ancient authors for battles between Roman armies and their opponents can be staggering. Mortality levels, and excess mortality caused by military draft and warfare, played a central part in the demographic history of Republican Italy, and are key components of arguments about population trends. For many years, the dominant view has been that Rome’s imperialism exacted a heavy toll on its citizens – not only on the men who took up arms, but on women, children and the population as a whole. What we know about mortality in the ancient world seems to tell us that: life expectancy was already so low under normal conditions that a crisis could easily mean a demographic disaster; reproduction under normal conditions was barely possible; and excess mortality phases, such as those produced by warfare, were very hard to recover from at the macrodemographic level. But recent scholarship has begun to raise doubts about this conceptual framework. Dyson, for example, puts more trust in the ability of the population of Italy to rebound and recover from demographic losses: ‘the general model of severe demographic decline due to heavy military losses is open to question. The casualty figures provided by Livy are those of the military-age male population. Certainly a generation was decimated during the Second Punic War, but many of those losses would
E.g. Brunt (); Hopkins (a); Evans ().
The demographic parameters
have been rapidly replaced by the maturing of younger males spared by the war’. This chapter asks to what extent Rome’s military orientation undermined population growth in Republican Italy. Because the period of the Second Punic War is generally regarded as a turning point in Roman history and as characterized by distinctively heavy military losses among the citizen population, I focus on this time period and its aftermath. Excess military mortality took place against the backdrop of structural conditions of the prevailing mortality regime. The characteristics of this regime are important for our understanding of the impact of exogenous shocks, because the former determine the scope and flexibility of the demographic system to cope with the latter. For that reason, the general characteristics of mortality in Republican Italy are scrutinized in the first sections of this chapter, which establish a background against which to evaluate the impact of conquest on Italy’s free population. 4.2 life expectancy at birth How far ahead did the road from cradle to grave stretch for an inhabitant of the Roman Republic? The answer to this question is not as straightforward as the question itself. We have no reliable direct evidence for life expectancies in Italy during the period under review. The largest quantitative dataset, consisting of tens of thousands of grave inscriptions, is entirely unhelpful for reconstructing survival chances. It is plagued by biases that heavily affect life expectancy reconstructions and for which we have no means of correcting. Since this is by now a well-established fact, there is no need to dwell on the problems. In brief: the number of funeral inscriptions that include information about age at death is highly variable and can be as low as –%. This subgroup of gravestones with age records is not randomly selected, but strongly affected by ‘epigraphic habit’: it underrepresents infants and tends to over-represent children and young adults. Depending on region, other biases occur. Most notably, the province of Africa counts an incredible number of centenarians and supercentenarians
Cf. e.g. Cornell et al. () vii. Dyson () . See e.g. Hopkins (); Hopkins (); Scheidel (b) and Parkin () – for an extensive analysis. –% including ages: sample by McWilliam () . Under-representation of infants: Parkin (). Over-representation of children and young adults: Hopkins () , and with Figs. and .
Mortality
(above age ). Inscriptions with ages at death are therefore not reliable indicators of precise life expectancies. But grave inscriptions that provide the month of death, rather than (or in addition to) the age of the deceased, provide insight into the relative role of infections and other causes of death. Individuals in populations under low mortality pressure tend to die of causes other than infectious disease, which are not linked to specific months or seasons in the year. Patterns of death evenly distributed across the year can thus be associated with higher life expectancy. By contrast, when infectious diseases exact heavy tolls, mortality rates will fluctuate markedly across the year, because weather conditions affect the timing of the outbreaks. The grave inscriptions from Roman Italy show substantial fluctuation in mortality rates over the year, with notable peaks in the numbers of deaths in late summer. By chance, a body of funerary inscriptions from the Republican period, found at the cemetery of San Cesario just outside of Rome, also allows for the reconstruction of seasonal patterns of deaths. The inscriptions, carved on burial urns, are post-Gracchan and probably date to the first half of the first century bce, around the time of Sulla. The distributional patterns of death confirm that strongly oscillating death rates were also characteristic of the Republican period. Over time, the oscillating pattern shifted along with changes in the disease ecology. These could possibly be associated with climate change: around bce, the highest mortality peak – associated with malaria – seems to have occurred about a month later in the year than during the period when Christianity was established. The ratio of
Hopkins () . On the seasonality of death, cf. Scheidel (b) and (b); Shaw (). Most data from Italy relate to Imperial Rome. Christians were more interested in recording exact dates of death, which are a prerequisite for reconstructing the distribution of deaths. But there are also inscriptions from the Republic that record the date of death of the individual buried: a total of from the graveyard of San Cesario, published in Shaw (). Note that the uneven distribution of deaths over the year was not a purely urban phenomenon, but characteristic of the countryside also. See Lo Cascio (), esp. . While there are problems in reconstructing patterns due to the shifting calendar of the Republic, Shaw argues that after some reconfiguration to correct for this, the inscriptions can still serve as evidence and likewise display an uneven mortality distribution: Shaw () –. Contra Shaw () f. The uncorrected Republican data display a pattern suggesting that mortality peaked about a month later than during the Imperial period. Shaw argued that the Republican inscriptions should be systematically dated back one month, to make the pre-Julian calendar of the Republic correspond to Imperial Julian calendar dates. This correction would yield roughly similar patterns of death over time. But in the pre-Julian calendar the years were of variable length, and adjustments to keep the calendar year synchronized with the solar year were made irregularly. New insights into conversion of pre-Julian to Julian dates published by Bennett () and at www.tyndalehouse.com/Egypt/ptolemies/chron/roman/chron rom intro fr.htm (accessed January ) show that around the time of Sulla, the pre-Julian calendar was in fact generally slightly ahead of the Julian calendar. In other words, there is a real difference in the seasonal death-peaks.
The demographic parameters
deaths from one month to another varies much more pronouncedly than that of modern Italy, and points to a larger role for infectious diseases in causing death. On the basis of the inscriptional evidence, we can therefore conclude that Roman Italy was characterized by a ‘high mortality’ regime with low life expectancy at birth, and that life between cradle and grave was often short. Yet this general inference leaves considerable room for variation. Across pre-industrial societies similarly characterized by high death tolls from infectious disease, life expectancies at birth ranged between a maximum of about years and a minimum of about . While either end of this range is low from a modern viewpoint, life expectancy at the high end is twice that at the low end, and the ends come with significantly different implications for population growth and population reproduction rates. When life expectancy is around at birth, adult women need to have about . daughters born alive (and another . sons) on average to keep the population stationary. At a life expectancy that low, the so-called Gross Reproduction Rate required for demographic survival of a population is close to the range of . and above that is considered highly unlikely, if not impossible, to maintain. When life expectancy is , the population will remain even across the generations when adult women have . daughters on average, and . children altogether. If adult women had . children under this mortality regime, population would grow by .% annually rather than by %, and double its size in about years. Different mortality conditions would therefore lead to extremely divergent historical scenarios under similar marriage patterns and reproductive behaviours. They would also place the impact of excess mortality caused by violence in different lights. All this illustrates why more precise knowledge of mortality in Italy would greatly advance our understanding of issues of wider importance. 4.3 papyri, skeletons and literary sources on survival To reconstruct life expectancy at birth in the ancient world more precisely, diverse bodies of data have been employed. I discuss the findings of a number of seminal studies below. First, however, the procedures by which these data have yielded life expectancies should be explained. So-called model life tables play a key role here. Life tables display population age distributions,
E.g. Hopkins () –. Coale and Demeny () . The Gross Reproduction Rate refers to the required number of female offspring alone.
Mortality
mortality rates and fertility rates for a range of life expectancies at birth, and at different levels of demographic growth (and decline). Data on the survival of Roman (sub)populations from a specific age onward, or age distributions of living or dead populations can be set against these tables to extrapolate the implied life expectancy at birth that best fits the available data. For the Roman world, historians have used the Model West life tables prepared by Coale and Demeny. We cannot be sure that the life expectancies implied by ‘best fit’ model life tables perfectly predict or match ancient realities. But despite their limitations (see Section . below), I present the result of studies based on these models and continue to use them. I do so for two reasons. First, demographic models are the best tool we have to think with and to test hypotheses for logical inconsistencies. Second, presenting life expectancy estimates derived from various ancient sources in the ‘translation’ of a single model keeps biases consistent. It allows us to gain insight into the demographic differences and convergences between datasets from within the Roman world. Unfortunately, none of the available data sources pertain to the period of the Roman Republic. For the early Imperial period, an attempt has been made to calculate age at death for a group of more or less ordinary citizens who died on the beach at Herculaneum during the eruption of Vesuvius. This reconstruction is based on the hypothesis that ‘during the escape there was no selection of a particular age group that would affect the demographic structure of [the] skeletal sample’. Despite the authors’ attempt to save the evidence, in fact it shows strong indications of selection. The share of - to -year-olds in this population is so high that we can, in my view, only conclude that it reflects their greater ability to run away from the danger fast enough to make it to the beach. Alternatively, the evidence may imply that Herculaneum attracted many young adult migrants. Either explanation pleads against using this data to reconstruct life expectancy. The only other data from Italy that reflect its disease ecology also stem from the Imperial period, and relate to the highest socio-economic circles of Italian society: emperors, senators and city council members. The number of years lived after accession by emperors who died a natural death is
Capasso and Capasso (). Cf. Roth () –; Witcher () . Contra Capasso and Capasso (). The share aged – in the sample is nearly %. This is about % higher than the expected c.%, according to the most widely used Coale and Demeny Tables. A share of % for these four age-groups is not reached in any of the Coale and Demeny models, which display all combinations of life expectancies between and with annual growth rates of -% to +%, for different regions (North, South, East, West).
The demographic parameters
consistent with a life expectancy at birth of . years. This conclusion derives from plotting the survival of the emperors against model life tables that display survival rates for low life expectancy populations. These in turn are extrapolated from existing survival curves for populations with higher life expectancies. The age distribution of mortality of of their wives fits well with Coale and Demeny’s model life table for e = .. Another dataset from within Italy, but again dating to Imperial times, is that containing members of the Roman Senate. For them, a hypothetical life expectancy range of . to . years at birth emerges from a theoretical model proposed by Scheidel that includes additional hypotheses regarding the size of the body and the number of new members admitted yearly to keep its ranks full. Both data sources draw on a longer time period and can therefore be reasonably thought to represent more or less stable conditions. The ‘Album of Canusium’, which lists all members of the council of this Apulian city, relates specifically to the year ce. It can only deliver a range-estimate, because life expectancy estimates need to be derived from assumptions regarding the possible career-paths of councillors. While this pushes the undertaking towards the edge of speculation, the resulting lower and upper margins of c. and c. years respectively still fall within the range of life expectancies at birth predicted on the basis of comparative evidence. The Italian data therefore suggest that Roman mortality rates fell in the upper half of the attested range for pre-industrial populations. Life expectancies conversely fell in the lower half of the attested range for preindustrial populations. The orthodoxy among historians – based also on Roman Egyptian data (see below) – accordingly holds that Roman life expectancy fell within a range of ‘between and years at birth’. In practice, a life expectancy at birth of years (e = ) is often used as a convenient mean. It deserves emphasis here that the convention among demographers to refer to life expectancy at birth should not mislead one to think that remaining life expectancy decreased consistently from that point
On the Coale and Demeny model life tables: e.g. Woods (). Scheidel () –, based on Hopkins () –. Scheidel () –. CIL IX ; cf. Scheidel () –, where a summary of previous scholarship (notably that of Duncan-Jones () –) on the inscription is also given. Canusium can probably not be regarded as a ‘typical’ Roman town, since its geography placed it in a good position to profit from the wool-trade, and its high-quality wool was valued so highly in the Diocletian Price Edict that it has been suggested the town enjoyed ‘above-average prosperity’: Salway () –. On the relatively high price of wool from the region around Canusium in the Price Edict: Jones () . Several earlier historical accounts confirm the notion that wool from Canusium was also expensive earlier on. Notably, Suetonius, Nero mentions that Nero dressed his muleteers in wool from Canusium, as an illustration of his extravagant money-wasting (profusionem).
Mortality
in life onwards. In fact, life expectancy rises after infancy: it rises to at age , and then slowly declines. Life tables (on which more below) generally yield life expectancy by -year age groups in an ‘ex ’ column, which can be used to getter a better sense of life expectancy for teenagers, young adults, seniors and so on. That said, the fact that Roman life expectancy seems to have ranged between age and at birth considerably narrows the range of possible historical macro-demographic scenarios, since life expectancy in the lowest half of the – range becomes less compatible with high growth rate scenarios. Yet the Italian data relate to high-status individuals. They do not inform us directly about the bulk of ordinary citizens, a group of greater interest from a quantitative perspective. Can we expect that a Roman from a modest background, barely able to get by, was no more likely to die early than fellow citizens whose financial means were orders of magnitude greater? This seems counterintuitive. Still, to the extent that research has been carried out, it mostly suggests that differences between higher and lower socioeconomic status (SES) groups in pre-industrial settings were negligible or non-existent. On these grounds, it has been argued that food intake, housing quality and other similar factors only emerged as major factors creating divergent experiences once epidemics no longer dominated the mortality regime. Previous to that, so the orthodoxy holds, socio-economic status did not affect susceptibility to morbidity and mortality. If this would hold true for ancient Italy as well, and if conditions during the Imperial period were not significantly different from those during the late Republic, we might infer that life expectancy for the population as a whole was similar to that of emperors, senators and council members, and probably fell somewhere in the upper s. That there were no substantial divergences in life expectancy between the elite and the masses seems to be the new orthodoxy among ancient historians.
Hollingsworth () – on early modern England. See also Livi Bacci () f. with Figure ; Wrigley et al. () ; Kunitz and Engerman () ; Grundy () and Clark () . But exceptions to this rule have been observed. Studies of notables in France and Geneva reveal that they already lived longer than their poorer counterparts in the seventeenth century: see Flinn () on Geneva and on a suburb of Le Havre. Bideau et al. () refer to similar distinctions in Rouen, but stress that evidence on differential longevity is not entirely reliable. Milanovic et al. () – are evidently ill-informed when stating that survival-rate gaps between different socio-economic groups may have been eternal. Hoffman et al. () – give an overview of evidence on differences in early-modern life expectancy. Scheidel (b) and Kunitz and Engerman (). See e.g. Scheidel (b) – for the view that socio-economic status hardly mattered to survival chances in the ancient world as a whole. See also Tacoma () –, who considers the logical attractiveness of assuming that higher levels of well-being among the elite lowered mortality levels among this group, and recognizes the difficulty
The demographic parameters
Implied life expectancy at birth in Roman Italy would seem to be several years higher than for ordinary people born in Roman Egypt, and more specifically in the Fayum Delta. For Roman Egypt during the first two centuries ce, census papyri relating to c. households suggest a population composition that according to initial analyses fits best with a model life table for a life expectancy of between . and years at birth for men, and for women. Later analyses of the same material showed that, for reasons that make little difference here, the data for women in rural villages are of the highest quality. These conform to the predictions of Coale and Demeny’s Model West Level Table for females, yielding a life expectancy of . years at birth. The data, however, are also compatible with a range of models that predict higher life expectancy at birth, because the dataset for countryside females is small. We thus need not necessarily view the Egyptian results as evidence of lower expectancy for lower status groups. If life expectancy among lower status groups in Roman Egypt was lower than reconstructions seem to suggest for high status groups in Imperial Italy, geography rather than (or in conjunction with) SES might provide an explanation. The Egyptian Fayum, where most records come from, was characterized by a harsh ecological environment, in which malaria may well have exacted a heavier toll than in Italy. The hypothesis that different socio-economic groups had similar survival chances, in other words, is not seriously undermined by comparison with the Egyptian data. In absolute numbers of years, differences would have been limited. Any analysis or comparison must nonetheless take account of the fact that some uncertainty surrounds the system of age reckoning in the ancient world. Basically, there are three options: inclusive age reckoning (a system in which someone is already considered, e.g. at the start of his or her th year of life, so from what we would call his or her th birthday); exclusive age reckoning (the system currently in use in Western countries); and a system in which anyone born during a certain year came to be ‘one year’ at the start of the new calendar year. We are not exactly sure who used which system when, but there are indications that in Roman Italy, exclusive age
of determining whether positive and negative impacts on life expectancy cancelled each other out. He ultimately emphasizes that the urban residence of the elites in Roman Egypt undermined their potential for substantial advantages in longevity, thus favouring the non-differential view, although cautiously. This caution fades in Tacoma () , where the conclusion is phrased more firmly. Bagnall and Frier () f. and (women) and (men). Overall life expectancy: –. Scheidel (b) –. Scheidel (b), Ch. . on malaria in the Fayum in Middle Egypt. Archaeological finds for this region include ancient magical spells intended to provide protection against fevers: idem, p. . For the geographical distribution of the surviving census returns, see Bagnall and Frier () –.
Mortality
reckoning was used, whereas in Egypt it seems that inclusive age reckoning was used. We may accordingly need to subtract one year from the Egyptian ages, which would enlarge the observed life expectancy differences. 4.4 coale and demeny’s model: are there alternatives? As noted, the model life tables used to reconstruct life expectancy in the Roman world are the so-called ‘Model West’ tables produced by Coale and Demeny. The authors recommend using this set of tables in the case of ‘underdeveloped countries where there is no reliable guide to the age pattern of mortality that prevails’. Arguably, at the time the Model West life tables were the best option available. But many recent studies have pointed out the limitations of these tables. The main one is that their values for high-mortality levels are not anchored in empirical evidence, but are extrapolated from data on populations with much higher life expectancies, at times when mortality profiles and causes of death were different than in Roman times. When Coale and Demeny constructed their models, there were some empirical data from pre- and non-Western populations with low life expectancies, but the quality of these was so inferior that extrapolation from evidence of a higher standard was judged to yield more reliable results. The mortality distributions by age that the model life tables display for life expectancies below around age at birth were created through systematic application of logical mathematical formulas to fill in data-gaps. In other words, the mortality parameters are set higher to reach the low life expectancies characteristic of a society like Roman Italy, but the formula of death itself does not change. The ratios between age-specific mortality rates remain stable, and the age-specific shape of the mortality curve is not moulded. In addition, populations suffering from infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis were excluded from consideration in the models. This means that the age-specific mortality risks in the Coale and Demeny tables are unable to incorporate the effect of diseases with age-specific target groups that prevail only in low life expectancy societies. The negative impact of tuberculosis on survival,
On exclusive Roman age reckoning: Parkin () –. On inclusive reckoning in birth and census declarations from Roman Egypt: Tacoma () with n. . Coale and Demeny () . Most recently, Earnshaw-Brown (). Note also Scheidel (a), who provides an elaborate critique of the (use of ) Coale and Demeny model life tables, and Sallares () f. Unreliability of data from developing countries and from European countries prior to : Coale and Demeny () . Low life expectancy tables as extrapolations: Coale and Demeny () . Cf. also Scheidel (c) –.
The demographic parameters
for example, is distributed evenly over people of all ages in the model, whereas in reality young adults suffer disproportionally more from the disease than other age groups do. Also, the ratio between infant and adult mortality can change at different levels of life expectancy or vary over time or between societies. Age-specific survival rates in Coale and Demeny’s model life tables reflect disease ecology conditions unlikely to match those prevalent in ancient times. Mortality in these societies is therefore unlikely to conform exactly to model life tables. We thus cannot be sure that the life expectancies implied by ‘best fit’ model life tables perfectly predict or match ancient realities, particularly when it comes to age-specific mortality rates. Notwithstanding the limitations of Coale and Demeny’s model, many ancient historians continue to use it. They have an important and obvious reason to do so: despite their limitations, life tables offer us a general idea of mortality conditions and their impact on Roman society. They are, as noted, our best means to test hypotheses based on qualitative impressions or statements for logical inconsistencies, and to investigate their quantitative implications by approximation. Dismissing the use of life tables altogether would remove the possibility of testing the likelihood of quantitative historical theories. It would re-erect obstacles to the study of social and economic history that ancient historians have recently begun to eliminate by adopting social science methodologies. It makes no sense for ancient historians to turn their back on quantitative models on the ground that models, if used, ought to be perfect, but can be proven not to be. Models involving human or animal behaviour, whether historical, econometric, demographic, ecological or of some other sort, are always approximations. A perfect match would simply be too much to ask for. In the case of the ancient world, they will always deliver very rough approximations at best. The point is that an approximation based on underlying assumptions that can be discussed openly is better than no approximation at all. 4.4.1 Chilean and African models . . . All that said, is there anything better than the defective Coale and Demeny tables to use for quantitative approximations of Roman demography? It seems that there is. Since the publication of the Coale and Demeny life tables, significant improvements have been made in models estimating
Woods () f. with Tables (France) and (England). For further guidance into studies of historical infant and child mortality and its patterns and causes: Bideau et al. (). Coale and Demeny () , . See also Woods () . Contra Earnshaw-Brown ().
Mortality
past mortality, and new mortality data relating to lower life expectancies have become available. A study by Woods with high quality data for Chile and Taiwan in the early twentieth century, when life expectancy was still below , is of particular interest to ancient historians. More or less coinciding with the publication of Woods’ article, further sets of life tables that might provide better material than Coale and Demeny’s were published by the INDEPTH Network, which has carried out extensive demographic data collection across the African continent. This dataset provides the first reliable large-scale evidence for sub-Saharan Africa. While the life tables derived from these data reflect a range of populations affected by diverse disease ecologies, the mortality profiles have in common that they are heavily affected by infectious diseases and come from low life expectancy settings. The advantage of both datasets is that, alongside demographic rates, they offer further information on the disease patterns and causes of death underlying the mortality profiles. To test the potential of his Chilean data as a model for ancient mortality patterns, Woods performed Brass modelling with two parameters to see how well these life tables fit with ancient data. The advantage of Brass modelling is that by using two parameters, both the level of mortality () and the ratio between infant and adult mortality (-) can be adjusted in the model to find the optimal fit with the observed data. Woods argued that his results, as measured by R , suggest a good fit. However, it remains unclear from his analysis how much better this fit is than the Coale and Demeny Model West tables. Clarity on this issue would require Brass modelling with Coale and Demeny’s model following the same methodology. Moreover, Woods used Ulpian’s evidence, which was not the best available, for his analysis. For the ages up to , the Chilean data were not fitted to these Roman ‘empirical’ data, but to another model life table. To meaningfully compare the potential of the various life table models that seem of use for the ancient world, we used the same Brass modelling method. We employed this method to test the goodness of fit of five models with what is generally taken to be the best available demographic evidence for the Roman world, the census data. These data, it must be emphasized again, are still far from perfect, a fact that must be taken into account when interpreting the results. Unfortunately, for technical reasons (sample size) it was impossible to use the best subset of data, that of rural women.
For a recent analysis of developments in the field, see Heuveline and Clark (). INDEPTH Network () and (). Woods (). See Woods () , Table , Sources. I am grateful to Adam Lenart, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, who kindly offered his knowledge and patience for the Brass-modelling in R (a code program).
The demographic parameters
Table . Best fit of life tables to Roman census dataa and Ulpian life tableb
Roman: census data Egypt (smoothed a ) . Coale and Demeny West Model . Woods ‘Southern Europe’ Model (Chile) . Africa Navrongo Model (Ghana) . Africa Morogoro Model (Tanzania) . Africa Butajira Model (Ethiopia)
Implied e
R
Standard error
-
. .
. .
. .
− . − .
. .
. .
. .
. .
. .
. .
.
.
.
.
.
. .
. .
. .
. .
. .
. .
. .
. .
.
.
.
.
Roman: Ulpian’s life table (age 15 onwards)b . Coale and Demeny West Model . . Woods ‘Southern Europe’ . Model (Chile) . Africa Navrongo Model (Ghana) . . Africa Morogoro Model . (Tanzania) . Africa Butajira Model (Ethiopia) .
Notes: (a) Empirical Roman census data from Egypt were smoothed using LOESS regression. (b) For comparability, and to offer the reader insight into the relative fit of Woods’ and the African models with the Roman data used by Woods, I replicated the life table used by Woods to represent the Roman Empire (Woods (), p. , Table ). This life is based on Ulpian for ages + (Frier ), but on Coale and Demeny West level females for mortality up to age .
Instead, all data were used and then smoothed to reduce the biases of under-reporting of the youngest and age-shoving of males beyond taxable ages. We also tested the models against the Ulpian ‘life table’ previously used by Woods. The first two models tested against these data are the known Coale and Demeny and Woods models. The other three models are based on different African settings and are based on the INDEPTH studies. Their specifics are described further below. Table . and Figure . summarize the results.
Note that the age groups from to represent % of the population in the complete dataset we used. This is % higher than in the sub-set of village females: here, % of all individuals were aged between and . See Scheidel (b) . Note that Akrigg () , with Table . created an interpolation of two Coale and Demeny life tables in an effort to get a better-fitting model for Classical Athens. I have chosen not to include his model in the Brass tests because it is essentially a variation on Coale and Demeny’s models.
Mortality
Age-specific death rates (nqx) per 1,000: Coale & Demeny Model West, Woods Model South, and African models compared 700
Death rate (per 1,000)
600 500 400 300 200
100 0 0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
60
65
70
75
Age group
Coale & Demeny West model
Woods Model South
Morogoro (Tanzania)
Butajira (Ethiopia)
Navrongo (Ghana)
Figure . Best fit models: age-specific death rates compared
It is evident from the results that for the Egyptian census data, all alternative models provide a better optimal fit than Coale and Demeny. This is indicated by the higher R and lower standard errors of the various African models and Woods’ ‘Southern Europe’ model (which is in fact based on Chilean data from the early twentieth century). The variance is small. It should be taken into account, however, that R values tend to vary within a narrow range. When they fall below , values are generally considered to indicate a bad fit between model and evidence. The implication of these findings is that the smoothed age distribution of the population of Roman Egypt conforms better to life tables from Chile and various African places than to those of the Western populations on which Coale and Demeny’s model life tables are based. Woods’ Southern Europe Model provides the best fit, followed by the model based on Morogoro in Tanzania. When set against the ‘Ulpian data’, Coale and Demeny’s tables do seem to provide the best fit. But this is merely a result of the fact that Ulpian’s data were supplemented by Coale and Demeny’s demographic model rates for children, so that the Brass modelling partly fits model life tables to
See Woods () and Haines () , who performed the same procedure for the United States in the late nineteenth century.
The demographic parameters
model life tables. In other words, in this case the very high R does not tell us much about how well the model predicts the data, and the results should be ignored. The best actual fit with the Ulpian data is provided by the model based on Ethiopian data, followed by Woods’ ‘Southern Model’. The Morogoro Model, which provides the second-best fit with the Egyptian census data, does not work well for the Ulpian data. It thus demonstrates that we cannot expect a single model life table to be the best approximation for the ancient world as a whole, because there was too much (regional) variation. To support his suggestion that his ‘Model South’, based on the Chilean data, provides a superior alternative to Coale and Demeny’s model for students of the ancient world, Woods emphasized the value of the results of Brass modelling, as measured by goodness of fit. However, the fact that several models yield close ‘goodness of fit’ with the ancient data used here emphasizes how a choice between alternative models can never be based merely on a statistical comparison, but ought to take into account contextual background information about the disease ecology of the environments from which the model data come. Coale and Demeny’s models are, as already noted, based on disease ecologies that do not include some of the main diseases characteristic of areas of the ancient world for which there is quantitative demographic information, or in which interest is high (such as Rome). The advantage of the alternative models is that they are based on single populations for which the demography of death is known in broad terms. This allows for model selection on the basis of more precise and explicit criteria. There are notable differences between the areas on which the alternative models are based. Woods’ Model South is based on Chilean data from the and censuses. Within this period, Chile’s population rose from . to . million. It was at that time a comparatively highly urbanized country, with the percentage of the population living in urban areas rising from .% in to .% in , and a capital that rapidly expanded to around , inhabitants in . As is shown in Figure ., the Chilean model displays the highest death rates of all models for very young adults between ages and . Adult mortality thereafter continues to be high and remains consistently above the rates in the Coale and Demeny models, but crosses with mortality rates in Ghana and Tanzania for part of the period between ages and . For those aged +, death rates in Woods’ South Model again rise to supersede mortality rates in the other
Woods () – and .
Mamalakis () .
Mamalakis () .
Mortality
models. Life expectancy was very low, at just over , for males in . At such a low life expectancy, infectious diseases are the main causes of death. By far not all deaths were given a specific cause in the records, but when they are, the majority are attributed to influenza. It is clear that the level of malaria endemicity was relatively low in Chile, markedly lower than in Egypt during the same period. Given the geography of Chile, this is unsurprising: only a limited portion of the country lies below the maximum height at which malarial mosquitoes can survive, and large parts of its territory are above , metres. For reasons that remain unclear, in Chile the role of cardiovascular disease in shaping mortality was notably large for a pre-transitional population. It was more important, for example, than tuberculosis, and ranked second among the specific causes of death in and . Cardiovascular causes of death were, intriguingly, not concentrated among the elderly, but were (depending on age) the second or third specific cause of death among infants, children, and young adults as well. This remarkable age-specific pattern of cardiovascular causes of deaths remains largely unexplained in the demographic data sources. We might hypothesize that it might have something to do with the extreme differences in altitude within the region, and with the need for internal and international migrants to adapt to them, which puts considerable demands on heart-lung function. But this is speculation. In any case, one should always be careful not to ascribe too much weight to interpretations of causes of death given in historical records, because it is notoriously difficult to sort descriptions of diseases and pathologies in historical sources within modern classification systems. Nonetheless, the Chilean data are from the twentieth century, not from centuries ago, so it seems less likely that the causes of death in the data are massively perturbed. At the very least, it is remarkable that the number of deaths seemingly caused by cardiovascular problems was five times higher than in Taiwan, which had a comparable life expectancy at birth of . in the same period. This exceptional characteristic and the distinctive, highly variable ecology of Andean Chile deserve attention when set against historical material from the ancient Mediterranean. The Chilean model fits well with the ancient data, but this is partly a coincidence that
Preston () , Table .A.. See also Caballo () . Preston et al. () –. Woods () , Table . Migrants from the highlands to the cities and agricultural areas in the lowlands tend to suffer from hypertension. Infant mortality is also higher due to increased fertility (this in turn is induced by the disappearance of biological mechanisms that suppress fertility under low oxygen intake conditions characteristic of mountain life). See Weil (). For a more general account of high mortality among highlanders migrating to lowlands: Bulayeva et al. (). Vice versa, lowlanders moving to high altitude experience difficulties in adapting to low oxygen values: Beall () –.
The demographic parameters
arises from similarities in age-specific death rates caused by different disease ecologies. Part of the African continent is more similar to the Mediterranean when it comes to environmental conditions that impact mortality profiles. The Ethiopian death rates display a pattern typical of areas in which malaria is ubiquitous: here, death rates for children aged – are very high – the highest of the tested mortality models. At high ages, death rates show a somewhat bumpy pattern (see Figure .). This results from the fact that the study population of the Butajira area was relatively small. It consisted of only , people studied over years, during which time slightly over , deaths occurred. Because few people make it beyond age , the number of observed deaths becomes very low at older ages. This is one factor underlying the somewhat spurious pattern, which deviates markedly from that for the other populations. Another is age-misstatement among the elderly. The geographic proximity to Egypt lends interest to the causes of death profile of the population of this area, but unfortunately the study area is among the least well described of the INDEPTH studies. The mortality profile of Morogoro is characterized by a high adult mortality between ages and . The Morogoro population is poor by Tanzanian standards, and physical infrastructure is very basic: only % of the surveyed population has access to electricity, % uses pit latrines, close to % are dependent on wells or rivers for water, and % cook over open wood fires. Demographic rates were collected for a sample population of , individuals, a number thought to yield good data even when subdivided into smaller subgroups (such as singular causes of death or age groups). Because farming dominates, the area is characterized by low population density and has a mix of lowlands and highlands, and because migration occurred mostly within the district, the Morogoro study site was selected to represent poor rural populations. Life expectancy at birth is . for men and . for women, but infant and early child mortality (up to age ) are slightly higher for girls. The difference is too small for much weight to be placed on its interpretation, but it might suggest that infant boys, who ought to display higher death rates under equal conditions, are treated better than baby girls and young daughters. The main causes of death in the area are acute fevers (including malaria), diarrhoeal diseases, HIV/AIDS, anaemia, pulmonary tuberculosis, injuries from both violence
On high death rates among ages – as typical of areas in which malaria is a significant cause of death, see INDEPTH () . INDEPTH (), Ch. , –. INDEPTH () . INDEPTH () (period: –); (infant and child mortality).
Mortality
and accidents, and malnutrition. While the mortality profile of the Morogoro population is far more similar to what we might expect for ancient Rome than Coale and Demeny’s West tables, which include neither malaria nor tuberculosis as causes of death, the impact of HIV/AIDS likely pushes adult mortality rates above what we might expect for Roman adults under normal conditions. Unfortunately, published information does not present exact information on the mortality burden caused by HIV/AIDS, but the prevalence of the disease is surely above %. The mortality bump for adults encapsulated in the Morogoro life tables, on the other hand, might prove useful to historians interested in the impact of war mortality. But more detailed information about the role of specific causes of death in creating the Morogoro bump for young adults would need to be made available for that purpose. Navrongo in Ghana is in West Africa, the region of the continent least affected by HIV/AIDS. The entire area lies below metres, includes a major river and a large lake, and has a Sahelian climate with a wet (June–October) and a dry season. Population density is again low; the urbanization rate is less than %. The demography of the area is under rigorous study, and relatively detailed information is available. Navrongo region is characterized by resistance to the use of modern medicine. Immunization of infants is common, but healthcare in general is dominated by traditional medicine. Available family planning services are used by only % of married women. The total fertility rate (TFR) was . per woman on average over the period –. Migration is particularly high among young adults (ages –), and outmigration is higher than immigration in the district. Social and economic life is shaped by the strongly patriarchal traditional culture, in which female autonomy is low. Life expectancies at birth, however, show that patriarchy does not automatically imply lower life expectancies for women: during the period –, e was . for men and . for women – even though women need male permission, for example, to seek medical advice. The area is very poor; about % of the c., people included in the survey population live in huts, and access to treated tap water is rare. Subsistence farming is the mainstay of the district’s economy, and about % of the inhabitants are farmers. The district is isolated, and dependence on local harvests, which are intermittently poor due to flooding or drought, makes malnutrition a common problem that aggravates the mortality impact of infectious diseases. Malaria,
INDEPTH () –.
INDEPTH () Ch. , –.
The demographic parameters
gastroenteritis and acute respiratory infections are the leading causes of death. 4.4.2 . . . What do they add? The test of four alternative model life tables makes it clear that there are ‘better models on the market’ than the Coale and Demeny West Model that has hitherto been dominant in research on ancient demography. The Chilean and African models have in common that they produce better overall results with Brass modelling. This means that these models fit better with the smoothed ancient census data and the smoothed Ulpian evidence than Coale and Demeny’s Model West does. This is unsurprising: Woods’ analysis already made it evident that the Chilean census data provided a better model than the Coale and Demeny West Model. The new African population data reflect the impact of infectious diseases that were not taken into account in Coale and Demeny’s models, so that here too a better match with the ancient data might have been predicted. Together, the four alternative models strengthen the notion of low expectancy for the ancient Roman world: despite differences in patterns of mortality, in all but one case Brass modelling produces the best matches of model to data for life expectancies at birth that do not deviate substantially from the range –. In other words, the use of the Coale and Demeny Model by previous studies has not, in contrast to what has previously been suggested, led to mistaken ideas about life expectancy at birth. That is not to say that life expectancy in specific areas of the ancient world might not have been higher; in fact, it was (see Sections .–. below on why and how). But in the regions for which data are available, different models (i.e. the Chilean and African ones) do not yield different results; they cannot be taken to suggest that Roman babies lived significantly shorter or longer than previously thought. It is only the distribution of the risk at death over the life-course that was probably slightly different from what was implied by the Coale and Demeny West Model. In three of the four alternative models, death rates for children aged – are lower than in Coale and Demeny’s model. This lends some force to earlier suggestions that infant mortality in the Greco-Roman world may
Contra Woods (), who suggested that the ‘South Model’ suggested that life expectancies in the ancient world might have been higher than hitherto assumed. Coale and Demeny’s model implies an infant death rate of .% for a life expectancy of at birth: Coale and Demeny () Model West, Level (female), p. , column (deaths per ,).
Mortality
have been lower than thought. If so, we must also assume that mortality among adults was higher. At which ages beyond four exactly the risk of death was higher is not so obvious; there is no clear congruence between the various alternative models. The Chilean model suggests that adults between age and were worst off. This is a pattern typical for societies in which tuberculosis exacts heavy tolls, since the disease hits young adults in particular. But in the case of Chile, cardiovascular disease in fact played a larger role in creating this bump: it consistently caused more deaths than tuberculosis in all age groups –. If ancient historians were to prefer the Chilean data over Coale and Demeny’s tables as a model for the ancient world, on the assumption that this model better reflects the impact of tuberculosis, they would likely overestimate mortality among young adults. Alongside accounting for tuberculosis, they would also attribute remarkably high cardiovascular mortality to ancient Romans. There are no grounds for doing this. The Ethiopian Butajira data, by contrast, show the most pronounced bump in mortality among children up to age . These are the victims of malaria mosquitoes. The demographic rates of the Butajira model thus reflect a society in which malaria is endemic, which cannot be said of the Chilean model, where malaria has no noteworthy significance. For ancient historians interested in the demography of Mediterranean areas heavily affected by malaria, therefore, the Butajira model arguably has advantages over the Chilean model, provided it is used in the awareness that it yields unreliable results for the elderly. But there are several varieties of malaria, and the intensity of its presence makes a difference for which age groups suffer most heavily. For that reason, the Butajira Model is perhaps less suitable for ancient Rome and Italy than for Roman Egypt. In the Nile Delta and the Fayum in Egypt, the source of most Roman census data, malaria was holo-endemic, as in Ethiopian Butajira. Under these circumstances, deaths concentrate among children, whereas older individuals have developed adaptive immunity and carry the disease without dying, or even without developing symptoms. It remains unclear how ubiquitous malaria was in Roman Italy. But temperatures were certainly less favourable and altitudes in some places too high to support holo-endemic malaria. This means
Scheidel (b) . In , deaths caused by cardiovascular defects were between . and . times as frequent as deaths resulting from tuberculosis for age groups between and : Preston et al. () . This is in contrast to Taiwan, where deaths due to tuberculosis were two to three times as frequent as those ascribed to cardiovascular causes.
The demographic parameters
that not all inhabitants of Italy were exposed to the disease. The city of Rome, the malarial area with the largest number of inhabitants, attracted many migrants. They could not have developed immunity, so the age profile of deaths from malaria there would look different from that of Roman Egypt or Butajira: immigrants to Rome from non-malarial areas of Italy (or overseas) would have died from the disease as adults as well. Because malaria likely counted among the main causes of death in Rome, we cannot expect the age-specific mortality profile of the city to be similar to the Butajira Model. In the Morogoro model, mortality rises above Coale and Demeny’s predictions from age –, primarily reflecting the impact of HIV/AIDSrelated mortality in a region where the disease affects more than % of adults. In the Ghanaian region of Navrongo, where healthcare and economy are the most traditional and gender inequality the most pronounced, mortality is relatively high only at even higher ages: here, mortality is higher than predicted by Coale and Demeny’s model between ages and . Why adults in these age groups are at the highest risk remains unclear. It is noteworthy, however, that the age profile of mortality is unaffected by high rates of HIV/AIDS and cardiovascular diseases, and includes malaria as a main cause of death. Malnutrition, a common problem in the ancient world (see Chapter ), also has a significant impact on the Navrongo population. All this suggests that it may also be worthwhile to consider the Navrongo Model as a viable model for ancient populations. To facilitate the choice between and use of alternative demographic models for ancient populations, Tables .–. provide complete model life tables for a life expectancy at birth of years based on the Coale and Demeny Model (Table .); Woods’ Model South(Table .); the Navrongo (Ghana) Model (Table .); the Morogoro (Tanzania) Model (Table .) and the Butajira (Ethiopia) Model (Table .). The most substantial difficulty in selecting a viable model for study of ancient mortality in a specific setting is patently that quantitative information on diseases crucial to shaping age-specific mortality patterns cannot be obtained from traditional historical sources pertaining to Roman Italy. Such information is only slowly beginning to reach us through
For a study of malaria focused on Roman Italy, see Sallares (). For causes of death in ancient (and early-modern) Egypt, see Scheidel (b). Sallares () focuses on ancient Greece. While there are several studies of death and disease in the ancient world, the problems of identification and quantification surrounding traditional historical evidence pose insurmountable difficulties to demographic analysis. Grmek () is still the standard work on disease in the ancient world. Grmek and Gourevitch () focus on the visual depiction of diseases in art.
Mortality
Table . Model life table (e0 = 25) – Coale and Demeny West Model Age q(x) d(x)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
M(x)
l(x)
L(x)
P(x)
T(x)
e(x)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Table . Model life table (e0 = 25), based on Woods’ South Model (Chile)* Age q(x) d(x)
M(x) l(x)
L(x)
P(x)
T(x)
e(x)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
* Based on Woods South Model, fitted to census from Roman Egypt for ages –; rates for age directly derived from Woods (), p. , Table .
The demographic parameters
Table . Model life table (e0 = 25) – based on Navrongo (Ghana) Model Age q(x) d(x)
M(x) l(x)
L(x)
P(x)
T(x)
e(x)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Note: Death rates at age replicate observed death rates for Navrongo, Ghana, multiplied by the best-fit multiplier for age (as established by the Brass-modelling).
Table . Model life table (e0 = 25) – based on Morogoro (Tanzania) Model Age q(x) d(x)
M(x) l(x)
L(x)
P(x)
T(x)
e(x)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Note: Death rates at age replicate observed death rates for Morogoro,Tanzania, multiplied by the best-fit multiplier for age (as established by the Brass-modelling).
Mortality
Table . Model life table (e0 = 25), based on Butajira (Ethiopia) Model Age q(x) d(x)
M(x) l(x)
L(x)
P(x)
T(x)
e(x)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Note: Death rates at age replicate observed death rates for Butajira, Ethiopia, multiplied by the best-fit multiplier for age (as established by the Brass-modelling).
bio-archaeological studies of human skeletal material and through DNA studies. Both age-specific mortality and life expectancy at birth are shaped by disease ecologies that vary by time, place and other criteria. The Roman Empire is therefore too large an entity for aggregate analysis. In the following sections, I pay further attention to variation in life expectancy and mortality rates. 4.5 uniformity and variation in mortality The major variables potentially determining variation in morbidity and mortality include: sex; geography (notably local disease pools) and perhaps climate (as discussed in Chapter ); population size and density; age; and behavioural factors. The latter includes practices such as infanticide and risk-prone participation in warfare. In some historical models, it has been (implicit) practice to consider any negative impacts of these factors as causing further depression of the ‘default’ life expectancy of e = . The overall life expectancies implied by the available data are thus regarded as
Cf. below Section . and Chapter for some examples. Cf. also Sallares (), Ch. , who argues against the notion of a single (probable) age structure of the Roman population, and against the use of an ‘average’ life expectancy of years at birth.
The demographic parameters
a ‘best possibly obtainable’ life expectancy spectrum for the ancient world. This is obviously mistaken, since there is no reason to believe that the conditions shaping the lives of individuals contained in our data sources were optimal. Because the data come from a region with malaria, and from a period in which weather conditions likely enhanced the spread of the disease as compared to earlier periods, the results for Roman Egypt represent life expectancy under mixed, not overly favourable conditions at best. The life expectancy of emperors and senators was doubtless lowered by their tendency to reside in densely populated areas, where infectious diseases were more prevalent, and perhaps also by wet-nursing practices that reduced infant survival. It is certainly not infeasible that under optimal conditions, life expectancy at birth reached beyond the – year range implied by the available evidence. But whereas under the best conditions, the averages attested in the documentary evidence may well have been superseded, under the worst conditions, mortality likely reduced life expectancy at birth even further. Historical evidence points to several key characteristics by which mortality in the Republican period distinguished itself from the later Imperial period that the source data reflect. First, as compared to the Imperial period, the life expectancy of Republican Roman males likely suffered more from the impact of military service. In Imperial times, the army was professional and drew heavily on citizens from outside of Italy, so that the burden of military service largely fell on individuals other than Italian citizens. By contrast, the impact of urban mortality penalties was far more limited during much of the Republican period. Immediately after the Second Punic War, Rome had perhaps only % of the inhabitants it counted in Imperial times. Climate change likely also invoked some divergence between mortality profiles during the Republic and the Empire, but it is not as clear that these would have come with substantially different mortality rates over time. 4.6 geography and locus-specific disease pools As already noted, mortality, from infectious diseases in particular, is intricately linked to ecosystems. Pathogens need a specific niche to survive,
Roman authors refer to the custom of not feeding one’s own child as distinctively elitist: for relevant passages in Aulus Gellius, Pliny, Plutarch, and Tacitus, see Fildes () . Whether this had a specifically detrimental impact upon the survival of elite offspring is disputable: if wet-nurses lived in with the family and were controlled by the parents, wet-nursing need not necessarily have been bad for infant health. Much depends also on the timing of weaning: the earlier, the worse. We know that weaning ages were variable: Prowse et al. (). But it remains unclear whether they were related to socio-economic status.
Mortality
and conditions in the environment decide whether a species flourishes and infects hosts, or instead succumbs itself. Temperature and humidity are particularly crucial variables for disease ecology. Because Italy’s landscape is fractured and diverse, and its ecology is characterized by local variation, it is all the more important to consider the role of geography in shaping morbidity and mortality patterns. These variations may well have been so locally specific that we cannot retrieve them now. But we can get a sense of the magnitude of variation involved. In nineteenth-century Italy, differences in survival chances at birth were years between two communities, Grosseto and Treppio. The former was in a malarial area and had an e of ; the latter was in a malaria-free zone and had an e of . In the first century ce, Pliny the Younger writes to assure a friend that he is not taking any health risks by moving to his residence in the countryside, because it is not in an unhealthy, low-lying coastal area, but in the hills, where ‘bad air’ does not reach. To add force to his argument, he tells his friend that the micro-climate is so healthy that people in the area enjoy longer lives than elsewhere: Hinc senes multi: videas avos proavosque iam iuvenum, audias fabulas veteres sermonesque maiorum, cumque veneris illo putes alio te saeculo natum Because of this [the climate] there are many old men; you can see the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of those who are already young men, and hear old stories and the language used by our forebears, and imagine yourself born in another century if you come here.
Pliny’s remark on the survival of grandfathers and great-grandfathers into the adulthood of their grandsons and great-grandsons depicts a very unlikely scenario, as we will see in the next chapter. But it illustrates the importance of geography and the difference it might make for life expectancy in Roman Italy from the perspective of a Roman citizen. Pliny’s point that hilly areas were healthier than low-lying ones close to the coast is often repeated in Roman literature. Livy notes that the location of Rome was chosen because its hills were saluberrimos, ‘very healthy’. Cicero similarly holds that Rome’s hills kept the city healthy within a pestilential region, by providing wind and shade. These descriptions of healthier and
Sallares () and Ch. ., with further references to the original study by Del Panta. Excess mortality rates in the area affected by malaria probably reflect the fact that malaria interacted with respiratory and gastro-intestinal diseases already prevalent to form even deadlier combinations. Pliny, Letters . (Letter to Domitius Apollonaris (trans. S. H.)). Livy ..: non sine causa di hominesque hunc urbi condendae locum elegerunt, saluberrimos colles. Cicero, De Republica .: Locumque delegit et fontibus abundantem et in regione pestilenti salubrem; colles enim sunt, qui cum perflantur ipsi, tum adferunt umbram vallibus.
The demographic parameters
unhealthier regions conform to the habitat characteristics of mosquitoes capable of infecting human beings with Falciparian malaria. Except for malaria, which was likely a major killer, we have little information on locus-specific diseases in Roman Italy. But regardless of which disease endangered their health and survival, most people in areas with an unfavourable disease ecology can have had little opportunity to protect themselves against local disease vectors, simply because the causes of diseases and how they spread were largely unknown. In the case of malaria, there is no convincing evidence that the connection between mosquito bites and malaria infection was drawn in antiquity, although, in Brunt’s words, they may have had ‘the germ of the true idea’. Columella, De Re Rustica .., for example, notes that staying around marshy areas could lead to ‘mysterious diseases whose causes not even physicians can understand’. Behaviour that was accidentally favourable to survival must have saved the lives of some. Because mosquitoes were conceived of as troublesome in general, the Romans put some effort into protecting themselves against them: Horace suggests that mosquito nets (conopia) were in use, and several plants that offer some protection, according to modern pharmacological studies, were recommended as insect repellants, for example by Pliny. Nonetheless, most ordinary Romans were probably not in a situation to spend their days resting under mosquito nets. Geography was also important for another reason: population density. Before infectious diseases could be appropriately treated or prevented, population density correlated closely with the outbreak of infectious diseases. Due to high population density, life expectancy in large urban centres was relatively low compared to that in the countryside. People in (over)crowded urban environments are more exposed to infectious diseases for two reasons. The first is that the closer people live to one another, the more direct contacts they have, and thus the more risk they run of contagion through interaction with someone carrying a disease. Second, some diseases require a minimum population threshold to become endemic. People living in rural contexts could thus escape constant exposure to (the risk of contagion with) such diseases, unless there was an epidemic, whereas residents of Rome were incessantly subjected to such germs. In other words, inhabitants of the capital of the Roman Empire were in a relatively bad situation.
(Trans. S.H.) Cf. also Aldrete () –. Brunt () . Horace, Epode .. Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) and related Artemisia species in fact seem to have some efficacy; see Sallares () . Seasonal migrants who lived in Rome during part of the year only, of course, were less so. Urban elite members too may have avoided risk of contagion to a certain extent, given that they could e.g. exchange their villas for the city during malarial peaks: see Sallares () .
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A recent study has demonstrated that ancient urbanization rates predict resistance levels against tuberculosis, which alongside malaria generally counts among the top three causes of mortality in areas with inadequate healthcare. Modern Italians, together with Iranians, score highest on resistance to tuberculosis, which means that large-scale urbanization with high exposure to tuberculosis in the environment started relatively early there. It implies that Roman citizens living in densely populated areas were frequently exposed to tuberculosis – a disease to which symptoms described in ancient sources often seem to point. Palaeopathological reports of tuberculosis are still rare for ancient Italy. Its presence was identified in one skeleton buried at a graveyard about km north-east of Rome (first or second century ce), and seemingly in two individuals from Herculaneum (first century ce). Given the above, the scarcity of direct evidence should probably be ascribed to the limited amount of palaeo-anthropological research directed at identifying the disease, and by no means suggests its limited occurrence. In ancient medical sources, accounts of lung disease become increasingly precise, which led Grmek to suggest that knowledge of consumption advanced substantially over time. Geography plays a large role in the recommendations of medical authors as to how to cure the disease: moving or travelling to a location with better climatic and ecological conditions is strongly advised, and travelling from Italy to Egypt, where the air is dry, would be best, according to the first-century bce Roman medical writer Celsus. Evidence that would allow us to quantify the effects of crowding and to compare survival chances in urban areas, and in the city of Rome in particular, with life expectancy in less densely populated areas of Italy is lacking. At best, we may note that if malaria and population density were two main determinants of overall mortality, life expectancy in Rome (not Italy as a whole) might have been even lower than the Egyptian village life expectancy of . at birth. But overall mortality patterns are so complex that such inferences ought not to be drawn on the basis of a restricted comparison of the prevalence of various causes of death. What is clear though is that during the initial parts of the period under investigation, Rome was far from the large international metropolis it became under
Barnes et al. (). Rome: Canci et al. (). Herculaneum: Capasso and Di Tota (). I would like to thank Luigi Capasso for sending me a copy of this article. Grmek () . The author of the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems (a), who had an interest in the infectious nature of diseases that was uncommon in antiquity, seems to represent the exception to the rule in describing phtisis as contagious: cf. Sallares () . Celsus, De Medicina iii... Cf. Grmek () –.
The demographic parameters
the early Empire. Crowding effects would still have taken their toll, but at the beginning of the second century bce the estimated number of free people in the city was around ,. By Augustan times, Rome counted , free inhabitants on a modest estimate. Since there is little reason to doubt that urban life curtailed overall population growth, the macrodemographic effects of urbanization grew dramatically over time. This issue will be discussed further in Chapter , which focuses on migration. 4.7 socio-economic status and health I suggested above that variation in morbidity and mortality according to socio-economic status (SES) seems contained within limited boundaries. But that should not be the end of the matter. Nowadays too, absolute differences in life expectancy between socio-economic strata rarely exceed a few years. Those few years form a much smaller relative share of life expectancy under modern high life expectancy conditions than they would have under low life-expectancy conditions. The lower the life expectancy, the more dramatic becomes the relative loss or gain. In addition, a recent study investigating the causes underlying the similar mortality rates for low and high status individuals in pre-industrial England suggests that elites undermined their own potential to turn their wealth into better health and higher life expectancy than their poorer counterparts enjoyed. They smoked heavily, were frequently obese, cultivated an ideal of physical inactivity, married relatives, and complied with fashion in not breastfeeding their own children, which led to relatively high infant mortality. Unsurprisingly, these behavioural characteristics did not promote longevity. In other words, the fact that the British elite did not live longer than the British poor hardly proves that the absence of SES differences in health and survival was universal before infectious diseases could be effectively treated. Findings regarding the presence or absence of a socio-economic gradient in mortality before the twentieth century are more mixed than is sometimes suggested to support the Greco-Roman case. In fact, in the past ‘the effect of income inequality on life expectancy varied from context to context’. Studies showing that class did not matter in, for example France
On the size of the city of Rome, see Chapter , Section .. Razzell and Spence (). On infant mortality and breastfeeding: Woods and Williams () –. On dietary excess as a possible factor contributing to a lack in survival advantage for the clergy in Rome between and , see Fornasin et al. (). So Johansson (), reviewing Kunitz (); Woods and Williams ().
Mortality
and England as a whole, are complemented by others that do find socioeconomic differentials in health and morbidity in historical populations, for example in Geneva and Paris. An internal comparison of the Egyptian data, in which I separated individuals in slaveholding families from ordinary individuals with no access to slaves, may suggest some internal differentiation along socio-economic lines. The average age of low status individuals was lower than that of high status individuals, no matter what age groups were selected. The overall difference of well over four years was highly significant. But this summary measure lumps together effects of mortality, fertility and migration. Future isotope analyses of skeletal material might further improve insight into the matter. Although they cannot inform us about life expectancy, they do offer insight into the overall health status and dietary intake of individuals, and may accordingly serve as a proxy for demographic living standards between groups. This emerging field has not yet produced many studies comparing different SES groups, but there is potential for addressing the question. 4.8 sex and death: were men the privileged sex? What about differences in survival between men and women? Age-specific mortality tends to be distributed unevenly between the sexes. Whereas in modern contexts, women tend to outlive men, studies of historical societies suggest that this is a fairly recent phenomenon. Although some historical demographers have denied or at least downplayed the impact of death in childbirth among women, the view still dominates that childbirth
France as a whole: Woods and Williams (), Fig. with further references. England as a whole: Hollingsworth () (aristocracy) and Wrigley and Schofield () (ordinary population). Geneva: Perrenoud (). Paris: Blum et al. (). The difference was significant at the . level ( = .). Hin (). On the general inadequacy of ageing methods for skeletons: Mays () – (both for children and adults). For the lack of representativeness of Roman burials as a sample for the population at large: Parkin () –. Cucina et al. () represents a first attempt, and finds no significant differences in health status or diet between burials at sites associated with different SES levels. But it is doubtful whether their low SES burials should be expected to show worse health: these were not free low-status individuals, but villa slaves and veterans at Lucus Feroniae. Veterans were well provided for after discharge. Villa slaves formed their owner’s capital, and it was therefore in his economic interest to keep them well-nourished and healthy. Cato De Agricultura bears this out in advising large landowners that the need for energy of workers should outweigh their status-related needs: working slaves received winter rations of modii of grain per month, their higher-rank overseers only three. A comprehensive overview is provided by Alter et al. (). Schofield () concludes that ‘although the risk of childbearing/dying in childbed was much higher than it is today, “childbearing” in past times turns out to have been a rather less mortal occasion than we may have been inclined to believe’. Cf. also e.g. Knodel (). Note though
The demographic parameters
was dangerous enough to cause higher death rates among adult women until quite recently. Moreover, frequent pregnancies were themselves a risk, because they deplete the body, and because during pregnancy the female immune system is repressed to reduce the chance that the woman’s body rejects the foetus. This also means that women may be more susceptible to infections and infectious diseases during pregnancy. Pregnancy and childbearing would therefore be a major reason why women died earlier than men under stable conditions. Preferential treatment of men, especially with regard to food intake, is another potential explanation of lower survival among females. Uneven power relations that privilege men have implications for women’s health at different stages in the life course. The fact that women took responsibility for caring for the sick further reduced their chances for survival as compared to men. How likely is it that these factors made similar contributions to lower survival among Roman women? Childbearing under the medical conditions prevailing in the Roman world certainly constituted a risk. Less than optimal hygiene and medical procedures endangered women who gave birth, particularly when complications arose during labour. Malnutrition, modern research suggests, made almost no contribution to maternal mortality in historical societies; instead, it was medical intervention that put women at risk. The scholarly imagination, however, has tended to overestimate the risks involved. Reliable data on maternal mortality reach back only to the late nineteenth century or so, but that is still enough to pre-date the onset of the decline in maternal mortality. The death risk for a woman was about .% per birth during that period. For Roman women, such a rate would imply that c.– per , women died of childbirth-related causes, if we assume that they gave birth to between and children. In reality, women in Republican Italy were exposed to a slightly differently composed set of risk factors than their counterparts in early modern Europe: they often started to give birth at significantly earlier
that research on Scandinavia revealed that women who had their first birth under age twenty were –% more likely to die than their counterparts who were older when they first gave birth (the one average rate reconstructed so far suggests that death rates were around per , births): Alter et al. () and . Given that Roman women married young, these figures are important. Liston and Papadopoulos () . Alter et al. (). Under stable conditions, i.e. when no major events occurred that were demographically disruptive and caused sex-biased mortality, such as specific diseases or extremely violent episodes of warfare. Sen and Batliwala () –. The relationship between women’s empowerment and demographic processes is relatively unstudied: Presser and Sen (b) . Loudon (). Loudon () , Fig. . Van Poppel () . I.e. somewhat higher than suggested in Parkin () – (– per ,).
Mortality
ages, shortly after menarche. At such young ages, women face higher risks in childbirth. Likewise, mortality risks are relatively higher at high parities, because frequent pregnancies lower resistance through body depletion. On the other hand, well over a third of maternal deaths in early modern Europe resulted from puerperal fever, transmitted in hospitals where doctors performed one operation after another without proper sterilization, passing on infections from one patient to another. Among Roman women, who gave birth prior to mass hospitalization of parturient mothers, deaths from puerperal fever must have been much less common. In the end, therefore, it is reasonable to suppose that overall maternal mortality rates in Roman Italy were not much above those in early modern Europe. As a sex-specific cause of death, maternal mortality would have contributed to differential survival between men and women. But the comparative evidence suggests that its impact was marginal: under the high maternal mortality conditions prior to the mortality transition in Europe, this factor reduced the life expectancy advantage of women in Italy (as well as in various other countries) by a mere four months as compared to men. Even if somewhat more women (and girls) died as a result of giving birth in Roman Italy, maternal mortality would not have created large gender gaps in survival. As regards the power relations between men and women, traditional historical sources provide significant insights. Sociologists and economists view property ownership and legal rights as important qualifiers of the bargaining position and empowerment of women in the household. Although evidence for the Republican period is much scarcer than it is for Imperial times, it is still possible to rank the position of Roman women in Italy as compared to their later European counterparts on these criteria. Communis opinio in scholarship holds that from the Second Punic War on, there was a trend towards greater ‘emancipation’ and independence of women. This view is based largely on accounts pertaining to elite women, since ordinary women are barely visible in the literary accounts that provide the most extensive details about the position of women. Stories confirming that women could dispose of considerable amounts of private wealth are frequent in Roman literature, for example in Livy, and the Roman state
Van Poppel () ; Erdkamp () . So Wells () . Share of maternal mortality caused by puerperal fever in the nineteenth century: Loudon (). United Nations Secretariat () . For a concise introduction offering further guidance into this (theoretical and empirical) research field, see England (). E.g. Rawson () ; Culham () , .
The demographic parameters
tried to draw on their wealth in emergencies. Legal evidence confirms that free Roman women outside the elite enjoyed equal inheritance rights already in early Republican times, and that the consent of women as well as of their prospective husbands was required for legal marriage. By the end of the Republic, the type of marriage in which a woman fell under the legal authority of her husband (in manu marriage) is assumed to have virtually disappeared. This gave women the right to dispose of their own property and to set up businesses once their father died. The latter often happened at a relatively early age. Tutorship by males seems to have been largely a formality. Political rights, however, were confined to men, and upon divorce – which women as well as men could initiate – children belonged legally to their father. Overall, despite the privileges men enjoyed, the legal position of Roman women was considerably stronger than that of their counterparts in medieval and early modern societies, where the evidence suggests that gender inequality contributed to higher mortality rates for women. As one scholar observes, ‘early modern jurists were selective in what they took from Roman law in regard to women, in general adopting clauses that placed women in a dependent or secondary position and neglecting those that gave women specific independent rights’. The social position of Roman women in the household setting, on the other hand, is often characterized as vulnerable. Whereas Roman housing was not designed to secure segregation by sex, and men and women consumed meals together, it has been argued that the higher social status of men within the family meant that women and girls had less access to protein-rich foods. The later Imperial provision of the alimenta, which provided families with financial support for their children, offers higher levels of support for sons (HS per month) than for daughters (HS per month). This may also be taken to indicate that men were valued more than women, although it should be noted that the difference is perhaps less dramatic than one would expect, especially if we account for the fact that the overall calorific needs of women are about % lower than they are
Wealthy women: e.g. Livy ... For instances when the Republic required rich women to contribute to the financing of warfare, cf. Ch. .. Rawson () ; cf. also Ch. , Sections .–. on sine manu marriage and women sui iuris (‘in their own right’). Evans Grubbs () –; Dixon () –; Culham () –. Saller (). Treggiari () : women as well as men could initiate divorce. For children as members of the father’s family, and his responsibility for their upbringing: Treggiari () . Wiesner () . Cf. also Evans Grubbs () . Garnsey (), Ch. . Rawson () .
Mortality
for men. Women taking liberties were certainly viewed with suspicion and disapproval. There are, in short, reasons to suspect that boys and men were socially privileged over girls and women, and that infanticide and exposure (on which more below) affected girls more than boys. Consequently, we may reasonably expect that under stable conditions – that is, in periods without significant impact of excess male mortality through warfare – men had some degree of advantage over women in survival. Neither inscriptions nor papyri help quantify the extent of differential survival. The census papyri suggest that in Roman Egypt, men lived about . years longer than women. If this were true and reflected differential treatment, it would have implications for Italy as well, since historians generally agree that the position of women in Egypt was stronger than that of their Roman (and Greek) counterparts. But the impression that women in the region in which they traditionally enjoyed the strongest legal position still lived markedly shorter lives than men is merely a function of the over-representation of older males in the sample. It follows that we cannot conclude that gender differences in survival were pronounced, either in Egypt or elsewhere. Skeletons offer some hope for the future. Bio-archaeological evidence cannot help us much when it comes to the very young, so the impact of gender-biased infanticide cannot be accounted for. But skeletal remains of individuals beyond early childhood do provide some insight into the relative health and mortality risks of men and women. As of yet, the number of studies is limited, and the skeletal material investigated dates primarily to the Imperial period. Nonetheless, the findings thus far are surprising, in that overall the physical remains of Romans in Italy show no statistically significant signs of difference in physical well-being between the sexes. Although at least one study suggests that women ate more plant material and less meat than men, in general women did not suffer more frequently from diseases and nutritional deficiencies that left traces on their bones or teeth. This finding qualifies dramatic accounts of the
The classic account of the alimenta is Duncan-Jones (). The inscription of Veleia that provides documentary evidence for the alimenta is published as CIL xi, no. . One may think, for example, of the character assassination of Clodia by Cicero, and of Juvenal’s Satire . Scheidel (b) (quote). But note Garnsey () , who argues on qualitative grounds (preferential treatment of men) that men lived longer than women in antiquity. Contra Garnsey () . Cf. Scheidel (forthcoming) in a summary of studies of burial sites across the Roman Empire. On food consumption as revealed by bio-archaeological material, see also Killgrove () , who notes that it is currently unclear if there is patterning in dietary variation based on gender. Prowse et al. ().
The demographic parameters
demographic impact of gender inequality in Roman Italy. If women were systematically denied access to adequate nutrition, we should see consistent traces of relative deprivation on their remains. That we do not suggests that gender disparities in health were limited, but does not exclude the possibility that women succumbed more often to diseases that killed them quickly, or were less likely to survive early childhood, matters regarding which skeletal material cannot adequately inform us. 4.9 shortcuts from cradle to grave: infanticide Infanticide and the abandonment of children were integral parts of the Roman demographic system and historical experience. How did they shape mortality patterns in late Republican Italy? While the outcome of infanticide is clear, whether or not an infant survived abandonment depended on the circumstances. Its life could end in quite unpleasant ways if it was left at a deserted spot by its parents or others. Alternatively, it could be intentionally abandoned at a place where others would find it. That infanticide and abandonment both occurred and were accepted (but also criticized) is supported by unequivocal evidence. Several accounts by contemporary authors treat the (alleged) custom of provincials of raising all the children born to them as remarkable (Diodorus of Sicily and Tacitus ), as a cultural peculiarity (Strabo ) or as an example to be followed by Roman citizens (Musonius Rufus and Tertullian ). Diodorus of Sicily, who visited Egypt at some point between and bce, dryly commented: ‘the Egyptians raise all their children out of necessity, in order to increase the population, on the ground that large numbers are the greatest contribution to the prosperity of both country and cities’. In fact, even the
For more extensive discussion, see Boswell (), Ch. , and Harris (). Diodorus Sicilus ... Tacitus, Germania : numerum liberorum finire aut quemquam ex agnatis necare flagitium habetur, plusque ibi boni mores valent quam alibi bonae leges, ‘to limit the number of children or to kill any offspring born after the first, is considered a moral outrage, and good morals are valued higher there than good laws are elsewhere’ (Trans. S. H.). Strabo, Geographica ..: .5
@
, / K ’ L
4 3
" 2 * 6 , ‘one of the customs most zealously observed by them [i.e. the Egyptians] is this, that they rear all the children that are born’ (trans. S. H.). Musonius Rufus XV. He objects that even birds raise all their offspring, even though they are much poorer than human beings are and unable to store food. Tertullian, Ad Nationes ..: vos [i.e. you pagan Romans] quoque infanticidae, qui infanes editos enecantes legibus quidem prohibemini, sed nullae magis s tam impune, tam secure sub omnium conscientia unius ae tabellis eluduntur. Diodorus Sicilus ..: .5 2 * 1 3 " ! 3*. M . , N * - 4 L 1 .5 6 . [Trans. S. H.]
Mortality
Egyptians did not raise all their children (see below). Yet recent archaeological investigations suggest that there might be a core of truth in ancient authors’ characterizations of Roman Egypt: infant burials at a site there yielded no significant evidence of infanticide. Instead, the distribution of infant deaths was consistent with standard time-patterns of natural infant deaths occurring after birth. At the very least, the fact that a range of Roman authors contrast practices in Egypt and other provinces with those in the heart of the Empire suggests that infanticide and abandonment were common in Italy. I know of no infant burial sites in Italy that have been investigated with the aim of establishing whether the deaths point to infanticide. Given the scarcity of quantifiable material evidence, it is no surprise that scholarly debate about infanticide and abandonment has been long and intense. Central questions are the scale on which the practices occurred, whether they were sex-biased, and what their wider demographic implications were. Infanticide in particular has been seen as contributing to population decline. Indeed, the demographic impact of lives lost before (completion of ) reproduction is much higher than that of deaths after an individual has already given birth to a next generation. Similarly, the loss of a female affects population reproduction more heavily than that of a male. For these reasons, infanticide targeted at baby girls undermines population reproduction relatively strongly. The evidence suggests that infanticide or abandonment were in fact more likely when the child was a girl. Literary texts that refer to parents choosing not to bring up a child reflect the idea that it was rational to opt for a boy. Ovid in Metamorphoses refers to a man who ‘with great reluctance’ instructs his wife to kill her newborn should it be a girl, ‘for a daughter is too burdensome and we just don’t have the money’. A bias towards infanticide of girls is also suggested in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ account of Roman history, written during the reign of Augustus. He claims that Romulus issued a law requiring Romans to bring up all sons born to
Egypt (Kellis Oasis): Tocheri et al. (). This tallies well with Scheidel’s interpretation of the census material from Roman Egypt, which in his view yields no indication that (female) infanticide was widespread enough to be of demographic significance: Scheidel (b) –. In Roman Britain, Mays and Eyers () report evidence of infanticide at a burial site: the age distribution of perinatal deaths suggests that infanticide victims made up a significant proportion of infant deaths here. E.g. Eyben (/); Engels () and (); Boswell (); Harris () and (); Patterson () (on Greece); Wiedemann (), pp. –; Frier (); Caldwell (); Evans Grubbs (). Note especially Engels () and Riddle (), Ch. . Ovid, Metamorphoses .–. Cf. Scrimshaw () .
The demographic parameters
them and at least one daughter. Although these comments come seven centuries after the supposed ‘historical event’, the fact that later Roman jurists took a ‘law of Romulus’ to indicate ancient custom lends some credit to the idea that the invention reflects (later) Roman practice. The sex-bias suggested by the literary evidence from Italy finds support in a frequently quoted documentary letter by a husband to his wife in Egypt. In it, he straightforwardly instructs her to raise a newborn child if it is a boy, but to discard it if it turns out to be a girl. It is unlikely that archaeologists have accidentally uncovered the one letter by the one father who preferred not to raise (new) female offspring. Earlier scholarship has rightly drawn attention to infanticide and abandonment as characteristic of Roman society, and to the fact that these do not seem to have been gender-neutral practices. That baby girls were more likely to suffer from infanticide is consistent with evidence from elsewhere: across societies known to practice or to have practiced infanticide, the victims were more often girls. Anthropologists have carried out extensive research on the underlying causes of such biases. Their results suggest that considerations about the parents’ own well-being should be seen as one reason why girls are more often victims of infanticide or abandonment in patrilineal family systems. Because girls marry into another household and leave their family of origin upon marriage, whereas boys continue to contribute to the economic well-being of their parents, parental investment in male offspring tends to be higher, and girls are valued less. Various general reasons might have led Roman parents to decide to get rid of an infant rather than bring it up as their child. To some extent, infanticide and abandonment could have functioned as a form of ‘birth control’ that was more effective than any preventive means available. It was also far less risky than induced abortion, which according to the most recent estimates brings an end to about one in five reported pregnancies in the world today, more in developed than in developing countries.
Dionysius Halicarnassus ..–. On Dionysius’ account, an additional provision was made by Romulus in the case of children who were ‘sick or monstrous from their very birth’. Parents were not allowed to kill such children, but abandonment was not prohibited, provided that they first showed the infant to five neighbours who confirmed the child’s status. Seneca, De Ira .. also speaks of the abandonment of weak or deformed children (si debiles monstrosique editi sunt). Cf. Boswell () –. P. Oxyrhynchus : ‘If you have given birth, keep it, if it is a boy; if a girl, discard it’. (Trans. S. H.) Cf. Smith and Smith () –. Johansson () . Scrimshaw () and : abortion comes at a higher cost in maternal lives and in impaired fertility. Estimates on induced (not spontaneous) abortion of unwanted pregnancies: Segdh et al. () with Table . In Eastern Europe, the ratio is about %; in the US %, in Western Europe
Mortality
Children might be unwanted for many reasons, among which poverty (a structural phenomenon in the ancient world) and handicaps perhaps predominated. But we should maintain a conceptual distinction between sex-biased infanticide as part of Roman culture and sex-biased infanticide as undermining the reproduction of that culture. Four matters deserve attention in this light. First, several mechanisms in place in late Republican Italy alleviated the financial stress of childbearing. I will return to this theme in Chapter . Second, there is no reason to hold that infanticide (or abandonment) was practised exclusively on females. Third, that historical sources yield evidence for infanticide in the Roman world should not surprise us: infanticide was embedded in a wide range of historical societies, and is far from exceptional. Fourth, evidence for infanticide should not be mistaken as an indication of disrupted population reproduction. Even societies with low life expectancies can support high degrees of sex-biased infanticide. Paradoxically, parentally manipulated infanticide in humans may even be conceived of as maximizing reproductive success, because it tends to increase the survival and reproductive chances of other offspring. At the very least, comparative evidence proves that the hypothesis that widespread infanticide would eo ipso lead to population decline is flawed. This can be concluded from a study of sex-biased infanticide among various groups of Inuit in Canada and Alaska. Extremely high percentages of girl babies were killed there, but the populations were demographically sustainable even so. The most skewed sex ratio observed was close to :, from which it has been inferred that up to % of female offspring was deliberately disposed of. High levels of sex-biased infanticide are also
%, and in Africa around % (corrected for underestimations). Wiedemann () , n. reports that .% of reported pregnancies in England and Wales in were legally aborted. It is unclear whether this refers to induced abortions alone or includes reported spontaneous abortions. In , the induced abortion ratio for Northern Europe including the UK was %. Poverty was recognized as a primary cause of infanticide in medieval legal documents: Minturn and Stashak () –. On poverty as a structural phenomenon, see now Harris (). Seneca, Controversiae .. notes that many Roman fathers were in the habit of exposing children who were ‘inutiles partus’ or ‘corpore invalidos’. For a concise general overview of overt and underlying reasons for infanticide, see Scrimshaw () with , Table . Note e.g. Faerman et al. (), for infanticide of boys in what was probably a Roman brothel in Britannia. E.g. Oberman (); Mays and Eyers (). The latter, however, fail to acknowledge the critical responses to Divale and Harris’ () methodology in quoting them as evidence suggesting that nearly % of over investigated pre-modern societies yield evidence of female infanticide. Divale and Harris’ conclusions are based on census material from small populations which (a) is susceptible to under-reporting of females and (b) may yield spurious impressions that reflect random variations in small samples rather than any historical situation. See already Harris () contra Engels (). So Scrimshaw () and –. Smith and Smith ().
The demographic parameters
known for historical China, where, according to Lee and Wang, ‘infanticide was probably conceptualized as a form of “postnatal abortion” by Chinese peasants and elite alike’. Between c. and , female infant death rates among the Qing nobility rose sharply, from about equal to that of boys around to three times that level towards the end of the eighteenth century. While on average c.% of all female babies were killed deliberately, in the s levels reached %. This comparative material shows that we should not conceive of female infanticide as an external demographic shock that perturbs and undermines an otherwise stable population, but as a practice that was, to varying degrees, part of historical demographic systems, including that of the Roman world. The comparative evidence also shows that time- and place-specific historical conditions determine how frequently infanticide and abandonment are practised. This brings us back to the historical setting of late Republican Italy. If infanticide and abandonment are fluctuating, flexible practices that respond to societal conditions, can the historical context of the Roman Republic during the last two centuries bce provide any indications of the potential scale at which they occurred? A satisfyingly precise answer to the quantitative question remains, as often, beyond reach. But there is evidence that the practice of disposing of infant girls correlates positively with adult male mortality levels. That is, in several societies female infanticide levels were high at times and places where death rates among adult men spiked. Particularly among the Inuit populations mentioned above, the phenomena have been linked. Over the course of the lifespan, a substantial surplus of males among infants was reduced and ultimately balanced out, as hunting accidents and homicide in particular killed off relatively more men than women during the prime of adulthood. This is clearly of interest to Roman historians. We have already seen that pregnancies reduced the lifespan of women by only a few months; despite earlier claims, the difference between death rates for men and women is thus relatively narrow. The lack of clearly marked health privileges in Roman skeletons lends further support to the notion that the ratio between female and male adult mortality could invert relatively easily when external conditions elevated male mortality. The warfare during the late Republic calls attention to
Quote: Lee and Wang () –. Lee et al. () –. N = , (children born). A more general account of Chinese preventive population checks is provided in Zhao (). Lee et al. () . Note that the data establish elite patterns only. Lee et al. () emphasize that for China as a whole, there are still insufficient data to document past prevalences of and fluctuations in female infanticide over time.
Mortality
itself as such an external condition, as does the large-scale process of rapid urbanization. As we will see in more detail below, the episodes of warfare during the last two centuries bce led to the enlistment of substantial numbers of men. In the absence of any counterforces, elevated soldier mortality should create problems in a society governed by monogamy as a defining characteristic. As men were killed in fighting, a female surplus would cause women to face difficulties in finding suitable marriage partners. The Roman marriage system (on which more in Chapter ) already tightened the market for women, because, as far as we know, girls were supposed to marry cohorts of men about a decade older, which meant that the number of female competitors would be larger than the pool of men they were drawing from. Scarcity of adult men might have been a concern for parents – especially for families whose prospects were not rosy, and for whom the living conditions of their daughters depended heavily on finding a suitable marriage partner. Temporary increases in stress and hardship during periods of substantial military recruitment may also have played a role. Alongside military recruitment, another historical process that presumably had a larger impact on adult male mortality than on female mortality was urbanization. The rapid growth of ‘population sink’ Rome coincided with an elevation of high-density mortality risks. It is often thought that it was primarily men who moved (temporarily or not) to the city to work. As a result, they were exposed more often to an environment with higher mortality risks than women were. In Chapter , I discuss in detail why I think that this differential mortality impact was probably smaller than hitherto believed. Nonetheless, the fact remains that residence in the metropolis of Rome elevated mortality risks. There are, in other words, several circumstances that to varying degrees elevated male adult mortality risks during the late Republican period. Adult males would have been particularly disadvantaged when urbanization and high military mortality coincided. Such conditions could, according to patterns observed later in history, be viewed as phases coinciding with or conducive to a relatively high rate of disposal of infant girls in Roman Italy.
On Roman monogamous marriage: Betzig (). To some extent, the presence of enfranchised male slaves on the marriage market provided a counterbalance to the lack of freeborn men, and led to more balanced sex ratios. But whether this solved marriage-market squeezes depends on an unknown: how attractive would a free woman or her parents have found the prospect of marriage to a freedman? Weaver () , Table shows that Imperial freedmen were attractive marriage partners for freeborn women (% of freedmen married a freeborn woman), but their high social status made them a special case. Rosenstein () suggests that as a result of elevated war mortality, men who under normal conditions would not have (re)married may have functioned as ‘substitute spouses’ for surplus women. Cf. also De Ligt (b) .
The demographic parameters
But this need not necessarily have been the case: we have no empirical data to test this model against. The model presupposes a systemic response that is dependent on the occurrence and timing of feedback effects, and on the interplay between macro- and micro-levels. One might also object that Inuit lived in exceptionally harsh conditions, and that this distorts the validity of comparison. But the intensity of the phenomenon need not have been identical in both societies for the comparison to be useful. The point is the proposed correlation between sex-biased infanticide and sex-biased adult mortality of the opposite sex, which suggests that during phases of elevated male adult mortality, the rate of infanticide of baby girls may also have been relatively high. Rather than in infanticide, however, parental unwillingness to bring up a daughter might end in abandonment. Classical literature contains many stories in which foundlings survive and are ultimately reunited with their natural parents, especially in mythology and comedy. This might suggest that when exposed children did not die, their abandonment effectively constituted a reshuffling or ‘recirculation’ of offspring from families with a surplus to people who desired more children, as has recently been argued. Comic and mythic texts, however, are of questionable value for the debate over the proportion of exposed infants saved and abandoned, since they may well represent exceptional cases. Some foundlings might have been welcomed as family members for lack of (surviving) natural heirs. But the expectation of profit was likely often a motive when they were picked up and taken care of. We can infer this from Egyptian papyri, in which female foundlings frequently appear as slaves. The papyri yield the impression that picking up an abandoned child was a relatively common way to get a slave, or to gain income by first nursing and then selling a child. Seneca and Pseudo-Quintilian moreover mention prostitution, a life as a gladiator and begging in the service of a malign exploiter as alternatives to death after abandonment. Raising foundlings could seemingly be a profitable business. In demographic terms, enslavement might have functioned as an outlet for surplus females: effectively, the transition of girls from free to
On the latter, cf. Patterson () who remains unconvinced that a surplus of women at a societal level would have invoked infanticide at a familial level. Evans Grubbs () . See also Boswell () . Cf. BGU .: if the foundling that is to be raised as a slave for a third party should die, the ‘foster mother’ (who is paid for her nursing) is ‘to pick up another child’. In P. Kellis , a man and wife write to a carpenter in their village, who had paid them to pick up a foundling, raise it and then return it as a slave-girl. Seneca, Controversiae ..– discusses the case of a man who reared children abandoned ‘at lonely places . . . who would die if they were left there’, but subsequently broke their limbs to turn them into successful beggars; Pseudo-Quintilian Declamationes Maiores .
Mortality
slave status would remove them (at least temporarily) from the marriage market. In his correspondence with the emperor Trajan, Pliny requests advice concerning the ‘serious problem’ of the legal position of freeborn foundlings. During his service as a political officer, he often encountered cases in which freeborn people had grown up as slaves. All this suggests that demand for slaves, and slave prices, affected the fate of abandoned children. Socio-economic studies of Roman slavery have long established that the dynamics of the Roman slave market changed over time, since the supply and demand for slaves and the prices they fetched were integrated parts of the larger economic system. During the late Republic, the conquest of large territories coincided with a relatively large influx of slaves. Increased supply should have kept slave prices low, implying it would have been relatively unprofitable to raise a foundling all the way to adulthood in order to use or sell it as a slave. In all likelihood, there was less space for foundlings on the slave market in Roman Italy during the last two centuries bce than there was, for example, in later Roman Egypt, where the documents indicate that slaves frequently had a background of exposure. What this meant for abandoned girls and boys in Italy is a matter of inference, but the historical conditions suggest that the chance that a stranger would decide to rescue an abandoned child from death were comparatively reduced during the late Republic, when there was an abundant inflow of human spoils of conquest. In sum, the quantitative dimension of infanticide and abandonment remains largely a matter of conjecture. Even so, historical conditions during the late Republic suggest that both played a significant role in Italian society. The death of infants constituted a shortcut from cradle to grave that left no time for reproduction, and hence had a relatively large negative demographic impact. But populations with low life expectancies can sustain high rates of (female) infanticide, and we should think of the practice as a
At the same time, the presence of female slaves, regardless of their origin, functionally broke the nominal system of monogamy. While Roman men had but one wife providing legal offspring, if they were rich enough, they could reproduce with one or more slaves; cf. Ch. . Pliny, Epistulae .. Trajan’s answer (Epistula .) reveals that it was a more general, frequently discussed phenomenon. See also Harris () –, who argues that most foundlings became slaves. For the late Republican period, only scattered data on slave-prices are known. The supposition that they must have been comparatively cheap is mainly derived from the notion that mass enslavements occurred during this period of conquest in particular, so that supply was high. See Scheidel (b) –. On the sources of slaves, see e.g. Harris (), who favours the role of continuing immigration into the slave population over that of natural reproduction of slaves (contra Scheidel ()). See also Harris () .
The demographic parameters
factor curtailing growth and balancing out sex ratios, rather than invoking population decline in the context of the Roman Republic. References to sex-biased infanticide are not inconsistent with the modest or even nonexistent evidence for differential health and survival later in life. The fact that Roman parents were permitted to dispose of unwanted daughters in infancy may already provide an explanation for apparently absent or at least limited health differentials later in life. That is, it has been suggested that excess mortality among females in childhood and adolescence emerged or intensified in social settings where females were valued less, but parents were pressured to keep them alive because of religious, cultural or social taboos on infanticide. Under these conditions, which are different from those in Roman Italy, parents instead stinted their unwanted daughters of food, clothing and other material resources for the duration of their childhood. 4.10 demographic responses to mortality crisis: hannibal’s deaths and post-war recovery; a case-study By now, the specifics of the Roman profile of death have become reasonably clear. Low life expectancy, locus-specific causes of death, contrasts between city and countryside and female infanticide were all consistent characteristics of the mortality regime under which citizens of the Roman Republic lived. Superimposed on this base-level mortality were short-term episodes of excess mortality. Among them were those caused by epidemics and the direct and indirect effects of food shortages, as well as by the effects of higher-than-average military recruitment. Roman conquest was facilitated by men – citizens, allies and slaves – serving in the army. The Roman army did not become a professional force before the first century bce; prior to that, the military draft meant that military service was an experience shared by most men in Italy, and one that contributed to elevated mortality rates among them. Women, children and elderly people suffered during the rarer occasions on which warfare took place in Italian territory and beyond the battlefield. The Empire, in brief, came with a demographic cost – but how large a cost? During the two decades immediately before the second century bce, the time of the Second Punic War, the scale of military recruitment and mortality in Roman Italy were exceptional. Detailed evaluation of the course of the war is beyond the scope of this book. Instead, I focus on
Johansson (), esp. – and . Hopkins (a) – hypothesizes that –% of male citizens were drafted into the army each year.
Mortality
Number of citizens counted by census (3rd and 2nd centuries BCE) 450000 400000
Number of citizens
350000 300000 250000 200000 150000 100000 50000 0
247 241 234
209204
194189
179174169164159
147142 136131 125
115
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Figure . Roman census figures (third and second centuries bce)
the demographic effects of the event. Although literary accounts, notably Livy’s, offer numbers of soldiers and deaths in military actions during the Second Punic War, it is impossible to present exact mortality rates here. As will become clearer in what follows, figures presented in the context of warfare are particularly problematic. We do not really need precise numbers, however, to draw inferences. The Second Punic War lasted years, during which Hannibal and his army invaded Italy. Both soldiers and civilians died. Rome’s final victory took an enormous investment of effort and a demographic toll. Qualitative remarks in the literature suggest that recruitment pressure was high. Over the course of the war, Rome’s allies began to complain, and several communities became unwilling to deliver manpower to the Roman army. Put another way, there can be no doubt that the Second Punic War had a demographic impact on the population of Roman Italy. It can therefore serve as a case-study that offers a better insight into the sort of responses to demographic crises that we can expect occurred in late Republican Italy. How did the war affect the demography of Roman Italy in the short, middle and long term? When we plot the census figures for the period immediately preceding the war and those for the second century bce, they show a huge decrease in citizens registered (see Figure .). In part, these decreases are an optical illusion, which can be explained by the fact that Campanian communities that collaborated with Hannibal
See Livy ..f. Men refusing to serve were punished: Livy .. and ..f. (on equites evading military service).
The demographic parameters
lost their citizenship rights. Their citizens were thus no longer registered for the Roman census. According to Livy, they were , men. It is unclear whether this figure represents all men of military age or only those suitable for service. After the end of the war, however, the Campanian cities regained their citizenship rights, and they therefore appear again in the records from the census of bce onward, where we see a steep increase. Given the uncertainty surrounding the number of Campanian men, we do not know how much of the slide and jump in the figures is to be explained simply by their exclusion and subsequent reinclusion. Toynbee held that we should assume around , capita civium, which seems a reasonable number. Renewed inclusion of the Campanians, in other words, explains about half of the rise in the figure for bce. That does not imply that the rest of the increase in citizens registered a decade or so after the end of the war resulted from population recovery. We also need to take into account the fact that registration procedures may have been disturbed by, or performed less meticulously as a result of the hostilities, so that the wartime figures disproportionally underestimated the actual number of citizens. Difficulty in keeping track of people is recorded in other instances, and it is not unlikely that some people avoided registration in order to evade military recruitment. Livy also remarks that in bce censors were sent overseas to the provinces ut civium Romanorum in exercitibus quantus ubique esset referretur numerus, ‘so that the men overseas in the army would all be systematically and carefully registered’. Apparently, there were concerns about the accuracy of census reports. Because the
Brunt () ff. The Campanians had lost their citizenship rights when the Romans defeated them. Cf. also Toynbee () f. and ff. Livy ... Brunt is clearly wrong in holding that these were all Campanian men. Livy unmistakably refers to men capable of serving or in service, not to all men, when he says: Triginta milia peditum, quattuor milia equitum arbitror ex Campania scribi posse. Campanians regained their rights in bce according to Brunt () . Toynbee () f. Note that some scholars have ascribed the lack of census figures for much of the first century bce to the Civil Wars, arguing that there would not have been any registration for the census during that period. But there are two indications that censuses were in fact held, and that we simply lack the figures. One is a letter from Cicero to Atticus dated to January bce. Cicero tells his friend he should not worry about his registration for the census, since Cicero will take care of it and besides ‘it is a real businessman’s style to be registered just before the lustrum’: Cicero, Letters to Atticus ... The reference to the lustrum, the closing ceremony of the census, as upcoming shortly strongly suggests that a census process was completed in bce. Second, the Tabula Heracleensis pleads against discontinuation of the census. Although admittedly referring to Rome only, it makes it clear that during the reign of Julius Caesar, registration of citizens and their assets was organized by state officials. Cf. also Brunt () – and , who notes that censors were appointed in , , and bce as well, and concludes that citizens were enumerated (but without a traditional lustrum ceremony). Livy ...
Mortality
reported figure for this high-effort census is much higher than both the preceding and the ensuing figures, it may indicate that a lack of registration of serving soldiers was another factor in producing the low figure for bce. The same might hold true for bce, when Rome was at war with Macedonia. In sum, the demographic impact of warfare was not as dramatic as the census figures, when taken at face value, seem to suggest. This observation ties in with the analysis offered below (Section .), where I suggest that both the military and the society of Republican Italy had characteristics that mitigated the demographic impact of warfare. Yet there is no denying that in demographic terms this was a highly disruptive event. Whatever the total number of deaths, the Roman population could not be described as stable after the war: its sex and age composition must have changed as a result of skewed excess mortality. This is not a new observation. Nor do historians working on the late Republic disagree about the fact that during the decades following the war, the citizen population did not decline further, but managed to recover. Population figures seem to have returned to pre-war levels rather rapidly. After bce, the census figures show a rebound of the numbers first to pre-war levels, and then beyond them, until bce, when the census reaches a temporary high of , citizens. The second phase of growth concentrated in the years after bce; the temporary halt that seemingly occurred during the preceding decade coincides with plagues that affected Italy in bce and – bce. The processes underlying this demographic recovery deserve detailed attention from a cross-disciplinary and comparative perspective. More recent societies whose demographic structures and population size were impacted by warfare are better documented. On these, studies have been carried out to analyse processes of post-war demographic recovery, for example Germany after the Thirty Years War (–), and a number of societies after the Second World War. The demographic processes
It has often been noted, for example, that the lack of interest in joining colonization programmes indicates that pressure on the land had been reduced and people were able better to make a living. Livy, Periochae . Livy ..: gravis pestilentia urbem atque agros vastabat ( bce), and Livy ..–: ‘The pestilence was so severe in the country and in the villages and rural communities and in the city, that Libitina could hardly take care of so many funerals’ (on bce). Livy .. states that the plague continued for three years, breaking out in bce. Cf. Brunt () , n. . Cf. e.g. Abel (); Cerman (); Pfister (), on regional differentiation in the impact of warfare and in post-war recovery mechanisms; and Behringer (), on lower marriage ages and increased fertility levels.
The demographic parameters
following mortality crises caused by disease have also been studied, notably for the outbreaks of Black Death during the Middle Ages. There is a danger in too easily attributing value to such comparisons. Rates of recovery after a mortality crisis are determined by the specific impact and responses to the crisis, which are dependent inter alia on the number of victims relative to population size and on the age- and sex-distribution of the dead. We thus cannot assume that, on these criteria, late Republican Rome is fully comparable to the best-documented and most fully studied cases. Moreover, social, economic and cultural characteristics play a role in determining a society’s response to a demographic crisis. Even so, historians have distilled three general principles from time- and place-specific responses to mortality crises. Although other mechanisms leading towards population recuperation are not unthinkable, therefore, demographic recovery in late Republican Rome likely followed along one or more of these lines. An analysis of these factors cannot offer the ultimate answers, but it will take us further than the ancient sources do. 4.10.1 A post-war boom of postponed marriages and childbirths The first response that can bring about recovery in population figures is that people begin marrying and having children in larger numbers after the cessation of warfare than they might have done under ordinary conditions. This process is well attested for a range of societies after the Second World War, and has produced a generation known as the ‘Baby Boom’ that moves up the population age-structure pyramid as a small bulge. Underlying the drop in marriage and childbearing during the war years were the social and economic insecurity and the lack of safety and freedom that invariably accompany war. People postponed investments until better times. In
See Livi Bacci (a) f. and – (with further references). The literature on this topic is overwhelmingly large, and my references are a biased selection of illustrative examples. On recovery of marriage rates, cf. for the Netherlands Van den Brink (), esp. the table between p. and p. , which charts the incidence of marriage per , inhabitants over the period –. From , the marriage curve goes into a downward slide. Directly after the cessation of warfare (May ), marriage rates rise steeply again, with peaks in and (note that seasonality patterns were not perturbed by the ‘marriage boom’). Klein () focuses on the US post-war baby boom and its causes: a combination of postponed marriages leading to higher marriage rates, dropping average ages at first marriage (AAFMs), shorter birth intervals, and increased total fertility rates (TFRs). The latter rose staggeringly, from . children per woman in to an average of . in , but soon dropped again. For the US, the effect of the economic depression, which hit the entire population, was much larger than the effect of warfare, which was limited to army recruits and their families. But Klein’s article is recommended because it neatly and succinctly summarizes the mechanisms of post-crisis recovery.
Mortality
addition, the number of marriages broken by death or by migration was disproportionably high under these exceptional conditions. In some years, rates of military recruitment were extremely high. As in other periods characterized by safety crises and a subsequent return to peace, in the case of the Second Punic War and the period thereafter we may imagine that fertility first slowed down, as a result of postponement of marriages and births,and then shifted into a higher than average gear after the war-mortality crisis was over. In our conceptualization of such processes, we must take into account that mortality, even if severe, primarily affected only a limited segment of the population, mostly soldiers and their immediate relatives. Economic and political instability impacted the entire Italian population. There were buffer mechanisms available, which would have kept indirect mortality effects (that is, the effect of adult male mortality on dependents) from spinning out of control, as we will see in more detail below (Section .). Nevertheless, the relative decline in fertility would likely have been more intense than the relative increase in mortality. Military recruitment obviously prevented soldiers from impregnating their wives. But comparative evidence shows that large numbers of civilians also chose to postpone marriage because daily life was disturbed and there seemed to be limited prospects of improvement in political, economic and social terms. This had a much larger negative impact on fertility rates during warfare. We cannot tell from direct evidence how Roman citizens experienced or perceived the Second Punic War. Perhaps it was not as ‘total’ as wars came to be later, in the times on which most demographers have focused their attention. Even so, a hostile army did march through Italy and plundered, raped and killed. For a long time, Rome was not in control of the situation and seems to have formulated ad hoc responses to enemy initiatives. The fact that ancient authors state that Rome’s allies became unwilling to speed to its aid or even defected to Hannibal corroborates this assumption. Locally, the effects of warfare were severe, and daily civilian life was disrupted. To give but a few illustrative examples: Livy mentions that citizens living in the countryside sought a safe haven in Rome to escape Hannibal and his troops. Polybius speaks of the town of Petelia as a case in which all the horrible things that tend to take place when a military campaign is inflicted on a civilian population occurred: the inhabitants of the place
See Erdkamp () f., with reference to e.g. Toynbee () on regional differences in the impact of warfare. Livy ... Cf. also Livy .. (the people of Cremonia and Placentia had been driven away from their colonies by the calamities of war: unde bellis casibus dissipati erant). See also Brunt () .
The demographic parameters
Maximum deaths Births Natural decrease Mortality
Return to normal Max natural increase
Deaths Minimum births Decline of Marriages Recovery of Marriages 1
2
3
4
5
6 Years
7
8
9
10
11
Figure . Schematic depiction of demographic crisis and post-crisis recovery Source: Livi Bacci (a) , Figure . Reprinted by permission of the author, Massimo Livi Bacci, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Note: Maximum deaths represent crisis mortality, in this case wartime excess mortality deaths. The minimum of births should be placed one year after the return of peace. The sinusoidal (fluctuating) curves to the left represent the initial (normal) situation.
were allegedly desperate enough after a month-long siege by Hannibal’s troops to ‘eat all the leather in the city and consume the bark and tender shoots of all the trees in it’. Since life was characterized by insecure and unpredictable conditions, the period of the Second Punic War may well have been a period during which marriage and childbearing were postponed in many areas. Postponed fertility may explain part of the population recovery after the war, and also the time-lag in the rise in census figures. While fertility tends to rise sharply from about a year after the peak of a mortality crisis or from the end of a war and the period thereafter (cf. Figure .), the first post-Hannibalic children would only begin to appear in the census of bce, which is precisely the point from which the figures begin to rise (cf. Figure . above).
Polybius .. Livy .. notes that some of the city’s inhabitants wanted to flee.
Mortality
4.10.2 Upsurge of remarriage rates An increase in remarriage rates might have been a second factor contributing to the resurgence of fertility rates and population recovery. Under favourable circumstances, widows and widowers tend to experience more difficulty finding a new partner than do bachelors or spinsters attempting to marry for the first time. While remarriage rates can be very high when no (religious) taboos are involved, there is always a percentage of widows and widowers who never enter a second (or third, or fourth) marriage. Several factors play a role in this. Under the adverse conditions generated by war, remarriage rates likely dropped, as did rates of first marriage. If remarriage rates followed a similar pattern after the end of war as well, the conclusion of postponed remarriages during the years after 201 bce and the fertility resulting from such unions would have contributed to population recovery. 4.10.3 Earlier marriage Sometimes ‘one man’s death is another man’s breath’. Because the ratio of land (and other resources) to people increases after a mortality crisis, individuals who survive the crisis may have better opportunities to make a living. As an effect of improving socio-economic conditions for those who survived the Second Punic War, the average age at first marriage (AAFM) may have dropped below what was customary before the war after the initial wave of ‘war-postponers’ married. Livi Bacci has recently linked the premise of better living conditions and higher per capita income to lower marriage ages in medieval Italy after the Black Death. That is, when economic conditions were favourable, it was easier for people to acquire sufficient means to set up their own households. As a result, they may have been inclined to marry younger, confident that they would be able to earn a living and could afford the cost of a wife and children. Although this
Among these are age and the presence or absence of minor or adult children. Remarriage rates decline with age. They do so much more steeply for women than for men, most likely because of the differential effects of ageing on men and women. The relationship between presence, number and age of children and remarriage rates is more complex. Cf. on these issues e.g. Grigg (); Knodel (), Ch. ; Fauve-Chamoux () and Bardet and Beauvalet (). Berkner () pointed out that Austrian women living in an agricultural context tended to lose interest in remarriage if they had adult sons who could take care of the farm and provide for them in old age, an observation possibly relevant to Roman Italy. Such is hypothesized in Rosenstein () . Rosenstein () : men could marry on advantageous terms. This is in contrast to Rosenstein () – where marriage ages are presented as static and culturally determined.
The demographic parameters
hypothesis has a certain attraction, no direct evidence proves it true. As Livi Bacci himself admits, nothing is known of marriage ages prior to the plague; the only indication of a negative correlation between economic conditions and marriage ages is the fact that, as time passed, average ages at first marriage rose in medieval Italy for both men and women, but more steeply for men. Even if we were to accept such a scenario for medieval Italy on the grounds of this meagre evidence, and attribute a rise in fertility (and population recovery) to a decline in average age at first marriage, it is questionable whether the argument would carry much weight in the Roman context. Marriage age may have fallen, but it does not necessarily follow that this would have brought about a rise in fertility. The impression arising from the analysis of inscriptions that allow for indirect reconstruction of marriage age is that women married quite young: by age over half of women in the Roman world already had spouses. Although the inscriptions are biased towards urban contexts, it seems fair to take what data we have as a starting point. If marriage in the late teens was in fact standard, a temporary decrease in women’s age at first marriage would have pushed the average down into the mid-teens. Theoretically, speeding up the entry into wedlock could easily have resulted in extra children, if we think in terms of sexual intercourse rates. But frequency of intercourse is not equal to the chance of conception even if contraceptives are entirely absent. Fecundity, the physiological capability to conceive, is a crucial factor. Modern societies tend to focus on the phenomenon of declining fecundity at higher ages, but fecundity is also sub-optimal among younger women. First, it takes some time after the onset of menarche for female fecundity to reach its optimal
With regard to post-Black Death England, Poos () has already pointed out the potential relevance of this factor. He emphasized, however, the need for firmer empirical work on the redistribution of resources freed by the Black Death and its effects on rural household economy and marriage structures in order to establish and specify such linkage. Livi Bacci (a) and Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber () –, with Tables and . The evidence, they emphasize, is meagre because the catasti for the period –, when AAFMs were low, contain only few marriage records. Rather than the outcome of economic conditions, Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber regard these lower ages at first marriage as induced by the lower average life expectancy prevalent during the decades when the plague was present. However, I am not convinced by their explanation, because it fails to explain why male AAFMs decreased so much more during this period than did female AAFMs. The link with economic conditions that Livi Bacci suggests seems a more promising explanation. On the basis of comparative evidence, it seems unlikely that women in the countryside married much later than they did in the city (men did). But comparative evidence can provide no guarantee. See further Chapter .
Mortality
level. Second, the duration of this period of sub-fecundity is flexible, and its length may be a major determinant of the age-pattern of natural fertility. The average age at menarche is thus crucial. From a reproductive perspective, lower AAFMs are pointless below a certain threshold. Ancient authors suggest that average age at menarche was around . This is somewhat higher than in the developed world today. However, it is in line with what might be expected, since the onset of menstruation is highly dependent on biological living standards and physiological stress. In considering this evidence regarding age at menarche in the ancient world and its determinants, we should also bear in mind that Roman and Greek authors are (as always) biased towards an elite public and reference group. Given that the elite likely enjoyed better diets, which is one of the main determinants of the onset of puberty and menarche, the average age at which the majority of the female population entered their fertile phase could have been substantially higher. A lower than average age at menarche for elite girls has been observed in other historical societies in which there was substantial heterogeneity according to socio-economic class. The elite-biased Roman data, in other words, are unlikely to be representative of the average experience. Most European data on the first half of the nineteenth century, which is as far back as statistical data can be pushed, indicate an average age of between and for non-elite girls.
Campbell and Wood () . The first several years after menarche are characterized by a high percentage of anovulatory cycles and the frequent occurrence of very long cycles of more than days. In addition, during this early phase women experience relatively numerous cycles with luteal phases which are short because certain hormonal levels are too low. Should conception occur in such cases, the risk of an early miscarriage is very high: see Wood () f. Wood () . Hopkins () . Cf. e.g. Soranus, Gynaecia i. (second century ce, working in Rome): frequentius . . . a quarto decimo anno initium accipit. Although there are some indications that the decline of menarche over time has been exaggerated, the communis opinio still holds that, notwithstanding regional and socio-economic variation, there has been a decline in the median age of menarche but not its minimum age. The current day US average, for example, is . years. Cf. also Hopkins () –. Wood () –, Table . presents the widest range of comparative data (relating to the mid-twentieth century). Cf. also his Fig. . at p. . Other factors identified as affecting the onset of menarche include hereditary influences, the extent of consanguinity, family size, exposure to daylight and psycho-social development. See on this e.g. Bullough () ; Swenson and Havens () ; Wu () f. and Wood () . The link between nutrition and menarche can be explained by the high energy demands of pregnancy (estimated at some , additional calories over the months, or close to kcal a day on average), which are incompatible with the high energy demands likewise required for human growth. Cf. also Bongaarts and Potter () – on nutrition and variation in age at menarche. Bullough (); Wood () . Bullough (). Hopkins () , suggesting an even higher average age, relies too heavily on the nineteenth-century evidence collected by Tanner () –, which was criticized in Bullough
The demographic parameters
Only American girls seem to have matured more rapidly, perhaps because of the abundant resources available. Such data arouse a suspicion that the Roman non-elite average should be placed towards the upper end of the early-modern European mean. In any case, there seems little reason to doubt that the fertility of Roman women during the first years of marriage was reduced by sub-fecundity or even entirely suppressed because they married prior to menarche. Consequently, if marriage ages for Roman women were pushed down as a response to the Second Punic War, this may not have had such dramatic effects on fertility. For younger girls, the chances of getting pregnant were most likely substantially lower, and the risk of spontaneous abortion and/or other complications resulting from sub-fecundity higher. The World Fertility Survey for modern countries reveals that the discrepancy between expected and observed fertility is particularly large for countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, where marriage is very early, and concludes that this must at least in part reflect teenage sub-fecundity. Nonetheless, even if well over half of all women married relatively young, this still left a group who married at higher ages. In their case, a lower marriage age would have had a significant effect on fertility rates. Therefore, lower marriage age may have had some positive effect on the population recovery of the overall population. At this stage of research, however, it is impossible to say with any assurance how large this effect was. Modelling the Roman population with the help of fertility schedules created by demographers seems the only viable way to determine the effects of such a change in demographic habit and to establish whether a decrease in the age at which women married could by itself have created the rise in growth rate needed for the population increase suggested by the census
(). Tanner’s early evidence is biased toward Scandinavia, and relies on small datasets; Bullough argues that if data for other countries were also plotted, the average for the nineteenth century would turn out lower. A more reliable Scandinavian dataset of , Danish women from the s implies an average age of about years and months – below that of other Scandinavian datasets used by Tanner and Hopkins: see Manniche (), who presents the data collected in the s by Ravn. In a short but widely cited recent article, evolutionary biologists Gluckman and Hanson () suggest that ages at menarche over the historical long run have followed a cyclical rather than a linear pattern. They propose that in the Neolithic, menarche occurred between age and , and that in Roman times also age at menarche was lower than in the later medieval and early-modern period. If true, this would have interesting implications for fertility in Roman Italy. But as far as Rome is concerned, the hypothesis seems to be based on nothing more than the legal minimum age for marriage of girls implied by the Digests .., which cannot be used as evidence for average age of menarche. Hobcraft () .
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figures. Without this heuristic tool, the explanatory value of this factor for the Republican case remains a matter of guesswork. 4.10.4 The recovery bonus of Darwinian selection The fourth and final point to be borne in mind is that natural population growth rates are always the sum of birth rates and death rates. For natural growth to rise, nothing much needed to have occurred than that death rates fell back to ordinary levels after the end of the Second Punic War. Furthermore, under the pressure of temporarily elevated mortality, the weakest die in greater numbers. Darwin’s principle of the survival of the fittest is at work when a population is disturbed by demographic shock. Apart from imposing direct mortality penalties on the population involved in warfare, in the late third century bce in Italy the war against Hannibal also hindered transport and devastated food production locally. When food shortages occurred as a consequence of this combination of causes, the segments of the population with fewer physical reserves were the first to suffer. The same would hold true in most cases of an outbreak of contagious disease encouraged by the disruption of normal living conditions. We may expect that immediately after the hardships of the Second Punic War, as after later wars and other types of demographic shock, the population had been out-selected, and those who survived were the strongest and fittest. As a result, death rates would have temporarily dropped to below normal (cf. Figure . above). Under such circumstances, no change in fertility rates is required for a population to grow. In sum, although other factors may partially explain the relative increases of census figures for individual post-war census years, it still does not seem to be a coincidence that the highest growth rates in numbers occur during the decades following the return of peace.
I by no means wish to claim that population recovery would be impossible, were it not for declining marriage ages: Cf. Sections .., .., and .. for other factors that played or could have played a role. Erdkamp () –. Polybius . notes that long-distance trade collapsed during the Second Punic War (at least in bce) because ‘all the world was at war’ (( . 2 3 2
+. 1 ). Brunt (), Ch. extensively discusses individual census figures. There is no need or space to reiterate this exercise here, except to emphasize two points. First, the most extreme increase in the census figures after the Second Punic War, the growth between and bce, could be inflated by an extraordinary effort made to register citizens: cf. Brunt () . Second and more generally, the fact that census figure trends could have been influenced by factors unrelated to natural population growth needs to be taken into account at all times: see Ch. .
The demographic parameters 4.10.5 Was the end of recovery growth the end of growth?
Recovery growth is a temporary phenomenon that fades when the political and socio-economic situation normalizes and death rates rise again, while at about the same time the exceptionally high birth rates caused by large numbers of postponed marriages and pregnancies move back towards levels sustained by normal patterns of marriage and birth. As a result, growth slows down again (cf. again Figure .). It has been forcefully argued in previous scholarship that what the census figures post-dating bce reflect is not just a slowing of growth, but the beginning of demographic stagnation and decline. 4.11 the demographic impact of warfare during the second century bce: a different story? The dominant view of the impact of conquest on the Roman population thus perceives demographic responses and outcomes to militarism as highly differential over time. It holds that the Roman citizen population was able to recover from the direct demographic costs of the Second Punic War, and in fact did so quite quickly. At the same time, there is wide (but not universal) agreement that the militaristic nature of Roman society subsequently shattered the world of the free smallholding farmer, bringing about a steady natural decline in the free population that continued at least to the time of Augustus. What, then, was so different about the second century bce? Two lines of argumentation have been presented in conjunction to support the notion that the demographic impact of warfare was different in this period. The first involves socio-economic change: the Second Punic War marked the beginning of overseas expansion, which brought with it, as discussed in Chapter , a massive influx of material wealth. This wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few, and spurred socio-economic differentiation and inequality. Ordinary citizens were forced to compete with fellow citizens who had become large landholders, and with increasing numbers of slaves used as a labour force, and they lost the battle. The dominant view has long been that ‘many of the conquerors of the world . . . were ejected from their farms and displaced by peoples whom they had vanquished and enslaved’, to quote Hopkins again. It was, so it has been argued, the
Brunt (). Even Brunt () holds that ‘a generation after the war [i.e. the Second Punic War] the size of the citizen body had at last surpassed its level of ’. Brunt sees only a partial role for enfranchisements in causing this growth. Hopkins (a) .
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consequent poverty among ordinary free citizens that led to a decline in fertility rates. Because the arguments put forward to underpin this approach to the question are grounded in the realm of fertility behaviour related to economic circumstances, I address this issue in the next chapter, which focuses on fertility. I argue that the picture sketched is overdrawn. While rapid recovery growth could not be sustained, there is no reason to assume that after this initial phase, fertility behaviour changed to such an extent that it excluded the potential for slow demographic growth during the late Republican period. The second line of argument focuses on the direct impact of military recruitment on male mortality and on the survival chances of soldiers’ close relatives. The continual warfare and recruitment that led to the absence of adult men on military service, and the fact that they might never return, it has been argued, had detrimental effects on farming families as well. The implicit underlying logic of this model of the demographic decline of the free citizen population is that conditions in the ancient world already pushed the demographic system. The added burden of continued expansive warfare was enough to reduce natural reproduction among the free citizen population of Italy. In what follows, I concentrate on this line of reasoning. 4.11.1 The toll of the military draft The Roman Republic has more than once been characterized as a ‘war machine’ pursuing a continuous policy of aggression. Warfare in Roman Italy exacted its toll across age and sex. As we have seen, some of the wars in which Italy was involved concentrated at least in part on its own territory: notably the Second Punic War, the Social War and the Civil Wars. During the Social War, for example, eight towns across the peninsula were sacked and destroyed, according to Florus, who based his account on Livy. Despite the unquantifiable casualties among children, women and the elderly, overall the heaviest demographic burden of warfare fell on adult men of military age.
See Eckstein () –. Florus, Epitome .. Florus claims that the devastation wrought by Hannibal was less serious, but this might be rhetoric in line with his forceful condemnation of what he saw as a war of citizens against citizens of the same descent. Brunt () – provides a grim account of the devastation of the Social War and the first Civil War. Emberger () (unseen) promises an account of the deep impact of the Civil Wars during the period – bce on women and children of elite families, who were used to increase political pressure on the enemy.
The demographic parameters
The Roman army did not become professionalized until the first century bce. Before that, ordinary male citizens were drafted on a more or less continuous basis. Because Roman historiography prior to the Second Punic War is meagre, the impact of continuous recruitment on the population of Italy during the early Republican period remains opaque. Between and bce, Roman generals and their armies suffered defeats classified as ‘major’ on qualitative grounds in a study by Nathan Rosenstein – a mixture of lost battles and failed sieges; of these defeats took place in Spain, where Roman invasions met with heavy resistance and the war of conquest became a protracted, costly operation. Other peaks of excess mortality inflicted by warfare occurred during the Social War (– bce) and the Civil Wars of the first century bce (– bce and intermittently during – bce). During the years after the Second Punic War (– bce), a recent estimate holds, a total of about , soldiers (Romans and allies) lost their lives as a direct consequence of Roman imperialism. This is a staggering number, which adds flesh to dramatic accounts of the toll of the military draft on ordinary free citizens in Italy. A continuous draft created excess mortality among adult men in the Republic. Absolute numbers that lump casualties over decades, however, are not the best way to assess the impact of military mortality on Roman society. They easily exaggerate the story. In recognition of this, Rosenstein in his Rome at War made an elaborate attempt to estimate average combat mortality. He did so for – bce, because this period is relatively well documented, since Livy’s Ab urbe condita gives us casualty figures for wars and battles fought and the number of legions in service. When all legionary soldiers are taken into account, including those who did not march on any battlefields, the annual combat fatality rate is roughly .% for the period following the Second Punic War. We know little of casualty numbers after bce. But the incidence of battles that inflicted losses on the armies of Roman commanders described as ‘serious’ in ancient literary sources remained roughly constant between and bce. This suggests that the death risk of joining the army remained in the same order of magnitude for most of the late Republican period. Despite the war in Spain, the impact
Rosenstein () with n. . Rosenstein (). Rosenstein () –. Rosenstein () f., (.%). Note that the percentage excludes excess mortality as a result of wounds and diseases, but does include some allowance for minor engagements that escaped the attention of Rome’s historians or have not made it into the surviving records. Rosenstein (). Of the known battles with heavy losses for the period between and bce, eight date to – bce, which amounts to an average of . known heavy losses per year. The years thereafter (– bce) witnessed such events, or . per year.
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of warfare between and bce may even have been lower than before bce. Brunt’s collection of literary references to legions under arms in the second century suggests that an average of . legions were in the field during that period, compared to . between and bce. Because of uncertainty surrounding the number of legions in Gaul and Macedon for part of this time, however, it is possible that the estimate for the second half of the century is too high. Once we near the end of the Republican age, after bce, the onset of the Civil Wars changed the situation. The suggested annual combat death rate for drafted soldiers allows us to get a clearer impression of the relative role imperialism played in the Roman mortality profile. Under ordinary conditions, annual mortality rates would be between .% (Navrongo Model) and .% (Woods’ Model South) for men between and . The share of excess deaths attributable to war mortality among these age groups, in other words, was considerable. It also makes a considerable difference which model life tables are used to assess the added risk of army service. If the Navrongo model life tables are considered the best option for Italian men, men who joined the Roman army were more than three times as likely to die. If Woods’ Model South, in which base adult mortality is already high, is used as a basis for estimates, on the other hand, the impact of military combat on the demography is more modest, more than doubling rather than more than tripling mortality risks for young men. Some critical notes ought, however, to be added to Rosenstein’s estimates of the impact of combat on male mortality. The estimates rely heavily on Livy, and the confidence Rosenstein places in them is somewhat overoptimistic. Livy’s figures go back to Valerius Antias, who unfortunately was not a reliable source for numbers: Livy himself was sceptical, and recorded that ‘on numbers he has little credit; no author shows less moderation
Brunt () , Table (– bce) and –, Table (for – bce). Brunt () . .%: predicted by the Navrongo Model. .%: predicted by Woods’ Model South. The Coale and Demeny West Model, the Morogoro (Tanzania) Model and the Butajira (Ethiopia) Model predict annual mortality rates of ., . and . respectively for the same age groups. All rates are unweighted averages inferred from the M(x) columns of the Life Tables on pp. – above (ages –). Cf. also Rosenstein () , who uses the rate predicted by Coale and Demeny’s West Model Level females. I.e. .% instead of .% with the Navrongo Model as a starting point. I.e. .% instead of .% with Woods’ Model South as a starting point. Cf. also Erdkamp () – for a critique on the reconstruction of war mortality by Rosenstein () –. Rich () is careful in characterizing Rosenstein’s confidence in Livy’s figures as ‘perhaps excessive’. Brunt () – was more sceptical.
The demographic parameters
in inflating them’. Military death tolls are in fact known to have been inflated for political or ideological motivations. It has been argued that figures are mostly inflated when they involve enemy deaths, probably because military success was measured by that criterion. What about the casualty figures for Rome’s own soldiers then? Here, counteracting forces were at work. The Roman state may have had an interest in keeping data on the army up to date for logistical reasons. It certainly developed regulations to punish absconding, thereby minimizing the lumping of deceased and deserted soldiers together in military accounts, and favouring accuracy. Generals in search of recognition and triumphs, however, may have been motivated to under-report Roman casualties. In this regard, it inspires little confidence that the Roman state promulgated a law in bce intended to enforce the accuracy of the information generals provided to the Senate. Apparently it was not a given that they offered a factual report of what had happened under their command. Instances of botched military administration are also known; in the war against Macedonia, for example, the Roman authorities had to order that soldiers who had left on furlough unauthorized, or their relatives, make a declaration before the censors, so that the books could be updated. There are reasons, in other words, to take reported casualty figures with a grain of salt. This means that the excess mortality as a result of military action may well have been either higher or lower than Rosenstein’s calculations suggest. But excessive discrepancies between reported and actual casualties were prevented by the limits of credence, and by the opposed forces of an interest in personal glory and practical needs. The Roman political authorities knew how many soldiers they sent off to war, so that overly optimistic or pessimistic accounts would raise suspicions. Moreover, policy based on numbers appearing out of nowhere would have undermined the successful operation of the army. Casualties among enemies could be grossly
Livy ... This is not the only point where he severely criticizes his source: cf. ..; ..; ... At .., Livy expresses doubts about the numbers preserved in his sources in a more general way, ultimately stating that he prefers intermediate estimates (si aliquis adsentiri necesse est, media simillima veri sunt). Cf. Brunt () . Cf. Henige (), Ch. (e.g. on casualty figures in Caesar and on Sulla’s victory at Chaeronea in bce). Note also that mortality rates of citizens might be misrepresented deliberately to emphasize the enemy’s cruelty. Livy ..; Polybius .. (on bce). Ziolkowski (), esp. –. Valerius Maximus .. (De iure triumphi). The law was put through by the tribunes of the plebs, L. Marius and M. Cato, and threatened to penalize generals who reported to the Senate either a false number of enemies killed in battle or a false number of citizens lost. To ensure the accuracy of their reports, generals were required to swear an oath before the quaestors as soon as they entered the city. Livy ..– (on bce).
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over- or underestimated, but casualties among Rome’s own soldiers could not. Despite the limited reliability of casualty accounts for the Roman army, therefore, in my view the estimate for the post-Hannibalic period still offers a valuable sense of the impact of military mortality. It shows both that warfare was a persistent factor in shaping demographic realities in late Republican Italy after the end of the Second Punic War, and that the risks of dying as a soldier, or of losing a husband or son in war, were less high than absolute, lumped numbers of casualties seem to suggest. In addition to the risks recruited men faced during battles and campaigns, Brunt argued, soldiers also suffered from elevated disease mortality. In early modern contexts, cases are known in which disease mortality among soldiers was twice as high as deaths from fighting. Something can be said for Brunt’s assessment, since population density in military camps was substantially higher than it was in the Italian countryside. Moreover, the army brought together individuals from various parts of Italy, meaning that soldiers may also have encountered disease pools unknown to them – diseases to which they had not built up immunity during childhood. But other factors kept disease in Roman military camps under check. Apart from a number of sieges, the Republican army was characterized by high mobility and non-permanent encampments. This lessened the risk of the outbreak of contagious disease. The Roman army was also well-organized. Evidence from Imperial times points to the presence of latrines, drainage systems, medical personnel and the organization of manpower in small units for sleeping and cooking (eight men per tent). All these factors would have contributed to keeping sanitary conditions under control. The little we know of late Republican camps described by Polybius and found near Numentia in Spain (Renieblas) suggests that they too were wellorganized. The extremely high ratios of disease to fighting casualties mentioned above, by contrast, were observed in less structured armies, in
Known cases include soldiers in the Union army during the American Civil War (–), and the troops from the British Empire fighting against the Boers in the South African Boer Wars (late nineteenth and early twentieth century): Rosenstein () –. Sieges tend to be associated with elevated disease risk: Scheidel (c) –. Ancient sources record outbreaks of disease during sieges: Polybius ..– (Agrigentum, bce; probably dysentery, which is caused by improper sanitation and contaminated water) and Josephus, The War of the Jews vi..– (famine and contagious diseases). See also Katz () (siege of Rome, bce) and Rosenstein () . Scheidel (c) –. Eight men per tent: Goldsworthy () . Note that Imperial camps contained hospitals with their own separate bathing areas and kitchens: Southern () . This need not, however, have provided any guarantee against contagion; much depends on how their use was organized. Rosenstein () –. Polybius Histories ..–... See Connolly () –; Southern () and Sage () –.
The demographic parameters
which exposure to or lack of protection against adverse (extreme) weather and insufficient food often added to the toll exacted by population density and substandard hygienic conditions. All this suggests that the level of disease mortality among Roman soldiers may not have been as elevated as was suggested by Brunt. While recruits from the Italian countryside were certainly worse off than at their farms, for those from Italian cities the food and hygiene conditions in the army were probably an improvement over daily urban life. The more modest account of excess mortality due to army service emerging here fits with new revisionist accounts of the nature of ‘the warring Republic’. Whereas warfare has traditionally been viewed as endemic to Roman Italy during the entire Republican period, there is currently a shift towards viewing continuous war primarily as a feature of the fourth and third centuries bce. Revisionists argue that endemic warfare was beginning to disappear at the beginning of the second century bce, as an increasingly civilian society started to emerge. After the Second Punic War, the military investment that made Rome an empire varied greatly in intensity, and warfare was intermittent, with longer and more frequent interludes of comparative peace between. 4.11.2 Losses to village and family: the demographic impact of conquest It will be clear from the above account that recruitment levels and soldier casualties fluctuated but at times were very high in the Republic. In contrast to the situation during Imperial times, the burden fell predominantly on Italy’s free men, citizens and allies alike. Scholarship in the tradition of ‘Hannibal’s Legacy’ has viewed the military engagement of free men as a phenomenon that fundamentally undermined Roman society, because it not only caused losses among adult males but also disturbed village life and the survival of families. In a nutshell, the traditional argument holds that nuclear smallholder families lost their household heads and/or adult son(s). Without this crucial source of labour, their livelihoods were irrevocably damaged. Men who fought for their country thus lost their homes. It has been argued, for example, that military mortality had a
Brunt () , – and Appendix . This refines Rosenstein’s conclusions, which fail to differentiate beyond the dichotomy soldier– civilian, which makes no sense from a demographic perspective. Rosenstein () –. Rich () –; Eckstein (). Cornell () –; Eckstein () . Thus Brunt (), Ch. .
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devastating effect on the Latin colony of Cosa, and on the colonies of Buxentum and Sipontum. They became deserted, as a Roman official accidentally discovered in the case of Buxentum and Sipontum: extremo anni, quia Sp. Postumius consul renuntiauerat peragrantem se propter quaestiones utrumque litus Italiae desertas colonias Sipontum supero, Buxentum infero mari inuenisse At the end of the year, the consul Spurius Postumius had announced that while he was travelling to investigate both coasts of Italy, he found that the colonies of Sipontum at the Adriatic and Buxentum at the Tyrrhenean sea were deserted.
Livy’s account does not mention the cause(s) of the desertion, and does not specify whether the people had passed away or simply emigrated because they saw better opportunities elsewhere. Even so, from the desertion of places like Sipontum, Buxentum and Cosa, it has been inferred that population decline was ‘a ‘natural’ phenomenon in a closed militaristic society’ – something that would have taken place not merely during periods of heavy warfare (such as the Second Punic War), but permanently, slowly and steadily. This line of reasoning is questionable on various grounds. First, to say that population decrease should be the ‘natural’ result of militarism sits uneasily with Rome’s survival over centuries. Rather than as external, continuous manpower demand should be considered an integral part of the demographic system of the Roman Republic – in other words, an endogenous factor. Second, several characteristics of Italian society dampened the effect of soldier mortality on civil society and reproduction. In particular, most Roman soldiers were young when recruited. During the Republic, the army was made up of conscripts, and men became liable for military service upon reaching age or , provided that they or their fathers had sufficient possessions. There is some discussion about the precise starting age, which results from our uncertainty about the exact system of age-reckoning customary in Roman Italy, a problem discussed
Rathbone (), esp. –. For criticism of his analysis see Rich () , n. ; Erdkamp (); Rosenstein (), Ch. and De Ligt (b) . Thus Dyson () . Livy ..– reports the desertion of the colonies, but does not mention underlying causes. Livy ..– (trans. S. H.). Note that in Book ., also on bce, Livy notes that many Latins had moved to Rome (presumably because it was attractive to live there) and claims that , were sent back to their native communities. Cf. Erdkamp () . Rathbone () . On the (declining) minimum level of assets required for military service: Rathbone (); Erdkamp () ; De Ligt (b) –.
The demographic parameters
in Section . above. Nor is it clear whether references to a so-called tirocinium, a preliminary training stage, imply that actual military service started one year later, and if so, for whom. Neither issue need bother us much here; whether military obligations started one year later or not, the point is that Roman men were recruited into the army at a young age. A long term of service is at odds with the nature of the Republican conscript army, since it would imply either that chance determined which cohorts (birth years) were heavily burdened, or that the selection criteria employed were so strict that they excluded most age cohorts and concentrated the burden on a select group. There are no indications for either possibility. This logic does not exclude that service might be longer under exceptional circumstances. But even during the Second Punic War, legions spent an average of about six years in service, although some, part or all of the consequently discharged soldiers may have been integrated into newly formed units again. It is commonly held that the usual term of service was about six years during the Republican period, although the actual figure seems less secure than we are made to believe. The literary accounts sketch a fuzzy picture, which perhaps arose as a consequence of changes in the length of service over time that became conflated in the historical tradition. In reality, length of service was probably variable at all times, so long as the army consisted of conscripts, depending on circumstances. For the second century bce, the period for which the impact of warfare has been described as dramatic, shorter-term service meant that young men who served in one stretch could be freed of their military obligations before their mid-s. Most of these soldiers would have been unmarried while in service; as far as we know, it was only after this age that they married. This is suggested by inscriptional evidence, which on the most recent interpretation implies that the average age at first marriage for men was in their late s. The vast majority of Roman legionaries thus did not leave behind families and farms that depended on their protection or labour
Note the exact Greek counterpart to this discussion: Carter (), on the age of entry into the classical Athenian ephebeia, and Parkin () in response. Polybius’ (..) figure of sixteen years seems to contradict the six-year hypothesis, but is an emendation on the manuscripts (cf. Rosenstein () , n. ; Walbank () with () ), and tends to be interpreted as the maximum under exceptional circumstances. Brunt () – suggests that Polybius may have referred to the number of (shorter) campaigns, not years, and that his description may contain archaic elements that did not correspond to the practice in his own day. See e.g. Keppie () – and ; Toynbee () . For a more detailed discussion of marriage ages, see Ch. , Section ... On military recruitment and its impact on the marriage market: De Ligt (b), p. and Rosenstein ().
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input to survive. By implication, moreover, married life and reproduction were in most cases not hampered or disrupted by long absence or death of spouses caused by war obligations. Unlike in some later societies, we have no evidence suggesting that men generally needed to remain ‘stand-by’ as reserve forces once they served their full term, or that they could be forced to serve again until they reached a certain upper age. While some accounts suggest that in emergency situations, elderly men might be posted on city walls, historical authors draw a clear distinction between ‘men of military age’ and ‘men above military age’. This suggests that already in Republican times, men were not liable for military service indefinitely. The recruitment of young adults thus mitigated the pressure of military service on society. During the first century bce, when the army became professionalized, a period of service of sixteen to twenty years became the norm, after which soldiers ‘retired’ and received land for their maintenance. In brief, there are substantial contrasts between the characteristics of army service during the first and the second half of the period under investigation. Army service impacted a relatively small subgroup of men from the first century bce onward, but for a much larger part of their life course. During the period in which military service was compulsory, we may conclude, most men were shielded from military risk by the time they married; they were no longer in service. It also seems that during fighting, the youngest recruits were assigned to fight in the frontlines as hastati, causing them to die in the largest numbers. Older soldiers filled the more protected ranks, which ran less risk. Livy even suggests that the eldest, the triarii, started battles ‘sitting or kneeled in reserve’. As a consequence, older soldiers with dependent families most likely stood a better chance of survival. This was probably deliberate, since it would be in the interest of army commanders to spare their more experienced forces. This is not to say that warfare did not have detrimental effects on households. It should be noted that poor soldiers of any age served as light infantry, the velites. Since velites seem to have been distributed between
See Ch. . During the Imperial period, veterans and their families were made ‘free from military service’ (and excused from the performance of other compulsory public services) by an Augustan edict dated to / bce. Cited and translated in Phang () – (text edition: BGU ). Smith (); but cf. Brunt () . See on battle lines in the Roman Republican army Rawlings () –. Younger troops, the hastati, functioned as skirmishers engaging the enemy, and were backed up by older and more experienced troops. Cf. Polybius ..–; Livy .f. haec prima fons in acie [i.e. the hastati] florem iuvenum pubescentium ad militiam habebat (..). Livy .. They were usually committed only if things went badly. Hence, according to Livy, the expression ‘it has come to the triarii’ (Inde rem ad triarios redisse, cum laboratur, proverbio increbruit).
The demographic parameters
the various ranks of the army (the hastati, the principes and the triarii), some ran the same higher risks as the youngest recruits who made up the hastati, regardless of age. Moreover, some soldiers would be married in any case. An average duration of military service of six years, first of all, is only an average. During the Second Punic War, many legions served longer than that. For other periods of the late Republic, we may imagine that military obligations were not always fulfilled by a single period of uninterrupted service. If men served for several short periods stretching over a longer period of time – say, for one or two years at a time, with a few years in between – marriage might take place somewhere along the route. Afzelius’ analysis of the discharge of Roman legions for the period following the Second Punic War (– bce) suggests precisely that: just over half (.%) of all legions served two years or less. Perhaps some men escaped serving out the remainder of their formal obligations because demand for legionaries was low, but others may have had to serve again later on. Disruptive effects through recruitment of the fathers of young families are thus expected, but only for a smaller percentage of Roman households and a shorter period of time. With regard to the age of marriage of Roman men during the late Republic, moreover, inscriptional evidence suggests that an average age at marriage in the late s is biased towards urban, imperial contexts, and leaves out the poor(est). This may thus not reflect normal practice during the Republican period or all over Italy. During later periods, in earlymodern Italy, men in smaller villages married a few years earlier than was the case in urban environments. In other cases, the absence of a young unmarried man may still have undermined the viability of family life, for example when it meant that an old (widowed) parent was left behind on his or her own. In such cases, war demands would translate into greater demands on Italian communities to assist those who had trouble coping with the absence or loss of a healthy, productive family member.
Cf. Toynbee () . On velites, cf. Southern () –. Afzelius () . Minor corrections to his table are made in Toynbee () . But cf. Rosenstein () –, who points to the fact that conscription was, if possible, based mainly on voluntary compliance with the draft; to the liberal policy of granting exemptions to those who sought them; and to the fact that heads of households themselves declared their property to the censors – a practice that left some room for manipulation for those who sought to evade military service on the ground that they were too poor. Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber () f. with Figs. and and Table . The average difference between the cities and the countryside of Tuscany during the years – was . years for men. With a difference of nearly years, male marriage ages in Florence and the Contado were furthest apart.
Mortality
Community support has been observed to be an important determinant of the impact of war on mortality among civilians indirectly involved in the conflict. In strongly individualized contexts, adverse conditions hit much harder, pushing up indirect war casualties. When families are small, relatives live far away and many people live relatively anonymously in urban contexts; the alternatives to turn to in difficult times are limited. Help and assistance are much more readily available in communities where everyone is or at least knows ‘the cousin of the neighbour of the grandmother of x’. In other words, the social structures prevalent in late Republican Italy were better equipped to absorb the consequences of war than modern, largely urban societies are. Small, close-knit communities, extended families and/or blood relatives living nearby must have played a role in cushioning the detrimental effects of the absence of men and war losses on families and individuals. This ability was limited in scope, however, especially when hardship hit an entire community or region. Effects would be worse if the community affected was isolated, or if interregional supply channels were blocked as a result of war. Inland regions without access to waterways would have suffered in particular. It should also be pointed out that Roman agriculture was characterized by underemployment, so the loss of a male relative did not necessarily require labour force replacement. Some manpower could in fact be spared. Furthermore, whereas agricultural work requires some human capital (in the sense of specialized knowledge), most people would have grown up on farms and learned the essential skills ‘by doing’ from an early age: ‘agricultural human capital’ was high across the board, surely not only among adult men. This created more opportunities for others to take over crucial tasks. It was easier for wives, children or other relatives in a Roman Republican farming context to perform such duties and keep the (household) economy going than it was for women and children who had to do this in war situations after industrialization, when there was more job differentiation and complex tasks were performed in a setting
Cf. Livi Bacci (a) – and . Rosenstein () in my view, underestimates the types of assistance that nuclear families could seek resort to when affected by war and conscription. Evidence of draft-avoidance does not prove that the labour of an adult man was absolutely needed on his farm, or that no one else could do the job. On (structural and seasonal) underemployment in agriculture: e.g. Hopkins (a) and ; Erdkamp () –, () and () . In my view, ancient historians too often create an opposition between farming as ‘unskilled labour’ and early industrial work as ‘skilled labour’; the essential difference, I would argue, is that skills are transmitted at young ages within the household setting in the former case, but outside the family home in the latter.
The demographic parameters
detached from the household, which prevented ‘learning by doing’ at an early age. For women and children in Roman Italy, moreover, such agricultural employment was not a peculiarity limited to war-enforced situations. It was a widespread phenomenon, required by the oscillating demands of household life cycles, and by peak labour demand coming most pressingly during harvest times. 4.12 the census: stagnating population figures and the economics of non-registration At this point, we must return to the stagnating population figures for the period after bce. I argued earlier that military mortality is unlikely to explain this phenomenon. The fact that the more severe ‘mortality regime’ between and bce did not obviate demographic growth, suggests that there is no convincing reason why the lower excess mortality of the s to s should have caused population decline. As I hope to demonstrate in the next chapter, it is also unlikely that fertility decline (caused by economic conditions) led to population decline among Italy’s free citizens. If we accept both of these conclusions, then what alternative explanations for the population numbers recorded by the ancient sources remain? In my view, only one convincing alternative has been suggested: what the figures present is not real, but a fiction caused by a decline in registration of citizens for the census in the period preceding the Gracchan land reforms. Historians have proposed two explanations of why the share of citizens registered by the censors might have declined during the midsecond century bce: impoverishment and the increasing unpopularity of warfare. Impoverishment might have been one reason why fewer citizens appeared in the records. Authors such as Plutarch and Appian present accounts that emphasize the loss of assets suffered by Roman citizens or allies in the period preceding the Gracchan land reforms, and explain the land reforms initiated by the Gracchi as inspired by this process. If the
Livi Bacci () . Scheidel () (theory and comparative evidence) and (a) (ancient evidence). Gallant () – and –, and Rosenstein () cover the issue of household structure and labour supply and demand most extensively, the one for Greece, the other for the Roman Republic. See now also Saller () – for a clear and concise overview of female labour and child labour in the ancient world, stressing their limited labour participation as compared to men. On child labour in an agricultural context, cf. Ch. , Section ... Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus . Cf. De Ligt (b) . Appian, Bellum Civile .–.
Mortality
ranks of the proletarii in fact grew during this period, this might explain why fewer men were registered: people with assets below the minimum threshold value were of less interest to censors. Citizens whose property value fell below a certain minimum level lost their value as a target for census registration because, as proletarii, they were not liable for military service and could therefore not be called upon. The decline in the number of registered citizens has traditionally also been related to the unpopularity of warfare, an aversion which perhaps increased over time. As the ability to declare citizens liable for service depended on their presence in the census registers, unwillingness to serve would have provided a motive to avoid registration. Consequently, decreasing enthusiasm for military service could have provoked a decline in census figures. Ancient sources repeatedly record difficulties with the recruitment of soldiers and instances of avoidance of service. Perhaps, it has been suggested, the Spanish Wars of the mid-second century became particularly unattractive, since they stretched on and on without initially delivering much. Erdkamp has recently suggested that growing opportunities in other economic sectors, mainly in towns and cities, became more attractive alternatives for making (additional) money for subsistence farmers who could not live off their land alone. Citizens may have become more selective than before and less willing to serve in the army than in previous generations, and may have tried to evade registration in order to prevent being drafted for the army. Erdkamp concludes that ‘in fact, economic growth in many parts of Italy may have contributed at least as much to the proletarianization of the Roman army during the second half of the second century BCE as any supposed impoverishment of the citizenry’. I suggest that a third factor should be considered when debating the backgrounds to changes in the extent to which citizens were registered for the census: the declining importance of tributum, or war-tax. That
De Ligt (b) and (). Cf. Erdkamp () ; De Ligt () –. See also Rich () –. E.g. Polybius ..– (Spain, ‘with disgraceful excuses’); Livy .. (Macedon) and Periochae (deserters); and Appian, Wars in Spain . (people tired of war). Evans () focuses on the evasion of military service during the second century bce. Cf. also Rich () f. and Dyson () . De Ligt (b) . Evans () observes that at the same time ‘the mere threat of conscription for service in Spain was enough to launch a panic in the streets of Rome (Polybius .)’, ‘citizens and allies alike rushed to volunteer when the Senate declared war on Carthage’. See also Rich (), esp. – and Rich () . Erdkamp () – suggests that economic growth and growing employment opportunities in the cities changed attitudes toward military service in the second century bce. Erdkamp () – on economic development and changing attitudes to military service. Erdkamp () .
The demographic parameters
military recruitment was not the only purpose of census registration for the Roman state is often overlooked. The institutional organization of the census, with its elaborate requirements on the registration of property, was also the means to establish taxation. It is well-known that, after the conquest of Macedonia in bce, so much booty flowed to Italy that the Roman state was able to abolish the war-tax, or tributum, imposed on its citizens. As a result, it would have become far less urgent for the censors to register everyone who could make a financial contribution to warfare. While the census figures do not stagnate and decline until after bce, one census after the abolition of military taxation, this does not necessarily undermine the model. The accounts are not very precise on the exact evolution of the process, and we may imagine that some time elapsed before it was decided that the Macedonian war gains would be directed towards financing warfare. Moreover, once it had been decided that citizens were to be freed of the obligation to pay tributum on their possessions, the news had to spread among and be trusted by census takers and declaration givers, and affect their behaviour. Perhaps it took one census before all this materialized in the results, especially if we postulate that the census was held on a rolling basis. While this reasoning is admittedly speculative, it is no more so than the hypothesis favouring impoverishment or that pointing to the unpopularity of warfare. Needless to say, a fourth hypothesis might combine these three factors to explain the stagnation of the census figures as the result of an accumulation of factors unrelated to demography per se. The phase of stagnating census figures ended after the land reforms of the Gracchi. From bce, the census figures rise again. In fact, in bce they jump so dramatically that factors other than natural population development again seem responsible for developments in the census tallies. I will not jump into this debate here; the purpose of this discussion of the Roman census has been to show that there are more convincing
Cf. Ch. below. Plutarch, Aemilius Paulus .: ‘Aemilius’ practically unlimited popularity with the people is ascribed to his exploits in Macedonia, because so much money was brought into the public treasury then that they no longer needed to pay special taxes until the times of Hirtius and Pansa, who were consuls during the first war between Antony and Octavius Caesar’ (trans. S.H.). Cf. also Valerius Maximus .. and Cicero, De officiis .. See Figure . and Appendix . Most historians have argued that the minimum threshold for being included in the fifth census class was significantly lowered, which led to the inclusion of more poor people who previously went unregistered as proletarii unfit for army service (because they lacked financial means). The issue is a thorny one: there are disputes and uncertainties about the exact dating of the changes, about devaluation of coinage and about the ‘exchange’ rates of the types of coinage used. De Ligt (b) provides a starting point for those seeking entry into the technical details. See for earlier analyses Rathbone () and Rich ().
Mortality
historical explanations for the stagnation in the second-century census figures than proponents of the ‘low count’, who interpret the census evidence as evidence of natural population decline, maintain. Further discussion of and details about the Roman census will follow in due course, in Chapter . In Chapter , I first discuss the characteristics of the Roman fertility system, and demonstrate why it is difficult to uphold the traditional view that Roman society went through a fertility transition and experienced wide-spread fertility decline during the late Republican period.
4.13 conclusion Traditional arguments hold that the mortality regime prevailing in Roman Italy put so much pressure on the Roman (citizen) population that the added burden of military conquest led to a continuous phase of natural population decline during the last two centuries bce, when the army won political dominance over large tracts of land across Europe and beyond. This chapter has evaluated this argument. We have found that accounts emphasizing the destruction of the Italian free citizen population during the late Republic tend to overdramatize the negative impact of warfare on the demography of Roman Italy. Italian society was able to incorporate structural military mortality as part of a sustainable demographic system. The impact of military service on Roman society at large was cushioned by several factors characteristic of late Republican conditions: military draftees were primarily men below , and the age at first marriage for men was late, so that economic pressure resulting from the absence of men did not concentrate on young families with few children, where an absence of male breadwinners could be least afforded. Instead, structural underemployment in Roman smallholder agriculture probably made service in the army a welcome opportunity for gaining extra income. The agricultural villages from which most soldiers would have come were generally tightly knit communities, in which neighbours and relatives provided assistance and support. Moreover, it is likely that not all families in Roman Italy were nuclear, but instead included extended family members. Both conditions suggest that the impact of the absence or loss of a male adult member of the household could be compensated for. Moreover, the businesses of small farmers were probably less vulnerable to the absence of male household heads or workers than some scholars have assumed: women and children could take over a large share, if not all of their work.
The demographic parameters
While episodes of heavy warfare and war-related mortality should certainly be regarded as demographic shocks, there were, I have argued, several mechanisms for post-war or ‘post-shock’ recovery within reach of the Italian population. These include postponed births and marriages, a rise in remarriage rates, and, to a lesser extent, the lowering of age at first marriage. All these mechanisms would have contributed to temporarily higher fertility rates, and although this is difficult to prove, at least some of them probably came into play. The Roman census figures, the success of Roman conquest and the survival of Roman society point to this. So does the fact that such responses have been shared by a wide range of historical populations that have experienced episodes of excess mortality. Even if Romans did not adapt their behaviour to changing circumstances to the same extent as other populations have, the effect of natural selection under extreme conditions would still have created an upswing in natural growth after (for example) the Second Punic War. Roman life expectancy at birth was low: in as far as we can tell, it hovered somewhere between and years at birth; under optimal conditions it might have been somewhat higher. Two datasets, the Roman census from Egypt and the Ulpian evidence, can be set against different model life tables. This exercise showed that different models have different implications for age-specific death rates. But it also showed that the life expectancies at birth they yield as ‘best fits’ with these ancient data fall within the lower half of this range. Alternative models from Chile and three African settings, in other words, do not suggest significantly higher life expectancies at birth than the Coale and Demeny model hitherto used. Several models yield a reasonably good fit with the Egyptian census data and the Ulpian evidence, because they have age-specific mortality profiles that show similarities with these ancient data. If ancient historians wish to use model life tables as a tool to explore hypotheses and to determine the limits of the plausible, they should be aware that similar age-specific mortality profiles can emerge from rather diverse cause-specific mortality profiles. It is therefore crucial to base choices between various models on background information about and similarities between demographic, ecological and economic conditions in a specific ancient and modern setting, and not merely on statistical goodness of fit. The range of life expectancies implied by different datasets leaves substantial room for variation, which occurred along several lines: perhaps by
Contra Woods () .
Mortality
socio-economic status, certainly by place. Locus-specific ecological conditions and population density shaped disease environments. Morbidity and mortality experience might have diverged substantially depending not only on where but also on when people lived: fluctuations in life expectancy were driven by warfare, but also by epidemics and perhaps (as suggested in Chapter ) by changes in the Italian climate. As far as we can tell from skeletal material, gender disparities were insignificant. This material, however, cannot inform us about deaths from (infectious) diseases that kill rapidly, since these leave no traces on bones. Whether women succumbed more often to such diseases must therefore remain an open question. Maternal mortality, despite earlier contentions, has only a minor impact on life expectancy. Disposal of newborns was an established practice, and evidence suggests that it was more likely to happen to girls than to boys. Not all instances of disposal or abandonment would amount to infanticide, as foundlings might be raised as slaves. During the late Republican period, however, this option would have been comparably unattractive, because of the large influx and low prices of people enslaved during military conquest. These characteristics of the Roman mortality profile should not lead us to believe, however, that qualitate qua the Roman population was incapable of achieving macro-demographic growth.
c h ap t er 5
Fertility
5.1 ancient fertility decline? No sex, no children. Fertility ensures human reproduction and is, as such, a central determinant of population development. Under the mortality conditions prevailing in most contemporary industrialized societies, a population remains stationary when women on average produce about . children. If the number is higher, the population will display what demographers label ‘natural growth’, to distinguish it from population growth caused by immigration. If a society’s women have fewer offspring, the next generation will be smaller. How many children a woman bears in her life depends on a number of things. From a more descriptive point of view, looking at the so-called proximate determinants of fertility, how old a woman was when she first conceived, the length of time between births, and how long childbearing continued, are paramount factors. Other related issues are how economic conditions, social circumstances and cultural values shape desires for having and opportunities to produce children both for women and for men. These questions are central to this chapter. One does not need to dig far to discover how deeply concerns about the effects of too few or too many children are embedded in politics. But ‘too few’ in a contemporary industrialized society is not the same as ‘too few’ in the Roman Republican context: Roman women needed to bear far more children over their life course than women do today to ensure the survival of the group. With mortality present at such an order of magnitude that life expectancy at birth was only around , women who survived to the end of their fertile life (say, age ) needed to bear – children to keep
Part of the argument in this chapter appeared earlier as Hin (), in a volume edited by Pudsey and Holleran published by Cambridge University Press. The suggestion by the economist-demographer Folbre () that ‘perhaps what policymakers [sc. in Western countries worrying about fertility decline] consider the optimal rate of population growth requires some optimal level of female empowerment (just enough but not too much)’ is bizarre but telling.
Fertility
the population growth rate at %. The total fertility rate (TFR) of – thus represents the number of children a woman in Republican Italy would need to bear, if she survived her childbearing years, to compensate for the fact that some of her peers died before age , and bore fewer children as a result. How many children did Roman women bear, and what were the implications for population development? Since we cannot answer this question in the case of Republican Italy from direct evidence about fertility rates, arguments have been based on indirect source material that relates to the proximate determinants mentioned above and the desire and opportunities for childbearing. As noted, the debate concentrates on the midsecond century bce, for which the literary historical record is rich in evidence for economic and social developments. Another reason why the decades after bce and before the Gracchan land reforms of the s and s bce have been given central place, is that the census figures for this period indicate demographic stagnation of the free citizen population (cf. Figure . above). Historians have attempted to link these quantitative and qualitative records in an explanatory framework. The census data have been assumed to reflect a real development, and have been explained as the outcome of a combination of high mortality and deliberate limitation of fertility on a massive scale. The avoidance of marriage and childbearing (or childrearing) was assumed to have been induced by the impoverishment of many Roman citizens, notably of small farmers, which was ultimately caused by imperialism. Peter Brunt has championed the view that Roman citizens en masse rejected procreation. It is worth offering a long quote to illustrate his point: If the rich sought to limit the number of their children in order to keep together their wealth, smaller proprietors will have acted in the same way, in order to protect their natural heirs against penury . . . Thus the rich and the peasant proprietors (or tenants) must have desired to restrict the number of their children. The proletarii simply could not afford them. For this reason, as contended earlier, many must have remained celibate; if they chose to marry, or if they already had wives before they fell into destitution, they had every motive to avoid procreation in the first place, and if they failed in this, to abstain from rearing the children born.
Coale and Demeney (), Model West life tables. E.g. Toynbee (); Brunt () and Hopkins (a). Toynbee’s conclusion (), Ch. , that ‘The new business class’s opportunities in the post-Hannibalic Age were the greatest of all; its needs were the least urgent of all; and its activities contributed the least to the welfare of the Roman People and the Roman Commonwealth [sic]’ is suggestive of the extent to which his perspective on Roman Republican history was influenced by his time. Brunt () –.
The demographic parameters
In Brunt’s view, poverty and lack of employment opportunities hindered marriage and the formation of a household because ‘a marriage almost by definition requires the establishment of an economic basis for the life of the couple and their children’. This ‘basis’ he understood to be a house and a means of livelihood. Underlying his account of developments during the late Republic is the hypothesis that the household system was nuclear (that is, consisting of a parent couple and their offspring) and neo-local (i.e. a new household at a separate location formed upon marriage). The general view of the fertility characteristics of the Roman free population during the late Republic expressed by Brunt has been considered applicable to Roman society over a longer stretch of time. Marriage and childbearing are thought to have been vastly unpopular at least until the Augustan period. Although the census figures for many years after the end of the second century bce are missing and coverage over time becomes patchy, an influential school of thought has, as noted earlier, argued that we can be reasonably sure that the free citizen population stagnated or perhaps even declined between bce and bce. The main argument underpinning this theory has been that the Augustan census figures show that no growth occurred in the late Republican period. In fact, this view is dependent on a particular and debatable interpretation of the census figures, and of the manpower figures reported by Polybius, on which more in Chapter . It is important to bear this notion in mind. In this chapter, I focus instead on the structural explanations offered to support the view that the census figures for, roughly speaking, the midsecond century bce reflect reality. My aim is to undermine the view that this period was characterized by a substantial decline in fertility, with the help of anthropological survey data, feminist studies, biological perspectives on fertility, and the findings of economic fertility analysis. I believe that this perspective is fruitful and justifiable for two reasons. First, the theory concerning fertility behaviour during the late Roman Republic put forward by Brunt is extremely succinct and depends largely on views of the relationship between poverty and fertility that have become controversial in the field of demography. A reappraisal of the processes and interactions underlying fertility behaviour in the late Republican period that accommodates the insights of a wider range of approaches is thus timely. Second, only a crossdisciplinary and comparative approach can put the scanty data available
Brunt () .
Cf. De Ligt () – and Hin ().
Fertility
for the Roman world into perspective and provide a counterweight to the tendency to overemphasize a few known factors or facts. 5.2 getting towards generation next without a penny? marriage and household formation The need to accumulate resources occupies a central place in Brunt’s account of family formation. Assets were needed for marriage; hence a lack of them would have prevented or delayed wedlock and undercut the formation of new families. In a context of neo-local household formation, average age at first marriage (AAFM) does indeed tend to be inversely related to conjectural fluctuations in economic conditions. High ages at first marriage resulting from a lack of resources could therefore have caused declines in final numbers of offspring. But substantial effects are only to be expected when, first, female age at first marriage is high, since although men’s age at first marriage is not entirely irrelevant, with regard to fertility rates it is the age at which women enter into marriage and commence childbearing that matters most. Second, a significant impact of poverty on AAFM is to be expected only when high bridal dowries or bride prices must be paid, and/or when newly wed couples customarily establish their own residence. This household system puts great economic pressure on the next generation, since it forces them to accumulate far more resources at an early stage than do extended household systems. In other words, to assess the strength of the hypothesis that poverty led to fertility decline, we need to know more about marriage and household formation in Roman Italy. 5.2.1 Age at marriage The best way to begin is to take a close look at what we know and do not know about Roman marriage patterns for both men and women. I focus here on marriage patterns outside the small circle of the Roman aristocracy. Literary sources referring to marriages of members of the elite invariably suggest that both men and women married early. The average age at first marriage for men was in the late teens or early s, and for women even earlier, in the mid-teens. As we will see below, there are
Lelis et al. () provide the most complete list of AAFMs recorded in the Latin literature: for men (pp. –), and for women (pp. –). For earlier analyses, cf. Hopkins () – (literary sources) and Syme ().
The demographic parameters
reasons to doubt the applicability of these norms to the wider population, and to suspect differential patterns of marriage between the elite and the mass of the population. Given the small size of the elite, their habits do not matter much for macro-demographic trends. My concern is accordingly with the inscriptional evidence, which includes people of less prominent status in Roman society. As will be evident to the reader, my use of the term ‘less’ prominent is deliberate, for even inscriptions by no means cover the full societal spectrum. The very poorest, as well as other underprivileged groups, were less likely to receive a memorial in stone. At best, inscriptions bring us closer to the lower socio-economic strata, but not quite there. Early studies of Latin inscriptions suggested that the marriage patterns of the sub-elite strata did in fact not deviate much from the elite. This dataset consisted of grave dedications that mention both the length of marriage and the age at death of an individual (hence known as the LOM/AAD inscriptions). This allows age at marriage to be calculated directly. The Roman inscriptions indicated that half of women were married by age , and half of men by age . But subsequent analysis of a much larger body of inscriptional evidence by Saller and Shaw has led to a different conclusion with regard to age at first marriage. The outcomes are based on , cases of commemoration of the deceased by relatives, derived from a much wider geographical area than the inscriptions used by Harkness and Hopkins, whose evidence came predominantly from the city of Rome. Shifts in the identity of commemorators over the life course were interpreted as indications of change in marital status. Consequently, when a deceased individual was commemorated by a parent or parents, he or she was assumed to have been unmarried. When a husband or wife
Note also Shaw () , who reminds us that this is a cross-cultural phenomenon. In pre-modern Europe, huge discrepancies between marriage customs and AAFMs existed between the elite and the wider population. Cf. Saller () , n. for more references. See Hopkins () , who argues that the minimum cost of a stone inscription would have been about sesterces, or the equivalent of just over a fifth of a year’s wage for a Roman infantry soldier (between c. and c. bce), and perhaps up to six months’ bare subsistence wage for an unskilled labourer. See also Saller (), Section (data and methods). Parkin () and Paine and Storey () – emphasize that the argument about the under-representation of the lower classes tends to be exaggerated at times. Women: Hopkins () with Fig. (N = ). Men: Hopkins () (N = ). Hopkins used the data from CIL i–vi previously gathered by Harkness (), but excluded inscriptions in which female marriage ages were oddly high and seemed to refer to second marriages. Because Harkness did include these inscriptions in the total, the outcome of his calculation of the average age at first marriage for women was about three years higher: years for non-Christian Roman women. Cf. Scheidel (d) Figs. and . Note that Scheidel includes female AAFMs between age and excluded by Hopkins in his calculations, hence the total of N = . On the geographical distribution of the inscriptions, see Shaw () (females) and Saller () f. (males).
Fertility
set up the memorial, an individual counted as married. For women, on average, spouses replaced parents as commemorators at about age in most regional samples. For men, the change occurred around age . This reading of the evidence suggests that marriages were concluded significantly later than had been believed. The disadvantage of this method is that it is indirect: conclusions regarding age at marriage rest on assumptions about the determinants of commemorative identity. Whether commemorative shifts from parents to spouses do in fact reflect changes in marital status is open to question. Arguing against Saller and Shaw, Lelis, Percy and Verstraete have suggested that in reality both men and women had already been married for some time before they began to be commemorated by spouses. Men qualified only after the death of their fathers, wives only after they had produced living offspring and their status in their new family rose. With regard to men, this explanation is far from convincing. The steep increase in the proportion of spousal commemorators around age contradicts the assumption that commemorative shifts were dependent on the death of fathers. There is no reason why mortality among fathers should have clustered so narrowly around the period when their sons were about . The demography of death cannot be moulded into such a distribution. Accordingly, the most logical explanation is that the act of marriage itself changed the commemorative patterns for men. As far as we can tell, there is a real difference between the AAFM implied by the small sample for Rome and that implied by the much larger sample of commemorative shift inscriptions. It is not only sample size that inspires greater confidence in the second, larger dataset. The second dataset also encompasses a wider geographical area, and displays a reasonably consistent pattern over several provinces. Because the LOM/AAD inscriptions from Rome deviate from this pattern, the representative value of these inscriptions for the whole of Italy may be questioned. For these reasons, the hypothesis that Roman men married late is the stronger one. Matters are less clear in the case of Roman women. The hypothesis that Roman women would be commemorated by their husbands only after they had begun to produce children is not grounded in any evidence. But neither are there real grounds to reject it: motherhood was highly valued
Women: Shaw (). Men: Saller (). Saller () –, presents the relevant data according to subsamples from Rome, northern Italy, southern Italy, Gaul, the Danubian provinces, Africa (Theveste region), Africa (Mauretania Caesariensis) and Spain (Lusitania and Baetica). For this criticism and a re-analysis of the evidence: Scheidel (d). Lelis et al. () –. As argued in detail by Scheidel (d), with the help of Saller’s () micro-simulations.
The demographic parameters
in Roman culture. Whether marriage occurred during the late- or the mid-teens, in either case Roman women married young compared both to Roman men and to women in later historical north-west Europe. Their marriage patterns were distinct, and our inability to narrow down the agerange further does not matter too much for most purposes. Nonetheless, the controversy is not irrelevant, as reference back to the models of postcrisis recovery processes discussed in Chapter makes evident. Clearly, the Saller–Shaw hypothesis on marriage ages leaves more room for arguments favouring a temporary decrease in female AAFM for demographic recovery after the mortality-shock of the Second Punic War than does the hypothesis advanced by Lelis, Percy and Verstraete. That said, attention must be paid to another bias in the inscriptional evidence that has already been referred to, but needs to be taken into account explicitly again: geographical location. The dataset of commemorative shift inscriptions may be spread widely over the western Empire, but it is not spatially neutral. The inscriptional record is severely biased towards urban contexts, and comparative evidence suggests that a single society can display huge differences in average age at first marriage, not only between groups of divergent socio-economic status, but between city and countryside. The medieval census data for Tuscany are a well-known example: male countryside dwellers married some four years before their counterparts in smaller Tuscan cities, and nearly eleven years earlier than men in Florence. The differences among women were less pronounced and did not follow such a clearly defined pattern. Most women married between age . and ., but urban girls did not marry later than girls in the countryside. Especially in the case of men, therefore, the geographical bias of the Roman inscriptions is problematic, and we cannot extrapolate conclusions derived from urban contexts. On the other hand, for later Tuscany the difference between smaller cities and the countryside is much less pronounced. Most Roman ‘urban’ contexts from which the inscriptions in the commemorative shift dataset come are more comparable to smaller Tuscan towns than to Florence, in terms of city size and population density. Historians should therefore not overstate the case for aporia. The distinction between urban and rural seems to have been less pronounced in the Roman world than in medieval times, with relatively large shares of
Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber () , Table . and Figs. . and . (p. and ). For men in the countryside, AAFM was . years between and . In smaller cities, the average age was .; for Florence it was .. Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber () , Table . and p. .
Fertility
the population of small towns involved in agriculture. Therefore, life in the Roman countryside is unlikely to have been so fundamentally different from that in small towns to create the substantially different marriage patterns observed between contadini and Florentine men in the medieval Italian catasto. But more restricted variability is not unlikely. While no evidence is available for Roman Italy, the Egyptian census data point in this direction. In their analysis of the declarations, Bagnall and Frier observe that village women married more during the early stages (mid- and late-teens) than did metropolitan women, who mostly married in their late teens and early twenties. Rural marriage thus seems to have occurred at earlier ages than did urban wedlock. But firm conclusions on the basis of these census documents are precluded by the small size of the database, and it hardly needs saying that behavioural patterns in Egypt or later Italy need not have been typical of Roman Republican Italy. In other words, while it is defensible to work with a general hypothesis of late male and early female marriage for Roman Italy, this is at best a working theory that conceals complexity, certainly at the individual level, but most likely also across time, place and socio-economic status. 5.2.2 Explaining age gaps between marriage partners Despite the recent discussion of the particular details of AAFMs in Roman Italy, the idea that a (fairly substantial) age gap existed between partners for at least part of the population has been widely adopted by historians. This model has been observed for other ancient and later historical Mediterranean societies as well, and is generally known as ‘the
Cf. Hansen () – (esp. –) for the Greek world. Garnsey () is more critical of the model of ‘agrotowns’, but his emphasis on dispersed settlement in the countryside does not preclude that cities included a substantial number of farmers. See also Van Poppel (/), esp. – and f. for the general observation that urban–rural differences in marriage patterns tend overall to be smaller than those between regions. The findings of his case study fit with those of the Princeton European Fertility Project, although it should be stressed that the studies focus on the period of the modern fertility transition (nineteenth/early twentieth century). Bagnall and Frier () . The sizes of the databases are small because of multi-fold sub-divisions made (by location and agegroup). The difference observed may therefore be the result of statistical coincidence: the differences were not significant (Z-test, % confidence interval), and they thus cannot be proven real. Cf. Bagnall and Frier () , n. .
The demographic parameters
Mediterranean marriage pattern’. For the ancient world, the large age difference between men and women is usually explained in terms of cultural habit. In the context, however, of the debate about impoverishment in relation to mortality and fertility in Roman Italy, it seems worth adding a different perspective. If, to put it very simply, fertility is valued, but lack of assets is a hindrance to achieving it and high mortality is a risk for old age security, can we think of the Roman marriage system as cushioning the effects of the bottlenecks? I suggest that the age differences in the Roman marriage system would have had such an effect, and that they may be viewed as an adaptive strategy. They helped minimize both the risk of ‘underproduction’ or demographic decline, and that of ‘overproduction’ on limited land resources. As I have argued elsewhere, the longer male marriage was postponed, the greater the chance that a man would be able to accumulate sufficient resources or income to establish a neo-local marriage. One factor in this was that the chance of inheriting a farm before marriage increased the older a son became, since more of the previous generation would have died. That is not to say that men whose fathers were still alive necessarily lacked property or access to property. Property transfers from the older to the younger generation could take place inter vivos as well, since fathers could give their sons ‘pocket money’, the socalled peculium. For some, peculium may have opened the way to an earlier marriage, either because the sum itself was large enough or because they managed to accumulate sufficient assets to afford marriage with the help of their peculium. Their fathers, however, would have needed to lend support to an ‘early’ marriage, because they remained the official owners of all this money unless they chose to free their sons from their paternal power (potestas). In my view, however, peculium is unlikely to have offered a real alternative to waiting to inherit immovable assets. Most fathers were probably not sufficiently well-to-do to afford giving away a substantial amount of cash or property while they were still alive, simply because they did not have a large surplus of resources. For sons in their fathers’ power (in potestate), it was also difficult to borrow money. The reason
Viazzo’s () article provides an entry into the massive body of work on the topic, with reference to older syntheses and theories (Hajnal, Laslett, Le Roy Ladurie) and to a stream of criticism put forward against the use of the concept ‘Mediterranean Family Model’, which has produced numerous studies highlighting (sub)regional variation. See Cantarella () . Hin (). The only exception to this rule was peculium earned through service in the military under the reign of Augustus, which could freely be disposed of by the sons themselves: Cantarella () . In my view, this demonstrates how keen Augustus was to create incentives for young men to join the army.
Fertility
most sons waited a long time to marry was, therefore, presumably precisely because they needed to patiently accumulate sufficient resources to sustain a family. Was the young age of the girls they married culturally determined? Culture and its emphasis on virginity certainly played a role. But a cultural habit is not self-explanatory, and urges the question of why such a culture came into being and persisted. Although functionalist perspectives are scarcely popular among historians, exploring one may help our understanding here. From this point of view, it can be observed that the young age of brides ensured optimal utilization of the period of female high fecundity for procreation, and would as such have minimized risk of demographic decline. This is not to say that any particular marriage was motivated by macro-demographic concerns about population reproduction; that much is clear from the elite behaviour analysed below. What is relevant is that, at a micro-level, concerns about old-age security and continuation of the family name will have motivated people to ensure the survival of at least some offspring. The Roman high mortality regime made such survival precarious and unpredictable. If someone wanted to be sure to end up with at least one or two adult children, it made sense for a woman to have commenced childbearing young. In pre-transitional populations, it is commonly agreed, the age at first marriage – particularly for women – was one of the main determinants of the total number of children a woman bore. Marrying young would have increased the chances for a couple to end up with enough offspring to provide for their security in old age. In reproductive terms, it mattered little that a woman married a man whose reproductive behaviour had been delayed owing to the need to accumulate resources. 5.2.3 The role of dowries Late male marriage provided more opportunities for men to bring property into the marriage market and into marriage, but assets came from the female side too: as in several other societies, dowries were an established practice in all social strata in Roman Italy. Fathers or other family members of the bride provided a dos, money and/or goods intended to help secure her maintenance during marriage. Dowries were a pre-mortem inheritance, an endowment to a daughter that was usually subtracted from, or in cum manu
This is most evident through the wide array of legal provisions concerning dowries collected in the Digests. For a wide-ranging coverage of the subject of bridal dowries, see Treggiari (), Ch. and Saller ().
The demographic parameters
marriages functioned as her inheritance. Given that the need to provide for a dowry might constitute a burden on a girl’s family, it is intuitive to suppose that dowries were a barrier to marriage. If the period from the mid-second century bce on was characterized by the impoverishment of large portions of the free population, as has been argued, failure to support a daughter’s marriage might partially explain how population reproduction was undermined between the Punic War and Augustan times. But was this the case? Evidence for Roman perceptions of the burden of dowries is hard to come by for the Gracchan period. But we do hear complaints in the first century bce. Cicero is explicit in his worries about his (in)ability to pay the dowry instalment due for his daughter Tullia. His case does not stand alone. The amounts mentioned as dowries in late Republican Latin literature show a rising trend, and have led Susan Treggiari to conclude that ‘growing wealth was matched by dowry inflation, at least among the great imperialist families’. But are we to understand this trend as representative of broader societal developments, and as creating increasingly insurmountable hurdles to marriage? This is debatable. First, the size of a dowry was perceived as an indication of the dignitas and facultates, the status and resources, of both husband and wife, and was explicitly understood as such in Roman law. This interpretation of the purpose of dowries and the mechanism underlying the practice is compatible with sociological observations regarding dowries in other societies: they are a tool to secure or create a union between partners of more or less equal social status and standing. This implies that dowries can and could (but did not need to) be used to attract a higher status partner, by giving one that was high relative to a family’s income and assets.
Saller () – and –. Female inheritance rights and their interaction with marriage patterns deserve more attention. The move toward a pre-dominance of sine manu rather than cum manu marriages during the Republican period could be particularly relevant. While in the latter type of marriage, women could no longer inherit from their family of origin, and property would shift into the ownership of the new family, a woman entering a marriage sine manu would retain her claim to her paternal property. This may have had an impact on family formation behaviour and on marriage ages for women, since it would begin to make sense for women to postpone marriage for inheritance reasons. There is no evidence to permit further elaboration of this hypothesis, but it points to a potential causative mechanism for fluctuations in female AAFMs over time. I am grateful to Rens Tacoma, Leiden University, for raising the issue of the potential importance of female inheritance. On cum manu marriage, sine manu marriage and inheritance rights: Dodds () f. and Crook () (esp. ). Treggiari () , contra Saller (). Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum ..; ..; ... Celsus, Digest .. Note also the late third-century bce comedy by Plautus, in which the protagonist, a Miles Gloriosus, says that because of his wealth he could attract a woman with a dowry that matched his status: nam mihi . . . propter divitias meas licuit uxorem dotatam genere summo ducere (l. –).
Fertility
The upward trend in the size and value of dowries noted in late Republican literary sources, in other words, may reflect behavioural patterns linked with elite competition and conspicuous consumption, and are not necessarily representative of wider societal developments. It hardly needs exemplification that strategic (re)marriages were an important component of the ‘networking’ that was crucial to political success for the Roman upper strata. The increasingly sizeable dowries of the late Republic can be understood as a function of the intensifying elite competition that characterized the period of transition from Republic to Empire. Although the example admittedly dates to the first century ce rather than to pre-Augustan times, fathers’ attempts to secure an upwardly mobile marriage for daughters are beautifully illustrated by the case of the advocate Quintilianus, who arranged for his daughter to marry a man of greater dignitas and facultates than his own. Pliny wrote to him, offering to contribute to his daughter’s dowry because: . . . debet secundum condicionem mariti [uti] veste comitatu, quibus non quidem augetur dignitas, ornatur tamen et instruitur. Te porro animo beatissimum, modicum facultatibus scio. Itaque partem oneris tui mihi vindico, et tamquam parens alter puellae nostrae . . . She needs to be on par with her husband’s position in terms of clothing and attendants, for although these do not increase one’s dignity, they do adorn and engender it. I know that you [Quintilianus] are very rich in spirit, but have only modest possessions. So I claim for myself part of your burden, and as if I were a second father to our girl . . . (Pliny, Epistulae ..– [Transl. S. H.])
Pliny offered financial assistance not because Quintilianus could not afford to marry his daughter to a respectable candidate on his own, but because he could not afford to send her into a higher social circle without the help of others. This is an essential difference, which brings to light how and why the men whose lives are illustrated most vividly in literary sources pushed themselves to the limit to offer the largest dowries possible. This leads to another important sociological observation. Comparison of a range of societies with bride-prices and dowries shows that whereas bride-prices paid by the groom to the parents of the bride tend to be uniform and stable within a society, dowries provided by the father of the bride for her maintenance in marriage are far more flexible and vary considerably in size across social strata. Late Republican Italy fits this pattern as far as we can tell: dowries were negotiable, varying in size and composition within
S. Anderson () –.
The demographic parameters
the elite and across time. Documentary evidence for ordinary Republican citizens is lacking. But what we know from papyrological evidence of the lower strata in Roman Egypt confirms the model’s prediction: virtually all marriage contracts include dowries, but they could be fairly small, consisting of a few garments and some jewellery of modest value. There is no reason to assume that the situation in late Republican Italy differed, for the general pattern observed merely reflects the fact that bride-prices tend to be offered in relatively egalitarian and less complex societies, whereas dowries occur more frequently in complex, stratified societies – societies, in other words, where one may expect greater variation in the size of property transfers. For later Imperial Rome, the legal texts of the Digest hold that the size of the dowry given to a daughter could easily be estimated from ‘the rank, the means and the number of children’ a person had. As in Roman Egypt, we can assume fairly small dowry transfers among Italian families of restricted means. Would poor families also have paid dowries that were small relative to their annual income? As Saller has convincingly argued, elite dowries were comparatively small in ancient Rome. A comparison of the dowries given in Roman elite circles with those given to brides in other pre-modern European societies has revealed that Roman dowries were markedly smaller as a proportion of family assets. Sums offered roughly equalled a year’s income. This is well below the averages observed for early modern Europe, medieval Tuscany and Florence, and contemporary India. Families in these places set aside three to five times the family’s annual income, three to six times its annual income, and three to eight times its annual income, respectively, to give along with a daughter in marriage. Taking into account that the Roman elite’s relatively low sums were inflated by politically motivated hypergamic strategies, we may reasonably suppose that the amounts offered as dowries by less wealthy families did not surpass those of elite
See Treggiari () – and Evans () – and –. Although the actual figures may be incorrect, the variation between amounts mentioned across a relatively short time span is illustrative. To stay with Pliny’s example, if the HS , Pliny offered as ‘a second father’ were half the dowry, the girl’s HS , would compare to the HS million Trimalchio thought he could get as a dowry, also in the first century ce (Petronius, Satyricon .). The daughters of two men with high-flying political careers (both became proconsul) around the time of the Second Punic War received rather distinctive amounts as dowries: the daughter of Scipio Calvus received the equivalent of , HS, whereas her cousins, daughters of Scipio Africanus, received c.. million HS, the highest amount we hear of in the second century bce. See Valerius Maximus .. (amounts in asses) and Polybius .. (amounts in talents) respectively. S. Anderson (). Cf. Treggiari () . Celsus, Digest .: quantam dotem oportet . . . non esse difficile ex dignitate, ex facultatibus, ex numero liberorum testamentum facientis aestimare. See S. Anderson () , Table . Saller () , Saller () f.
Fertility
families in relative terms, i.e. as a share or multiple of annual income. From a cross-cultural perspective, it cost a Roman citizen relatively little to marry off a daughter. That is not to say that the need to collect such funds did not pose a challenge to poor or impoverished families. They may well have encountered difficulty in organizing a (proper) marriage. But even this need not imply that girls ended up unmarried as a result. Families could opt for a loan or for payment in several instalments, and friends or extended kin might offer to contribute. As a last resort, women could marry without a dos: a dowry was not a legal requirement for marriage. Although marriage without dowry was a source of embarrassment to the parents, brides who were poor but of unblemished reputation were not necessarily stigmatised. In Plautus’ comedy Aulularia, for example, written sometime between and bce, women with dowries rather than those without are mocked. Their freedom of action is contrasted negatively with the modesty of women without a dowry. Poverty could in fact have worked as an incentive to marry daughters off young, rather than late. In other societies with dowries, for example medieval Tuscany, endless postponement of marriage was not a good strategy in the case of a daughter, because dowries went up with age. A younger bride was valued more than an older counterpart, because she offered better fertility prospects, and her parents could therefore offer a prospective husband a smaller dowry. These characteristics of the dowry system are essential to bear in mind in any discussion of poverty and the forfeit of marriage. Even if we accept the thesis of previous scholarship, that impoverishment was a significant problem for Romans in the late Republic in Italy, the flexibility of the dowry system makes it hard to see how dowries formed an obstacle to marriage that disturbed marriage markets across the board. It may well be true that, in the words of J. K. Evans, ‘the Plautine obsession with dotal
Note also the distinction Hughes () – identifies between dowries among elite and lower classes in medieval Italy. Whereas elite dowries were driven up by concern about family status, alliances and marriage policies – sometimes to the ruin of the family – Hughes argues that we can hardly speak of a real ‘dotal marriage’ in the case of petty artisans for whom status concerns were minimal. Cf. also Ingalls (), who notes that bridal dowries were not a significant factor in the ancient world. Treggiari () –. Roman literature records some cases in which apparently no bridal dowry at all was given. See, for two examples in the first century bce: Varro, De Re Rustica .. (Lucullus with Clodia; but note the doubts expressed about the authenticity of the sine dote status of the marriage by Tatum () –) and Horace, Epistulae .. (Scaeva with Horace’s sister). Plautus, Aulularia –. Botticini () . Her study covers the fifteenth century and makes use of inter alia the Florentine catasto data.
The demographic parameters
property betrays a peculiarly aristocratic concern not shared by Roman society as a whole’. 5.2.4 The neo-local household – a universality? Although he does not use the exact demographic terminology, it is clear from Brunt’s account that the main starting point for his analysis of the demographic effects of poverty is that households in Roman Republican Italy were nuclear and neo-local. This coincides with the currently most popular view of the Roman family. As Dixon succinctly summarized the historiography in the introduction to her classic The Roman Family (), ‘just as [scholars of the Roman family] once assumed the family to be multigenerational, now they assume it to be nuclear’. Even so, some scholars still take as a starting point to their analyses that, at least during the Republican period, families were extended rather than nuclear. The rub, in other words, is that Brunt’s assumption is not as valid as it may seem, and the issue of household composition in historical demography is a thorny one, which is vulnerable to conflation with modern perceptions and to perturbation by presuppositions. At any rate, household systems can vary, and the neo-local marriage system, in which nuclear families prevail and the establishment of a marriage coincides with the establishment of a separate household, is not universal. The argument that the small peasant in ancient Italy must have deferred marriage until he had succeeded to the possession of an owned or rented farm thus need not be true. It was not a necessary precondition for marriage of the sort that would have blocked men from entering the marriage market. Extended or multiple (joint) family households were alternative living arrangements into which younger generations could be incorporated. Shared use of land and labour resources would have eased family formation for the next generation of rural dwellers. Such an arrangement eliminates the need to acquire the starting capital neo-local marriage requires. All
Evans () . Cf. e.g. his reference to the Talmud, which says that ‘a man should first build a house, then plant a vineyard and after that marry’ in his analysis of the marriage of proletarians (p. ). See also p. : ‘the protracted absence of the husbandman from a small farm now, as in the past, inevitably meant that it was likely to be inefficiently cultivated’. Both examples in Brunt (). Note, for example, Lelis et al. (), Ch. , esp. p. . Dixon () –. See e.g. Kertzer () who asserts that, given the extent of variability observed and the coexistence of various household systems, ‘the whole enterprise of branding major areas of Europe as having a particular type of household system is misleading’. So Brunt () .
Fertility
of these living arrangements – nuclear, extended and multiple or joint households – are attested to in Roman Italy. One would like to know how prevalent each was in relative terms. Was one type the dominant norm, and the others exceptional? Were there shifts over time? And what of variation according to geographic location (city vs countryside), or across social levels? These questions are highly relevant to our understanding of the demographic history of Roman Italy. Unfortunately, all are unanswerable at this point and will probably remain so. The scant literary references do not help much in this respect, and there would be little point in presenting an overview of them here except by way of illustration. Alternative approaches are likewise fraught with difficulties. Saller and Shaw tried to argue that the familial links expressed on grave inscriptions elucidate household patterns for the Italian Peninsula and other parts of the Western Roman Empire. Among nearly , commemorative relationships counted on gravestones, on average % of the commemorators were parents, siblings, spouses or children. Extended kin accounted for only % of the total, the rest being friends or dependents. The cautious subtlety in their phrasing of the conclusion, that this might imply that nuclear families were already predominant in pre-Christian times, has often been lost in subsequent work, which tends to treat the predominance of the nuclear family as well-established. It is far from clear, however, that a one-on-one relationship between commemorative habits and family patterns exists. The fact that individuals were commemorated by parents, children, siblings or spouses need not mean that they lived in a nuclear household. However, the performance of the commemorative act by such family members does perhaps indicate that ties were stronger between them than were those with other members of a potentially extended or multiple household. Aunts, grandparents and other relatives or non-family members may well have lived in the household without taking part in the erection of the grave inscription. Such was in fact the case in Roman Egypt, where the contrast between the residence patterns suggested by the commemorative ties expressed on gravestones and actual living arrangements as recorded by the household census is striking. Of individuals recorded on gravestones,
Saller and Shaw () –. For some examples: Erdkamp () f. For methodological criticism of their research, see Martin () f. But compare now Edmonson () f., with Tables . (pp. –) and . (p. ), who reaches similar results with improved methodology, as well as Scheidel (b) on the limited impact of Saller and Shaw’s () methodological shortcomings on their overall findings. Cf. Martin (); Scheidel (b).
The demographic parameters
.% were commemorated by members of the nuclear family. But we know from the census records that only around % of the population lived in nuclear households. The prevalence of multiple and extended households was much higher than the inscriptional record suggests. It should be noted, however, that individuals remembered by others on stone form a heavily out-selected group in Egypt: on average, only –% of the Egyptian inscriptions mention family ties. This is markedly different from Roman Italy, where commemorative inscriptions are far more representative of the body of inscriptions, since family ties are mentioned and can be classified in around % of inscriptions. The ‘commemorative’ families in Egypt were clearly set apart by strong selective criteria, so that it remains uncertain whether the distinction between the inscription database and the census data is real or only created as a result of selection effects. It is therefore unwarranted to argue on the basis of this evidence that in Roman Italy as well the inscriptional evidence must be biased towards overemphasizing nuclear family ties. Nonetheless, these findings at least demonstrate that we should be careful about drawing inferences on living arrangements from commemorative patterns on gravestones in Roman Italy. Extended or multiple households may have been more widespread than our inscriptions suggest. There are three further qualifications to the findings of earlier scholarship. First, speaking of the distribution of family types is misleading, if we want to capture the living arrangement experience of individuals. Since extended families are larger in size, a significantly higher proportion of the population lives in such a household type than the percentage of such households suggests. Extended or multiple families are not necessarily larger than nuclear ones in all cases, but they do include more individuals on average, which is what matters for the argument. A second problem is that the epigraphic evidence from Roman Italy stems mainly from urban settings, whereas most people lived in the countryside. Demographers repeatedly find that family patterns diverge substantially between urban and rural settings. In this regard, it is notable that the same differentials have been noted for medieval Tuscany. Multiple families in Tuscany were about twice as prevalent in the countryside as in the region’s towns in . Historians have identified a similar pattern
Huebner (). Percentage of population in nuclear households: Bagnall and Frier () . –% for Egypt: Huebner (). % for Roman Italy (civilians, slaves and soldiers): my calculations are based on the data of Saller and Shaw () , , and . See Bagnall and Frier () – with Table . on Roman Egypt, and Clarysse and Thompson () on Hellenistic Egypt. Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber () , Figure .. Cf. Viazzo () on urban–rural differences.
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of urban–rural difference in Roman Egypt: non-nuclear households were around % more prevalent in rural areas. What drives these observed differentials, and whether there might be a common denominator, is not entirely clear. But the importance of access to land for making a living might be at least part of the answer. In urban settings, where land is not the means of production, family members could earn an income independent of their household assets. Where there was no such decoupling of land and production, access to land was vital to ensure an income. For people in the countryside, therefore, extended or multiple household arrangements may have served as a social risk-management strategy. It enabled distribution of the main resource across more individuals. Again, we are severely constrained by the fact that all our data are comparative: we are not sure what share of the variation between urban and rural contexts is determined by the difference in means of production. Even if the evidence for Roman Italy testifies to the existence of labour-market distinctions between city and countryside (see below, Section ..), which it does, other causes of divergence that may have led to cross-cultural variation cannot be seen. Nonetheless, to the extent that multiple or extended households were more or less logical corollaries of farming under conditions of limited access to land, this would be a feature shared by peasant populations across time and space. In other words, it is quite possible that the phenomenon of a significant share of non-nuclear households likewise characterized the Italian countryside in the late Republican era. Under such conditions, a person could start making a living on the farm of a parent or other relative, and shift towards a conjugal family system later. The fact that nuclear households tend to be associated more strongly with urban environments than with rural settings has a further implication. The late Republic was characterized by strong urbanization processes. Because the data that have been collected and studied for Italy contain mostly inscriptions from the Imperial period, changes over time need to be reckoned with as a potential variable. The Imperial inscriptions may
By contrast to the Roman Egyptian census records, unfortunately, the Egyptian salt-tax registers from the Roman Republican period are useless in the context of this question. Most, if not all, are from the countryside and the villages of Ptolemaic Egypt, and they accordingly do not permit us to measure urban–rural differences. Cf. Clarysse and Thompson (). Bagnall and Frier () , Table .. See e.g. Erdkamp () – on household formation in the Roman Empire. Bagnall and Frier () : the age of adults in Egyptian conjugal households was remarkably high by comparative standards, suggesting that couples were integrated into extended households at a younger age.
The demographic parameters
reflect ‘metropolitan habits’ not yet fully developed under the less urbanized Republic, particularly not during the decades immediately following the defeat of Hannibal, which tend to take a central place in the arguments of ancient historians. A third indication suggesting that extended and multiple households may have been more important than previously thought is provided by the presence of dowries in Roman society. As already noted, Roman women generally received a dowry when they married. Such dowries seem to be offered primarily in societies where women move in with their husband’s family upon marriage. If neo-local marriage and bridal dowries both coexisted and predominated in Roman Italy, this would make Rome a historical exception that would urge reflection and explanation. It thus seems prudent to treat the presence of extended household structures as a realistic possibility, particularly in the countryside. These strands of argument taken together make a case against assuming that neo-local households were universal in Italy during the second and first centuries bce. Tying that observation back into the discussion on the decline of the smallholder, who would no longer have seen a chance for marriage and children, we can conclude that the traditional low count interpretation is deficient on this point. Contrary to what Brunt and his followers have assumed, opportunities for marriage were most likely not conditional on owning or renting a farm. 5.2.5 Labour opportunities: alternatives to subsistence farming There can be no doubt that in the Roman Republic, land played an important role in subsistence provision. Some farmers who experienced difficulty in accumulating the means of subsistence on their farm may not have considered alternative means to make a living, at least not immediately. Rather than abandoning agriculture, they may have intensified their farming, if they had an amount of land that scarcely sufficed to feed their families. In the case of small subsistence farmers, options would have been limited mostly to the intensification of labour (rather than capital), for example, by turning to a system of crop rotation. The law of diminishing returns would have imposed clear limits on such intensification. If feasible options to improve agricultural yields did not suffice (or even when they did), farmers or their family members could also have sought employment in other parts
Botticini and Siow () and .
Cf. Erdkamp () f.
Fertility
of the agricultural sector, for example as day labourers on larger commercial farms, especially in the busy season. This could have provided some additional income. But the heavy emphasis on subsistence farming in the evaluation of economic opportunities for the mass of Romans during the late Republic has led to a neglect of employment opportunities outside agriculture and their effect on demographic developments. Historians have been too willing to present worsening farming conditions driven by mounting population pressure as the end of the world. Surely there were ways to make a living other than farming. In fact, labour opportunities outside agriculture improved during the late Republican period, as a result of increasing urbanization and widening opportunities for army service by the poor. These other economic niches were presumably more important in securing income for those who experienced difficulty in getting by on the income generated by their farms. Unquestionably, opportunities to earn an income and finance a marriage and household did not end when options in the agricultural sector did. In both the city and the countryside, manufacture and transport were sectors providing employment. In addition, the army was an important provider of work and income. Its continual need for new recruits turned it into a stable outlet, creating opportunities to accommodate a larger number of offspring. This is similar to what happened during the Middle Ages, when the army may have served as an alternative means of subsistence for ‘surplus sons’ for whom there was no land. This would have held true especially in the first century bce, when the duration of army service lengthened and the army slowly developed into a professional force. But even before that, joining the army would at least have provided a temporary way to relieve pressure on growing households. In demographic terms, the effect of army service was twofold. On the one hand, the military sector was an economic niche that offered (the prospect of ) a means of living and enabled continued childbearing by creating a future. Particularly for families with more than one young man, army service was attractive. Simultaneously, on the other hand, those who ended up as soldiers ran greater-than-average mortality risks. Crudely put, the army functioned as a demographic pressure valve, by increasing mortality rates among the population. Formulated differently, in numerical terms the population of late Republican Italy was both given room for
Idem. On the professionalization of the Roman army during the first century bce and the length of army service, see Ch. , Section .. Dyson () .
The demographic parameters
growth and kept under demographic constraints by the balancing forces of risk and opportunity that formed a central mechanism in its war-oriented society. It is generally assumed that the label ‘pressure valve’ also applies to urban environments. It was there, in the cities, that other opportunities for labour outside agriculture were concentrated. As noted above, manufacture and transport were important employment sectors. The rapid growth of Rome during the late Republic in particular attests to its function as a pull-factor. As Voland recently put it, ‘[migration] no doubt include[s] important components of reproductive strategy’. In the next chapter, I discuss urbanization in more detail. What is important here is the observation that in other pre-industrial populations, the prospect of the availability of future employment opportunities has had a positive effect on fertility levels. If migration was available as a ready alternative, there was less need to worry about one’s ability to sustain a partner or about the future opportunities of offspring. The ‘outlet’ or ‘niche’ provided by urbanization thus formed another reason dwellers in the countryside did not need to refrain from marriage and having children. It added to the effect of the possibility of living in an extended household, again mitigating the problem of poverty and marriage as posed by Brunt. Third, as we have seen, late marriage extended the opportunities for resource accumulation without affecting ultimate fertility rates much, because postponement of marriage seems to have been a male phenomenon. In sum, there is little need to assume that getting married became more difficult than before, or that a massive decrease in the proportion of married people was the cause of population decline among the free citizens of Italy. 5.3 childbearing: strategies to limit its burden What about the effects of poverty on childbearing? Getting married without a penny is one thing, bearing and bringing up children quite another. In this section, I analyse the factors that assisted childbearing among young adults and facilitated reproduction among couples of limited means. As in the case of marriage and family formation, certain adaptive strategies, conditions and settings can limit the financial burden of childbearing and the time-costs that caring for offspring imposes on parents. The family
Erdkamp () f.
Voland () .
Davis () .
Fertility
and the community typically play a large role in this. So does the interval separating the birth of children, since the younger children are, the more care they need. These two factors deserve particular attention. 5.3.1 Sharing burdens: the contribution of grandparents and the community As already seen above, living in an extended or multiple household could mitigate problems related to marriage and the establishment of a household. Similarly, such arrangements could help young adults sustain a family. It is no secret that the younger children are, the more demanding their dependency is. Economic pressure on the household, in other words, is partly a function of the life cycle, and this pressure concentrates in the early stages of family formation. In this phase of the life cycle, the inclusion of other adults in the household would amend the adult–child ratio to more favourable proportions, thus supporting and facilitating childbearing. Since adults other than the parents would bear part of the cost of offspring, a choice for non-neo-local marriage was an adaptive strategy that had advantages. The demographic reality of high mortality meant that multi-generational households could not last forever. By the age of , only half of Roman children would still have a surviving grandparent to rely on for support. But during the initiation of a new generation, when the dependency ratio between parents and children was most unfavourable, grandparents could theoretically have done a considerable part of the caretaking needed in over % of households. In such cases, both the social and economic costs of childbearing were shared between parents and grandparents. We may be unable to tell how often grandparents, parents and children were co-resident. But even if they were not, there must have been numerous cases, especially in the countryside, where generations were not on the move and lived close to one other. In practice, sharing a house and sharing a neighbourhood may easily have amounted to (virtually) the same thing. Ancient texts that speak of the obligations of children to assist their parents in old age can be supplemented by those that show that it was a matter of pietas for ascendants to care for grandchildren. Family affection was expected to extend further than one’s own children. Thus we find both male and female grandchildren, for example, provided for in the wills
Parkin () .
The demographic parameters
of the aristocratic aged. Moreover, as grandparents were not the only candidates for participation in an extended household, the prevalence of the institution as a type was not limited by their survival rates. Siblings of either parent or more distant relatives could have taken their place, or might have been there from the beginning. The best known example of such an extended household is the case of the two herdsmen who married one another’s sisters and shared a house. Such households were not uncommon in later Mediterranean Europe. It has been suggested that social structures that allow for sharing the responsibility for children may be positively correlated to high(er) fertility. This is in contrast to systems in which individual responsibility for children is high: the latter favour lower average numbers of children per couple. Multiple fertility-enhancing effects may result when the economic and social costs of bringing up children are shared between a larger group of kin, whether grandparents, aunts, uncles or others. Young couples are encouraged to have children by their family. For the young couple, in turn, childbearing becomes more attractive, because both the material and the immaterial costs are shared. The benefits of childbearing, which mostly emerged at a later stage, once the children were grown, would accrue directly to the parent couple. By that time, the grandparents would likely be deceased and, as the parents’ family members would increasingly have established their own separate households, ties with siblings would have loosened. The larger community in which a family was embedded likely also played a role in contributing to the raising of children. The Italian countryside consisted of many small rural communities, and under such conditions in particular – but also in urban neighbourhoods – contacts tend to be frequent and intense, and neighbours often call upon one another for assistance. Some historians have suggested that in Roman Italy, the vertical bonds of patronage may have undermined horizontal associations or
As described e.g. in Pliny Epistulae .. The grandson lived in his grandmother’s house. His sister, unknown to Pliny, received a share of the inheritance as well. The fact that no children are mentioned in the will may suggest that they were deceased. But cf. the case of a grandfather who wanted his granddaughter to be his heiress in an effort to exclude her father, whom he detested (perosus): Pliny, Epistulae ... Dio Chrysostomos, Discourses .. Cf. Erdkamp () f. Cf. Viazzo () f. This type of household, where married brothers or sisters cohabit after the death or retirement of their parents, is known among demographers as a ‘fr´er`eche’. In the Arazzo country district in Tuscany (–), for example, Klapisch found that this type included more than half of all non-nuclear households. Caldwell et al. () . Although their reasoning sounds plausible from a common-sense point of view, the study by Hinshaw et al. () they seem to draw on provides no basis for the Caldwells’ strong inferences.
Fertility
‘village solidarity’. But we are not without evidence for such assistance. Roman comedy at least played with the notion that nearby relatives as well as friends would be expected to show solidarity when necessary. In a lost passage of Ennius’ Satires, the protagonist sought help from relatives and friends at harvest time, and the comic twist in the story was that he failed to find them willing. Along similar lines, we might expect that neighbours or friends provided mutual help in the case of children who needed care, for example by pooling resources and redistributing tasks amongst themselves when women needed to work on the land. 5.3.2 Spacing burdens: birth intervals Pre-industrial populations are generally defined as ‘natural fertility populations’. This creates the misleading impression that fertility levels in pre-transitional societies depend on biological factors only, with individual pairs ‘subjected’ to a natural regime and any means of family limitation out of reach. Once a marriage was consummated, there was no way to suppress childbirth, so it suggests. In fact, there are large differences among ‘natural fertility’ populations (cf. Figure .), which point to the effect of various factors limiting childbearing. Even so, natural fertility is a distinguishable demographic condition, in that its lower limits among observed populations substantially supersede those of non-natural fertility populations, as can be seen in Figure .. While pressure-relief could be achieved through grandparents and others assisting with childcare, child-spacing could serve as another means to achieve the same end. Birth intervals can be manipulated, and by lengthening the period between pregnancies, parents would have been able to distribute its burdens more evenly. Once children were older, they would have required less attention, could start to contribute to the household, and could help take care of younger siblings. Consequently, a long interval between births facilitates the continuation of childbearing. A well-known
Garnsey and Woolf () –. See Scheidel (a) –. Cf. also Gellius’ Noctes Atticae ... Even between neighbouring farms, harvest times may differ due to natural conditions, but also because of human manipulation (most seeds can be planted over a period of several weeks). The phenomenon seems to have passed unnoticed by ancient historians, but it allows nearby relatives and neighbours to ‘coordinate their schedules’ and provide mutual assistance during times of peak labour demand. The concept was already labelled ‘something of a misnomer’ in the s by Easterlin () , but it nonetheless continues to be widely used. Cf. McDonald () : ‘In pretransitional societies, high fertility was/is socially determined, not naturally determined’. But see also Oppenheim Mason () f. on ‘culture’ misconceived as eradicating individual strategic behaviour – or, more specifically, family planning.
The demographic parameters
30
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Total fertility rate Controlled Natural
Figure . Distribution of natural fertility: comparison of controlled fertility populations with natural fertility populations Source: Redrawn from Campbell & Wood , p. . Note: the average total fertility rate for populations which practise birth controls was .; the average for populations with ‘natural fertility’ ..
example of such spacing behaviour in a pre-industrial population are the very long birth intervals among Kalahari !Kung women in Botswana, said to be the result of adaptive behaviour to extremely adverse ecologic constraints. Their four- to five-year birth intervals optimize chances of survival for both mother and child. Similarly, we have no reason to presuppose that birth intervals were static in the Roman world. Before adding another mouth to the family, the optimization of the productivity of children already in the household may have been awaited. The Kalahari !Kung are not unique. Historical populations in pre-industrial Belgium, for example, are thought to have done exactly this. Indeed, one observation that has strengthened criticism of the concept of natural fertility is the recent accumulation of evidence suggesting that in pre-industrial populations, couples deliberately lengthened the duration of breastfeeding to cushion (temporarily) adverse economic conditions. Spacing behaviour rather
Betzig () and Blurton Jones (). On the positive effect of lengthened birth intervals and postponed weaning, cf. Hobcraft et al. () and Scott and Duncan () . Kaplan and Lancaster () . Van Bavel (). Cf. Friedlander et al. () for more indications.
Fertility
than stopping behaviour seems to have been the pre-industrial response to the burden of childbearing. I should emphasize that in the Roman Italian case, lengthened birth intervals could have been the result not only of deliberate intent, but of late male marriage. Recent research has shown that the age of the father has an independent effect on the chances of survival of an embryo. Given the deteriorating quality of sperm with rising age, the chance that a woman’s pregnancy will end in a miscarriage rises with the age of the father of the child, regardless of her own age, and independent of other factors. The effect is significant: among women impregnated by men aged and over, the chances of spontaneous abortion are % higher than for women whose partners are aged –. In Roman Italy, where many men above age must have fathered children, spontaneous abortion may well have had a prolonging effect on birth intervals, especially during the later stages of marriage. How, in practice, could birth intervals have been manipulated? Breastfeeding stimulates hormones that suppress female fecundity. Lengthening the period of breastfeeding would therefore have reduced chances of pregnancy by protracting the workings of this biological mechanism, which serves to protect the newborn infant against a potential competitor. But the biological mechanisms responsible for undermining conception decrease in strength over time, so the effect achievable in this way alone is limited. Another, more secure means to lengthen birth intervals is the instigation and observance of post-partum taboos on sexual intercourse. Breastfeeding contracts from Roman Egypt may suggest that, at least in theory, the period of breastfeeding coincided with sexual abstinence. The comments of medical authors from the Roman Imperial period also suggest that such taboos existed. Both Galen and Soranus disapprove of sex during breastfeeding. Soranus motivates his advice, maintaining that Coitus cools the affection toward nursling by the diversion of sexual pleasure, and moreover spoils and diminishes the milk or suppresses it entirely . . . by bringing about conception.
Kleinhaus et al. (). Based on the Jerusalem Perinatal Study (N = ,, of which , were reported spontaneous abortions). Other factors checked on included maternal smoking, maternal diabetes and parity. This study fills some of the previous gaps in knowledge and supersedes Wood (), Ch. . But note that the effect of male sterility is much less important to fertility variation than that of female sterility. Cf. Tacoma () . Soranus, Gynaecology .. (Trans. Temkin ()). Cf. Bradley () and Hrdy () . In BGU ., a contract letter from Egypt, a woman who is to nurse an infant slave girl is ordered ‘not to spoil her milk, nor to engage in sexual intercourse, nor to become pregnant, nor to nurse another child as well’.
The demographic parameters
0.5
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Natural fertility
Figure . Age-specific fertility schedules: controlled fertility vs natural fertility for populations with marriage starting from age Source: Redrawn after Coale and Trussell , p. . Notes: This model of age-specific fertility is based on a situation in which all women ultimately marry (proportion ever married = %), and marriage for women starts from age . The curves correspond to a TFR of . for natural fertility populations, and a TFR of . for populations with fertility control. It does not represent the maximum divergence between fertility controlling and natural fertility populations, since fertility controlling populations can have TFRs substantially below ..
The deliberate stretching of birth intervals is obviously an adaptive strategy with a fertility-limiting effect. But it is important to realize that family limitation of this type, which aims only at widening the interval between births, has not had the same dramatic effect in historical populations as the deliberately induced sharp reductions in childbearing after a certain age or number (known as ‘parity specific stopping behaviour’) do in modern post-transitional populations. In birth spacing, parents had at their disposal a means to relieve the burdens of childbearing that, unlike infanticide, was not detrimental to children already born. The availability of this option could therefore, paradoxically, even be thought of as facilitating the upbringing of children. In so far as parent couples attempted to limit the burden childbearing imposed on the household economy through child-spacing, this had far less
Note that, vice versa, one might deliberately shorten birth intervals; the phenomenon of doing so in response to the unexpected death of a previous child is known as ‘replacement spacing’ and is conceptually distinguished from ‘normal’ spacing, in e.g. Hinshaw et al. () , who found that the intervals between births halved among Guatemalan populations in the former case.
Fertility
impact on fertility than the outright rejection of childbearing and marriage Brunt held responsible for driving a decline in the free population of Italy. This can also be derived from Figure .. It shows that natural fertility curves not only differ in shape, but are associated with higher overall levels of fertility. In fact, lengthened birth intervals may in the end have no effect at all on total fertility rates, because prolonged breastfeeding also pushes infant mortality downward. 5.4. why have a child if you can? the desirability of children To summarize the preceding argument: Roman men and women could adopt several alternative strategies to support marriage and childbearing, even if their economic means were limited. But why should we assume in the first place that people wanted to make the effort to reproduce and to circumvent whatever stumbling blocks they may have encountered? We cannot simply make this assumption, especially given the indications of fertility-limiting measures and the rhetorical and moralistic complaints in ancient literary sources about adults who failed to reproduce. We have already seen that infanticide and abandonment were integrated aspects of daily life. Brunt was right to state that lack of economic means or the threat of diminishing them through (further) childbearing prompted some people to kill their newborns or to abandon children, either to be found by others or not. After all, another child is another mouth to feed. Poverty appears several times in the ancient sources as a motivation for abstaining from rearing offspring. References to plants and drugs described as contraceptive or abortifacient are also well-represented in ancient medical literature, and some can be shown to be (partially) effective. While all of these measures were employed, the extent to which they affected the direction of population trends is another matter. Clearly they could only have done so if their prevalence suddenly increased significantly. I have demonstrated in detail elsewhere why it would have taken more than difficult economic circumstances to trigger a dramatic, structural downward shift in birth rates in Roman Italy. In the following sections, I briefly summarize my arguments for thinking that children remained a desirable asset even for poor Roman citizens.
E.g. Musonius Rufus xv; Ovidius, Metamorphoses .–. Hin (). Riddle ().
The demographic parameters 5.4.1 Children as invaluable assets
Children can be very valuable during peaks of labour demand. The Roman agronomist Varro refers to the labour input of children when he notes that pauperculi, the poor, had to till their land cum sua progenie, ‘with their offspring’. This is a tiny scrap of evidence, but there is no reason to doubt its general applicability to the world of the rural smallholders in the Roman Republic. At times of peak demand in agriculture, when the labour input of the adult members of the household did not suffice, smallholders would first put their children to work because, unlike Varro’s elitist audience, they had no means to hire labour. During such periods, children could make vital contributions to the household’s economy. Varro’s observation in the first century bce is echoed by several instances of child labour recorded in documentary texts such as funerary inscriptions. In the ancient world, children were often put to work from a young age onwards. This might suggest that they contributed more to households than they cost, but debates on the results of anthropological field studies have shown that such is not the case in pre-industrial agricultural societies. If parents relied heavily on their children during periods when there was lots of work to be done, they might even so have been motivated to have (more) children on the basis of distorted positive perceptions of their economic value. A further reason why Roman adults might have viewed children as invaluable assets is their value as a source of support in old age. In antiquity, when the elderly did not stop working after a certain age but kept contributing to the family’s income, old-age economic dependency commenced with diminishing physical ability alone. But in the absence of a public support system for the old and sick, for all but the richest Romans
Varro, Res Rusticae ... See Bradley () for child labour and inscriptional evidence. Papyri from Roman Egypt also record apprenticeship contracts: see Laes and Strubbe () –. Note especially Caldwell () and Hin (). The fact that many Roman peasants owned small parcels of land of perhaps a few iugera during the late Republican period (cf. Roselaar () –) further limited the economic potential of child labour. Some children, however, were apparently sent to work on the estates of the rich in the countryside, as is suggested in Columella, De re rustica .. (fern-manuring), .. (taking care of vines), .. (looking after a herd), and .. (vineyards again). The pueri he speaks of may have been free children, but were more likely slaves: thus Petermandl () . Cain (), and Friedlander et al. () f., view this as the most cogent reason for high fertility in societies without public pension support systems. Cf. Finley () and Parkin () – and . In this respect, Roman Italy resembles other pre-industrial societies, in which older males in rural areas in particular continue to work on their farms (even though their descendants may now be the official owners), either because of poverty or because they wish to continue pulling the strings of the family enterprise. In the age group –, labour participation rates for rural males are still above %. See Mueller () f. with Table . (based on previous research by Durand; census and survey data from less-developed countries).
Fertility
children were the prime means to transfer income from their productive to their unproductive years. In most traditional cultures, the care of elderly parents by children is an important norm. Although the late Republic is not covered extensively in Roman literature, in documentary texts and legal sources pertaining to this aspect of life, the continuity is so pronounced that we may safely assume that these were persistent norms in Roman society. Parents expected children to pay them respect ‘as they should’, and at least by the late Empire, legal prescriptions had encoded such notions by obliging children to care for their parents: Si impubes sit filius emancipatus, patrem inopem alere cogetur: iniquissimum enim quis merito dixerit patrem egere, cum filius sit in facultatibus When a son is emancipated under age, he will be forced to take care of his destitute father: for one could justly say that it is extremely unfair when a father suffers from poverty while his son is wealthy.
Although the following text stems from Egypt rather than from Italy, I cannot resist quoting this complaint of a mother about her daughter and son-in-law (?), simply because the expectations with which parents brought up offspring cannot be illustrated more vividly: . . . I am being wronged by Dionysius and my daughter Nike. For though I had nurtured her, being my own daughter, and educated her and brought her up to womanhood, when I was stricken with bodily infirmity and my eyesight became enfeebled she would not furnish me with the necessities of life. And when I wished to obtain justice from her in Alexandria . . . she gave me a written oath by the king that she would pay me twenty drachmae every month by means of her own bodily labour . . . Now, however, corrupted by that bugger [sic] Dionysios, she is not keeping any of her engagements to me, in contempt of my old age and my present infirmity.
For women, children were an even more important source of security than they were for men: because they were often substantially younger than their husbands, women could expect to outlive them by many years. Fathers had a substantial chance of dying before or by the time their children (assuming they survived) returned their investments. Widows, moreover, had a lower chance of remarrying than did men, who might seek a second young wife.
Ut par est: CLE . So Nugent () . Digests .... (Trans. S. H.) Note also the Codex Iustinianus ..–. Select Papyri ii, . (Trans. Bowman () ). According to the demographic micro-simulation performed by Saller () , Table ..d, at age – if we take that as a ‘turning point’, at which the benefits of children begin to outweigh their costs – only % of sons would have had a living father. Half of those fathers would have died within the next five years. Mothers would be in greater supply: the proportion of individuals with a living mother at age is set at .. Cf. as well Saller ().
The demographic parameters
Thus, for a man the odds were better that a spouse would fulfil the role of reliable caretaker, and women had more to gain from childbearing in the long run. In a world in which life expectancy at birth was not much more than years, dependency and disability were not predominantly or exclusively associated with old age; it is characteristic of low life expectancy societies that ill health and disabilities are spread more evenly over the life course and are as much a concern for young adults as for the old. One of the authors of the Hippocratic Corpus even held that old men generally have fewer illnesses than young men. The relatively large role of infectious disease and of injuries produced, for example, by warfare and accidents form the underlying phenomenon for the proportionally low healthy lifespan of low life expectancy populations. On average, people spent up to % of their lifetime in ill health, as compared to % in modern developed countries. The awareness that independence was fragile may thus have encouraged investment in a network of social support, and particularly in childbearing. 5.4.2 Children as source of social status and the role of peer pressure The human desire for children cannot be explained in purely economic terms. Studies in the field of demography increasingly document the importance of social norms and the availability of alternatives to create purpose in life as determinants of fertility behaviour. As for the latter, access to education and opportunities for professional development for women, as well the availability of (time-consuming) services and goods to invest in, play a major role in limiting fertility rates. In their absence, fertility tends to be high. For the majority of women in Italy, no such opportunities were readily available, which suggests that in the Roman Republic, having children was the most important time-investment and means for women to gain
In various societies, both men and women have been observed to take younger spouses for the specific purpose of providing for care during old age and disability: see Nugent () f. with n. . Anthropologists focus on the role of polyandry and polygyny in this context. But it seems to me that, where old-age security is concerned, the age difference between the spouses is at least as relevant as the nature of the marriage. Kagitcibasi () shows that women in developing countries overall regard children as more important to their long-term well-being than men do. Hippocrates, Aphorisms .: >O -@ / 2 , 2 P F Q ’ R L
6 7 * , 2 2 . . Cf. Alter (); De Bruijn () . Scheidel (b) . There is a vast body of literature on the correlation between fertility declines and these factors: e.g. Sen () f., McDonald (), and Presser and Sen (b).
Fertility
social status. Non-familial labour opportunities were limited as a consequence of structural underemployment and the availability of slaves. In later early-modern northern Europe, many young women performed domestic labour for wealthier households. This delayed marriage and decreased the percentage of women who eventually married. But in Roman Italy, slaves dominated this sector, blocking service in other people’s households as an option for the Roman young. For women, this meant that few other options remained – not because of economic conditions, but because of norms and social values. While women contributed in the domestic sphere and on their farms, female labour outside the context of a household was regarded as indecent. This is not to say that women did not work outside the familial context. We find women attested as operating or owning (small) businesses. But clearly opportunities were few. The limited participation of women is revealed by the range of women’s jobs attested in Roman funerary inscriptions, which is significantly smaller than for men: about different occupations attested for men compared to a mere for women. Most of these women, moreover, are commemorated in conjunction with a husband, which suggests that they participated in a family business. References in the literary sources to Roman women working as daily wage-labourers in agriculture are few. In addition, education was out of reach for the overwhelming majority of women. These structural conditions fit the average pattern for premodern agrarian societies, in which the overwhelming majority of people
In early-modern northern Europe, –% of all young adults are thought to have worked as servants: Reher (). See Erdkamp () – on female labour within the household (for a wage or commercial) but outside the primary subsistence sphere. His focus is on textile production, i.e. wool and flax processing. There is no evidence, however, for such activity in peasant households; his assumptions are based on inferential reasoning from remarks on slave estates and on evidence from (Roman) urban contexts (see for the latter Treggiari ()). Roth () and – makes a similar argument. Note also Minnen (), who argues that it is no coincidence that the three girls in Egypt who we know took up apprenticeships to learn a craft were entrusted to female teachers or to families. Treggiari () ff. and . Their jobs are biased towards small retail (‘bazaar products’, particularly food), catering and work associated with prostitution. Cf. Saller () –, who also presents Joshel’s research on gender asymmetries in the occupational distribution in CIL inscriptions. On the other hand, some women running businesses on their own may have passed unnoticed because they were less likely to receive a burial commemoration. Many of them might have been widows taking over the role of their older, deceased husband. The relevant evidence is collected by Scheidel (a), who describes his project as an ‘ultimately frustrating venture’ in Scheidel (). Note, however, that the agronomists show little interest in daily wage labour in agriculture in general, so that an argumentum e silentio on the absence of female labour has no force for methodological reasons here. See on this point Erdkamp () .
The demographic parameters
are illiterate and live in relatively isolated villages. In such contexts, cultural transmission is overwhelmingly vertical, not horizontal, since the family is the most significant social institution in which production, consumption and socialization occurs. This favours norms that encourage reproduction to increase the power of the lineage, and leads to the depiction of childlessness as misfortune – to peer pressure towards childbearing, in other words. Roman society was strongly pro-natalist, not only at the micro-level of the family, but also in the public political, religious and social realms. Women were expected to be mothers by their mothers, husbands, peers and politicians. A reflection of the anxiety about the creation of the next generation can be found in the attitude of a fictive Roman mother on what was supposed to be her daughter’s wedding day: Our whole house was covered in laurel and lighted by wedding torches, and the wedding hymn sounded out loud. Then my . . . mother . . . overloaded me with sweet kisses, and already propagated her anxious hopes and desires for future children.
Especially when they are incorporated into the household or closely involved in its daily routine, the oldest members of a family may exert considerable influence on others. This favours the promotion of fertility: parents and grandparents tend to strongly encourage childbearing. Studies of African countries show that the same is true of husbands. Biologists explain this phenomenon as the result of a desire to maximize dynastic utility, from which these individuals gain in both biological and social respects. Outside the immediate family circle, ideology placed women in the household as wives and mothers. Even elite families who educated their daughters could maintain negative verdicts towards the education of girls in general or the education of girls from other families. The concept ‘matrona docta’ emphasized that educated women were better (not worse) mothers. Elite women who lost the (ideological) connection with the family or with traditional values by openly exerting influence on politics or other ‘male
Apuleius, Metamorphoses iv.. (Trans. S. H.) Richerson and Boyd () . Cf. e.g. Caldwell and Caldwell () on Africa. Caldwell and Caldwell (), esp. and –. Cf. Caldwell () on the power of the older generation in demographic decision-making. See also Lee and Bulatao () . Hemelrijk () .
Fertility
realms’ ran the risk of being depicted in negative terms. Politicians urged both women and men to bear children for the good of the state. In sum, in the Roman Republic, culture and biology did not function as counteracting forces in the context of fertility. Rather, biological urges towards sexual reproduction were reinforced and even strongly encouraged by ‘cultural’ ideology – in which term the modifier ‘cultural’ may be replaced by ‘religious’, ‘social’ or ‘political’. For individuals who wanted to limit their number of children, the barriers to overcome were multiple and the social costs high. Ordinary citizens, I believe, were therefore likely to reproduce, even if they were poor. But for the Roman elite, matters were different. 5.5 differential stakes, divergent outcomes: elite, mass and offspring For Roman elite families, the preservation of political, economic and social status was a central concern. As scholars have demonstrated – for Italy, but also for Roman Egypt and the cities of Asia Minor – elite families were fragile, and the risk of a considerable slide down the social ladder over a (few) generation(s) was real. Awareness of this profoundly affected marriage and fertility behaviour among the upper class. Ancient literary sources frequently speak of limitation of childbearing in elite circles, and see the wish to obviate the division of (landed) property, with all its negative consequences, as the underlying cause of such behaviour. For elite families, having too many legitimate children was the greatest risk, since there were efficient adaptive strategies to repair a lack of natural offspring and safeguard one’s future political and social influence. A family without heirs
Hillard (). Gellius, Noctes Atticae .. Cicero, De officiis .: procreation in the family context forms the principium urbis et seminarium rei publicae. Treggiari (), p. f. Cf. also Dio Cassius lvi..–, the ‘speech of Augustus’, addressed to elite men, who are encouraged to create a ‘multitude of men’ for the sake of the state, so as to secure Roman rule over ‘all the world’. Note also Seneca, Controversiae ., on whether a man who crippled exposed children could be accused of harming the state. One of Seneca’s arguments in defence of the man was that, since these people were not found in the census-rolls or in wills, they were not part of the state, which therefore was not damaged when they were harmed. The implication is obviously that if they had been part of the state, it would in fact have been harmed when they were crippled. Cf. Sterelny () for the argument that it rarely pays for individuals to act against social norms. The phenomenon of the homo novus exemplifies the case. Tacoma (), Part ii, Ch. on property transmission (with Part ii, Ch. on the demography of the elite). Cf. e.g. Musonius Rufus xv. Zuiderhoek (), esp. – and –.
The demographic parameters
could adopt an adult son or sons, who could become legitimate heirs. In this way, risk of underproduction was countered. In addition, their wealth and status meant that elite men had plenty of access to resources for sexual satisfaction other than their legitimate wives, notably slaves and concubines. Fertilization in the margins enabled men to produce ‘spare heirs’ without risk of overproduction of legitimate heirs; in principle, these children would have no claim on a man’s inheritance, unless he decided to recognize them. Other men as well, of course, could beget children by women to whom they were not bound by marriage, and in whom they did not need to invest. But men of lower status have more limited chances to achieve this: men with status and assets are more likely to do well in extramarital reproduction when monogamy is socially imposed, as it was in Roman Italy. Perhaps the fact that most ordinary men lived in small communities, which tend to be characterized by more intense social control and less anonymity, also contributed to making their reproductive success more dependent on fertilization within the marital context. Elite Roman men (and women) may have had just as many children as ordinary citizens, but they produced fewer legitimate children who counted as Roman citizens for the census. This explains some of the complaints expressed by Roman politicians. The Stoic Musonius Rufus, writing in the first century ce, was probably only partially correct when he complained that elite parents ‘robbed their children of brothers, never having learned how much better it is to have many brothers than to have many possessions’. Perhaps officially recognized offspring did not share their homes with brothers, but it may well be that some illegitimate half-brothers went unnoticed. A further reason why elite and mass differed with respect to the desirability of children may pertain to their economic value. Although I emphasized above that even in pre-industrial settings, children were net consumers not
There is evidence too of the practice of adoption among the wider population, in particular for the Hellenistic East. Families without a surviving son seem to have been keen to adopt one, preferably a son of a relative who had a ‘surplus’. On such redistribution of offspring, focusing on Egypt but with reference to other times and places, see now Huebner (). The difference with elite families, of course, would have been that the latter had more to offer the adoptee (see main text), in particular if adoption of non-kin was involved. Cf. Scheidel (a) , , f., . See Dixon () f. Saller () , points out that it is a misconception that even within a legal marriage, a father had to acknowledge and accept his child through the ritual of picking-up known as tollere. In this case, offspring acquired a claim to their father’s estate by birth, with or without tollere. Patterson () , considers lack of paternal support an important factor in pushing young unmarried girls and women who bore illegitimate children toward abandonment. Musonius Rufus xv. (Trans. Lutz ()).
Fertility
net producers, the story does not end there. There are certainly reasons to assume that, in relative terms, the value of children was much higher among the Roman masses than in elite circles. Their labour contributions compensated at least in part for their consumption, and they required much less investment. This may explain the distinction between upperclass Romans and those from the lower ranks. For economic reasons, elite women likewise must have had easier access to the means for family limitation. By contrast, among poorer segments of the population, high costs associated with foregoing pregnancy or childbirth, the so-called ‘costs of non-bearing’, will have worked as a stronger disincentive. Third, children can be a source of social status. How important this is to parents was in fact strongly emphasized by Caldwell. In a late Roman context, Musonius Rufus refers to the social benefits that come from a large number of offspring: A man who has many children is honored in the city . . . he has the respect of his neighbours . . . he has more influence than his equals if they are not equally blessed with children. I need not argue that a man with many friends is more powerful than one who has no friends, and so a man who has many children is more powerful than one without any or with only a few children, or rather much more so, since a son is closer than a friend.
As he says, even among men of equal wealth, those with more children will get more respect. The benefits of status produced by (a large number of ) offspring will have been comparatively large, especially when there was little status to be gained in other domains. As a result, parents without resources have little need to manipulate their offspring for social reasons, all the more so given that they may have hopes of profiting from the benefits of opportunistic strategies by their children. This may be an additional factor in creating divergent fertility outcomes between the rich and the poor, and another reason why the fertility-limiting behaviour of the elite was unlikely to spread among the wider population. Even if the contrast between ordinary citizens and elite men sketched in the ‘speech by Augustus’ to elite bachelors contains highly rhetorical elements, there is no reason to doubt that its central idea rested on a core of truth:
It may be argued in response, however, that poorer people would simply have chosen different means of limiting family size that did not incur high economic costs, namely infanticide or abandonment. Cf. Kapparis () f. on the ancient world. Musonius Rufus xv. (Trans. Lutz ()). Kaplan and Lancaster () .
The demographic parameters
What seed of human beings would be left, if all the rest of mankind should do what you are doing? . . . And even if no others emulate you, would you not be justly hated for the very reason that you overlook what no one else would overlook, and neglect what no one else would neglect, introducing customs and practices which, if imitated, would lead to the extermination of all mankind, and, if abhorred, would end in your own punishment?
Differential fertility behaviour between richer and poorer subsections of the population was common in pre-modern European populations: while European elites between and attempted to limit their fertility, the same was not true for the mass of the population. In , there was near uniformity in Europe in the maintenance of natural fertility within marriage. Pace Brunt, I am unconvinced that Romans in the last two centuries bce deviated from this pattern. 5.6 fertility decline? summary and conclusion As we have seen, substantial fertility decline is characterized by the limitation of family size to a specific number of children, a practice that can be tracked by the presence of the so-called parity-specific stopping behaviour referred to above. But an analysis of the only ancient data that allow for this, the Egyptian census records from the period of Roman rule, does not point to such behaviour. Moreover, these data are compatible with those on other pre-industrial populations. Instead, the differences observed between post-transitional and pre-transitional fertility regimes are most likely fundamental, and apply to the ancient Roman population just as much as they do to Egyptian and European historical populations, with the exception of small elite groups irrelevant to macro-demographic analyses. The Egyptian census data confirm what the qualitative evidence from the Roman world cited above strongly suggests. In general, motherhood and fertility were highly valued and favoured by prevailing norms and conditions, and people would not have been inclined to stop reproducing after a certain number of children. Instead, to avoid a downward slide into poverty, adaptive strategies could be employed to ensure economic subsistence. Such strategies fall into two main categories. First, there are strategies involving attempts to shape
Dio Cassius, Roman History lvi..–. (Trans. Cary ()). Note also Patterson () , who concludes that ‘the rich, not the poor, are the main target of criticism from such moralists as Polybius for their refusal to rear children’. Wrigley () . On pre-modern European elites, e.g. Johansson () f. Cf. Frier ().
Fertility
demographic frameworks, patterns and conditions to integrate better with economic conditions. Childbearing can be sustainable even when assets are tight because there are a number of ways to enter into marriage and form households, and because birth intervals are flexible even in natural fertility regimes. There are indications that in Roman Italy marriage ages, family patterns and birth intervals were organized to facilitate reproduction by diminishing its physical and financial burden on the mother or parent couple. Second, citizens could find alternative means of livelihood in place of (subsistence) agriculture, most notably in cities and the army. The above analysis allows us to conclude that the demand for fertility was somewhat elastic, but certainly not as flexible as it came to be in posttransitional societies. The structures and strategies sketched out above were conducive to fertility, and allowed couples to continue marriage and childbirth as before, rather than turning to celibacy and childlessness when land became scarcer. If, in this context, the late Republican period witnessed a massive shift towards avoidance of childbearing, this would have set the population of Republican Italy apart from a trend of high fertility observed widely among pre-industrial populations with high mortality regimes, and runs counter to theoretical predictions. As I hope to have demonstrated, the evidence and arguments put forward to uphold the view that Roman Italy was such an anomaly are unconvincing. The main reasons why structural fertility decline is unlikely to have occurred in Roman Republican Italy are perhaps best summarized by Cicero. He certainly must have believed his speech would appeal to a Roman jury when, during a lawsuit, he argued that the murder of an infant was an injustice that had taken away ‘the hope of his parents, the continuity of their name, and the support of his gens, stripped his house of an heir, and the Republic of a citizen-to-be’.
Frier () . Cf. also Scheidel (c) – and Caldwell (). Cicero, Pro Cluentio xi.. (Trans. S. H.)
c h a p te r 6
Migration
6.1 introduction Migration is the third main component determining demographic developments, both at the macro- and at the micro-level. Fluctuations in migration patterns can occur abruptly, and their impact can be extreme. Large waves of population movements have deeply impacted human history, and continue to do so. At a lower level of analysis, the movement of entire households and of individuals away from their households and/or places of birth affects the life courses of migrants and of those they leave behind. Patterns of marriage, childbirth and death may all change as a result of migration. In this chapter, I am interested in the effects of migration on the demography of late Republican Italy. The main reason for this is that internal migration in Italy has received particular attention from ancient historians in the context of the debate over population development in Italy. Over the course of the last two centuries bce migratory flows intensified because more and more people moved from the countryside to cities, and in particular to Rome. In large pre-industrial cities, mortality was higher than in the surrounding countryside. Moreover, the fact that the number of deaths in the records superseded the number of births shows that these cities faced a natural deficit, so that urbanization ate into overall natural growth in pre-industrial societies. On these grounds, it has been postulated that the cities of Roman Italy, Rome more than any other, were ‘urban graveyards’ characterized by natural demographic deficits. Debate concentrates on the
See e.g. Brunt () f. and Morley (). See De Vries (), esp. –, for an account of urban natural decrease in European cities in the early-modern period (–). E.g. Morley (), Scheidel (), and Jongman () –. The latter argues that immigrant slaves were needed to keep population numbers in Rome up because the urban deficit was too large to be compensated for by internal migration.
Migration
size of the deficit, and on the number of migrants needed to fill the gap. Did the number of migrants Rome needed only eat into overall natural growth, or did it eat out natural growth, causing population decline? My aim in this chapter is to elucidate the ways in which migration impacted the course of mortality, fertility and population development. I organize my analysis along these lines. Rather than providing an extensive historiography of the debate, I focus on new elements that can be brought into the discussion. As Erdkamp has recently emphasized, we have approached the issue of migration in too undifferentiated a fashion. The type and nature of migration play a fundamental role in determining its effects on demography. In Section . below I distinguish and define the main variants of migration in an attempt to obtain a clearer view of the concept with which we are dealing. Over the course of the rest of the chapter, it will become clear how the character of migration to the cities affected the demography of mortality and fertility in Roman Republican Italy as a whole. More specifically, I argue that, for various reasons, the aggregate demographic data from early-modern London is both unsuitable and inadequate as an inferential model for ancient Rome, and that we must distinguish between relative and absolute urban deficits. On another note, one consequence of the more fluid migration patterns suggested by others is that urban–rural mortality differentials were perhaps less pronounced than hitherto assumed. I also draw attention to the fertility side of the demographic equation that underlies the urban graveyard hypothesis. The role of fertility has not been studied in sufficient depth; most research has been directed instead towards elevated urban mortality and its causes. I investigate whether the idea that migration towards cities would have been preponderantly male can be supported with comparative and inscriptional evidence. If migration indeed created a surplus of men in Rome, does this imply that Roman reproduction was undermined by rural–urban migration? In attempting to contribute to existing debates about the effects of migration on population development in late Republican Italy, my focus is biased towards an analysis of particular aspects of migration. I pay far more attention to internal than to external migration (although the latter is addressed briefly in Section .), and I stress the study of migration to urban environments over internal migration towards colonies. In
Erdkamp ().
The demographic parameters
Migration Voluntary
Involuntary
Seasonal or oscillating Temporary (circular) Permanent
Pull factors
Chain migration
accessibility of locations labour opportunities legal incentives
Ecologic Economic
Push factors
disaster
degradation
land pressure
Political
instability
warfare
Ethnic
‘Little Italies’
discrimination Religious
Figure . Push- and pull-factors towards migration and types of migration
the first instance, my concern is with the demographic effects of migration on the migrants themselves. But migration can also have a negative impact on the mortality and fertility of residential populations, or on those left behind. Important factors in this regard are the spread of microbes along with migrants, and the creation of skewed sex ratios. I pay attention to rural residential populations in this chapter only to the extent that their demography was affected by the migration of their fellow citizens. Their counterparts in urban settings, the residential city populations, are briefly treated separately in Section .. The overall relation between migration and Republican Italy’s population development is considered in Sections . and .. 6.2 typology of migration 6.2.1 Causes of migration Causes of migration are multi-layered and multi-faceted (cf. Figure .). Even so, the framework traditionally constructed to study the phenomenon
Migration
has worked with two dichotomies. The first distinction made in sketching the diversity of migration is between voluntary and involuntary migration. At the extremes, the difference is fundamental and clear: voluntary migration can be seen as induced by pull-factors, whereas in involuntary migration, people were forced by (the actions of ) others to move away from their living spot. In the Roman world generally, enslavement was an important reason for the dislocation of individuals against their will. As we have seen, calculating the number of slaves in Italy is notoriously difficult, and establishing their origins has proven even more complicated. Nevertheless, for the period after the Second Punic War, there is no doubt that large numbers of slaves entered Italy as a result of forced permanent migration. Whereas for the Imperial period, it is unclear if slaves were predominantly born in Italy or were imported, slave imports were an important source of nonnatural population growth in late Republican Italy. Conquests in various Mediterranean regions were responsible for these migratory flows: Roman soldiers enslaved defeated enemies and brought them back to the heartland of their emerging empire. Although I pay little attention to slaves in the ensuing sections, primarily because the debate I am engaging with focuses on developments among free citizens, it is important to bear their presence in mind. In addition to the forced migration of enslaved individuals, examples of free people forced to move from their residence are known. We have already encountered the sources that refer to free farmers whose land was taken over by wealthier neighbours. Two other well-known instances concern the years bce and bce. At that time, Livy reports, officials of the Roman state were informed that many inhabitants of allied towns and Latin colonies had left their home towns behind and come to live in Rome. When the communities complained about the loss of their citizens, the ‘illegal immigrants’ were ordered to return to their places of
Cf. Demuth () in an article on theories and concepts of migration in which theory and sociopolitical predisposition merge in a slightly uncomfortable combination. Note that according to some definitions (e.g. that of the UNHCR), involuntary migration should not be counted as migration, but rather as flight. Involuntary migrants should include those who migrate for political, religious or ethnic reasons, usually in relation to warfare, civil war, or other types of conflict. Economic migrants are seen as voluntary migrants. This categorization, however, is closely linked to present-day political issues and (im)migration policies. I do not follow it here, but instead consider economic motivations as a potential driving factor in both voluntary and involuntary migration (cf. Figure .). Scheidel (a) and (). See Ch. , Section ... Harris (), arguing against Scheidel ().
The demographic parameters
origin. In a quite different setting, the Second Punic War, Hannibal is said to have forced the Atellani, one of his Italian allies, to relocate during the final years of his presence in Italy (although for their own safety). By contrast, many Roman citizens themselves made the decision to migrate. This is not to say that their migration should therefore by definition be classified as voluntary. Here the interplay between push- and pull-factors, which form the second dichotomy, comes into play. Migration induced by political instability and/or warfare is a clear case in which people are themselves the decision-takers but are forced by circumstances into considering migration, so that their migration counts as involuntary on the latter ground. Push-factors are so strong that there is often little choice. During the Second Punic War, for example, citizens living in the countryside are known to have sought a temporary refuge in Rome, driven there by fear of soldiers plundering and ravaging their villages, as Livy reports : sacrificuli ac vates ceperant hominum mentes quorum numerum auxit rustica plebs, ex incultis diutino bello infestisque agris egestate et metu in urbem compulsa Sacrificial priests and seers had captured people’s minds – the rural plebs augmented their numbers, because poverty and fear had driven them into the city, away from their plots of land, which were uncultivated as a result of the ongoing war, and because they were exposed to hostile attacks.
Like ordinary countryside dwellings and villages, some colonies established by the Romans as strongholds bordering hostile territory were abandoned by their settlers because neighbours were a threat. People migrating
Livy .. ( bce) and Livy ..– ( bce). According to Broadhead () the scope of this forced remigration was rather limited, and should not be viewed as a trend toward more general restriction of immigration to Rome: it concerned only migrants who had left towns or colonies that had become weak links in the Roman defence system as a result. Erdkamp () similarly qualifies the picture of forced evictions. He holds that the Romans had no stake in enforcing the return policy requested by the Latin communities, and that many Latins residing in Rome were allowed to stay there. Appian, The Hannibalic War : he forced the Atellaei to move: S % . . .
( bce). Livy .. ( bce) mentions that in order to defend his supporters and troops, Hannibal concentrated them all in one spot. The citizens of Metapontum and the Lucanii subject to him were among them: et Metapontinos civitatem universam excitos sedibus suis et Lucanorum qui suae dicionis errant in Bruttium agrum traduxit. Livy ... (Trans. S. H.) Minturnae and Sinuessa, two colonies established at the beginning of the third century bce, are said to have been unpopular for this reason: it was difficult to find colonists quia in stationem se prope perpetuam infestae regionis, non in agros mitti rebantur (Livy ..). Placentia and Cremona were deserted by many in the midst of the Second Punic War because the neighbouring Gauls were attacking the settlers: Livy ..–. In bce this was apparently still a problem: Livy ..–.
Migration
in the aftermath of natural disasters could be classified under the same heading: Roman farmers were regularly threatened when harvests failed and other means to ensure a food supply on the spot could not be relied upon. We also know from the accounts of various Roman authors that floods sometimes left the inhabitants of low-lying quarters close to the Tiber little choice but to move or drown. Definitional ambiguity is created by the fact that even in such cases, where push-factors were overwhelming, the presence of pull-factors may still have induced some to stay: the desire not to leave their homes or immobile family members behind, for example. The qualification of circumstances as ‘push-factors’ or ‘pull-factors’ is likewise often the result of a subjective perception, both by those considering migration and by those analysing the phenomenon. The same conditions can make one citizen move, and another stay. This is one of the difficulties that play a role particularly in the case of migration for economic reasons. Ancient historians agree that the growth of Rome, like that of other cities, was at least partially the result of migration from countryside to city, and was related to economic factors. They disagree, however, on the respective role of push- and pull-factors in driving migratory flows. Diverging scholarly perceptions of the nature of the Roman economy, the economic character of Roman cities and the carrying capacity of the Italian countryside play a decisive role here. Many accounts of Roman historians support the idea that Rome grew because many farmers could no longer make a living in the countryside. While, as we have seen, it is certainly true that some must have had to give up in the competition for agricultural land, this seems to overemphasize the role of push-factors in Roman migration. Urbanization processes in general occur not only as a result of circumstances pushing people to move to cities, but also because the concentration of facilities and opportunities in cities make them pull-factors. Regardless of one’s view on the real urban contribution to economic productivity, there is no doubt that demand always concentrated in and around cities because of the high population density and elite expenditure there. Consequently, cities functioned as nodes of
For the most succinct overview of survival strategies and the variable access to cushioning against disaster, see Garnsey () –. Aldrete () –. See Chapter , p. , n. . A rather morbid example to illustrate this point is given in Demuth () –: the knowledge that rebels might come to offer them the choice between ‘short sleeve’ or ‘long sleeve’ (i.e. to have either the entire lower arm or only the hand cut off ) caused some villagers in Liberia to flee in the late s. Despite the threat, others decided to stay. For the debate about the ‘consumer’ vs the ‘producer’-city, see Ch. , Section ... Cf. Jongman () – for a summary of the traditional view, as championed in Toynbee (), Hopkins (a) and Brunt (), and followed by many others.
The demographic parameters
labour opportunity. Moreover, labour opportunities need not even be real to work as a pull-factor. The mere perception that life is better elsewhere in fact suffices as a pull-condition and encourages migration. Even if many Romans ended up joining the urban proletariat, and knew that they ran the risk of doing so by migrating, for some the mere chance of finding (day) labour may have provided more hope than the countryside did. In general, it can be observed that, although mobility is not confined to the poorer segments of a population, the degree of mobility of those without significant property tends to be higher. Apart from factors related to ecology, politics and the economy, religion and ethnicity can also be strong forces driving migration, be it voluntary, involuntary or a combination of the two. Socio-cultural factors often play a role in chain migration, in which the existence of a community of migrants from a particular place ‘abroad’ encourages further migration there. Typically, the presence of members of one’s own family, home-town community or ethnic group elsewhere works as a pull-factor. ‘Chinatowns’ and ‘Little Italies’ in various countries are well-known examples. For Imperial Rome, the presence of chain migration may be indicated by the anomalously frequent commemoration of deceased adult migrants by their adult brothers, although the latter may also imply that they initially migrated together. Geographic clustering of religious symbols pertaining to specific cults points in a similar direction. In some parts of Rome, certain gods or cults were far more popular than in other parts. Such a pattern might be linked to the geographical distribution of professions, for example, but may also point to a concentration of particular migrants in specific areas, perhaps especially where cults of a foreign origin are concerned. Finally, when we think about overseas colonies, it is worth noting that their appeal was strengthened by their Roman layout and civic infrastructure. These emphasized the ‘Romanness’ of the migration destination and facilitated the continuity of one’s lifestyle abroad.
Cf. also Jongman () f., who suggests – but without further argumentation – that pull-factors surpassed push-factors in contributing to the growth of Rome during the second and first centuries bce. See Osborne () , who points to evidence for early-modern England in a comparative study of ancient Greece. Note that this observation relates to internal migration, not international migration. Shanin () – too observes that the poorest farmers in early twentieth-century Russia were by far the most prone to migrate – to the cities, or to colonies on Russian territory. Cf. e.g. his Table .. The situation can be different in the case of overseas migration, since the costs of travelling to and entering the destination area can be high. Noy () , . Cf. Salmon () f. and Plates – (after p. ) for an impression of how public structures in colonies imitated their Roman counterparts.
Migration
The above sketch of motivations is far from exhaustive. At this juncture, it is worth drawing attention to an analysis by a Roman observer. In a letter to his mother, Seneca emphasizes what people hoped to find or wished to pursue in the city. He singles out various pull-factors that are otherwise left untreated here but may have drawn people from outside (for shorter or longer periods) to Rome: From their towns and colonies, and finally from the whole world, they have gathered here. Some have been drawn here by ambition, others by the demands of a public task (officium), again others because they were leading an embassy, yet others are drawn by luxury, because they are seeking a place that offers opportunities for and is rich in vice; some because they have a desire for higher studies, others by the public spectacles. Some have been drawn by friendship, others who see the ample opportunity for displaying their exceptional quality, by the chance to work. Some have brought their beauty to sell, some their eloquence. There has been no human type that has not swarmed into the city that offers enormous rewards for both virtues and vices.
It deserves emphasis that this letter dates to the early Imperial period and reflects an individual elitist perspective: its most striking omission is of any reference to push-factors, which would have been of prime importance among the motivations of many non-elite migrants. Nonetheless, Seneca offers a neat insight into what a contemporary citizen thought were the pull-factors drawing migrants to a large city like Rome. 6.2.2 Types of migration In short, a variety of push- and pull-factors may underlie migration. Pertinently, not only do the motivations for migration differ between individuals, but so also can the forms migration takes. Although the distinctions made are arbitrary to some extent and categories may overlap, migration is commonly subdivided into three types, based on the nature of the mobility. Chain migration, mentioned above, is one. As summarized in Figure ., people may also migrate on a seasonal basis, taking advantage of annually recurring cycles of labour surplus and shortage in different sectors of the economy or in the same sector but at different locations (think of differences in harvest times according to local circumstances). Strictly speaking, seasonal migration is a sub-category of temporary migration, which can take other forms.
Seneca, Ad Helviam matrem, de consolatione .. (Trans. S. H.)
The demographic parameters
Temporary migration as a life-cycle event is particularly noteworthy in our context; entering military service during early adulthood may count as an example of this. Moving back and forth for shorter periods (between a few days and three months), independent of a regular seasonal circle but related to work opportunities, is known as oscillating migration. In this case we may think of traders travelling to Rome. Temporary or ‘circular’ migration and permanent migration tend to be treated as analytically distinct categories. But the distinction is in fact not so clear-cut. Often migration is initially (intended to be) temporary, only to become permanent at a later stage, or to turn out to have been so upon death, when the intention to return never faded but also never became reality. The duration of migration can impact the demography of the household in various ways, as the temporary or permanent departure of an individual may lead to the postponement of family formation or to its interruption. Migration, births and deaths are therefore closely connected variables. In the next section, I first address the impact of migration on mortality. Although cities and colonies were both important migration destinations during the Republic, the lethal impact of moving to a colony was arguably less pronounced than that of a move to a larger city. I will therefore concentrate on the mortality impact of migration flows towards urban contexts, and to Rome in particular. 6.3 rome as the ultimate migrant city Migration took place in several forms and across Italy. But Rome was Italy’s ultimate migrant city. We have already seen that contemporary observers conceived of it as such. Even so, traditional historical sources are unable to answer the question of how prominent immigrants were in Rome in numerical terms. They simply do not tell us what share of Rome’s inhabitants had been born elsewhere more precisely than, for example, Livy’s remark on the presence of migrants in Rome in bce: iam tum multitudine alienigenarum urbem onerante Back then already the city was burdened by a multitude of immigrants.
Apart from its imprecision, this statement is of questionable neutrality, given the context of the ‘foreign superstition’ scandal described in this book of Livy. Very recently, however, bio-archaeologists have begun to
Livy .. (Trans. S. H.)
Migration
employ new methods of investigating the geographic origins of skeletons. The composition of the enamel of teeth and molars is affected by the isotopic signature of natural elements, such as oxygen and strontium. These elements were absorbed by the body when the teeth and molars were formed. Once formed, the chemical composition of deep enamel remains unaffected by changes in surroundings. As a result, chemical analysis can reveal whether an individual changed his or her residence between the formation of two or more parts of his set of teeth. The field employing this research method is still in its infancy, particularly as regards Roman Italy. So far, only three cemeteries, all close to Rome, have been investigated with a view to identifying migrants: Isola Sacra (associated with Rome’s harbour town Portus); Casal Bertone (around three kilometres from the city centre of Rome); and Castellaccio Europarco (in the outskirts, the suburbium, of Rome, about kilometres from the centre). All are from the Imperial period, and are therefore of limited value to the debate over migration flows during the late Republic. Nonetheless, the results are worth presenting. Interestingly, the sites produced similar findings: the portion of firstgeneration migrants among the cemetery populations was invariably high. At Isola Sacra, near the harbour of Rome, about a third were first-generation migrants. The Casal Bertone cemetery is associated with an industrial complex involved in textile production as either a fullery or a tannery. It became the final resting place of a population in which % of individuals had come to Rome from elsewhere. Similarly, % of the people buried at the cemetery were not born in the area surrounding the site of Castellaccio Europarco, which was used for agricultural production. The congruence in the proportion of migrants at these three sites near Rome, each with a different economic character, is surprising. It suggests that a similar share of non-locally born residents may be expected for the city itself in Imperial times. On the assumption that the total population of Rome was around , – a hypothetical figure, but one that falls midway in the range of the proposed numbers – this would amount to a minimum of around , immigrants per annum if all migrants entering Rome remained
Killgrove () – and Ch. . Isola Sacra: Prowse et al. (). Casal Bertone: Killgrove () f. Castellaccio Europarco: Killgrove () f. Prowse et al. () . Casal Bertone and Castellaccio Europarco: Killgrove () –. That is, if about a third of the inhabitants of Rome were migrants, this implies that some , people would have been needed to settle in Rome over the course of a generation. I assume, in
The demographic parameters
there forever, , if they stayed in the city for five years on average, , if they all left again after a single year, and so on. We cannot be certain whether the share of immigrants was the same in late Republican times. But surely immigrants helped Rome grow. Over the course of the last two centuries bce, the city’s population expanded rapidly, perhaps from some , free citizens around bce, to about , a century thereafter, to , around bce – or even more, on some estimates. If slaves, freedmen and non-Roman free residents are included, total numbers, according to most historians, reach between , and one million inhabitants in the last decades of the Republic. Few historians defend significantly lower estimates. All inhabitants of the c. other Italian ‘cities’ together amounted to perhaps about the same number, or a few more. The figures quoted here represent averages of range estimates based on indirect evidence, since there are no figures for the size of Italian cities in the ancient sources. Parameters or approaches used include the number of grain dole recipients and the amount of food consumed, the percentage of increase in the total water supply provided by the aqueducts of Rome over various time spans, estimates of population density per hectare and estimates of the urban area. Most of these require the use or adaptation of comparative evidence in a way that is badly or sometimes not at all justified. Since the estimates are at best the result of controlled speculation, they are only a very rough indication of the development of
accord with the most widely used estimates, that a generation lasted about years. If we assume that life expectancies were lower or that Rome was bigger, or that migrants left again after moving to Rome, this figure rises. Scheidel () –. For this estimate (= Scheidel ()) and other estimates of the size of the city of Rome and its growth over time: cf. e.g. Lo Cascio () and (); De Ligt () – (for bce, with further references); Jongman () f.; Scheidel () ; Morley () –; Brunt () . For criticism of Morley (), see Lo Cascio (b) –. Many such estimates go back to Hopkins (a) – and –. Scheidel () . He guesstimates that there were ‘perhaps up to , slaves, –, ex-slaves, and , aliens’ by bce. See also Beloch () f. on the size of Rome. His minimum estimate is based on the number of recipients of the corn dole, his maximum on the acreage of the city. Storey () forms a notable exception to the , to million paradigm, in presenting a substantially lower estimate (c., inhabitants), but begins with the false premise that ‘a house-by-house population count for Pompeii and Ostia . . . produces a population density statistic applicable to Rome’. He revives an older tradition: cf. Beloch () for other low estimates of the total number of inhabitants of Rome by Dureau de la Malle and Castiglioni. Scheidel () calculates with , inhabitants per ‘city’ on average, thereby arriving at ,. Previously, Hopkins (a) – and Morley () attributed a total of . million to the other Italian cities (for bce), which would amount to , inhabitants per town on average. See now also De Ligt () for a re-estimate. Cf. Morley () – for an overview.
Migration
urbanization and city size in Republican Italy. But by all accounts, the growth during the years preceding Augustus’ reign was spectacular. In absolute numbers, then, immigration must have become ever more prominent, and, whatever the precise role of immigrants in urban growth, their importance will have increased particularly steeply during the first century bce, when Rome’s population, according to the estimates cited above, nearly doubled in years or so. The demographic pressures of migration on the population of Italy as a whole increased as a consequence. At the same time, the expansion of Roman territory and citizenship rights meant that the population of citizens in the countryside who formed the resource-base of migration grew. Percentage-wise, the scale of migration among Roman citizens – the census population – therefore increased less steeply over the course of the late Republic than Rome itself grew; perhaps by %. Consequently, if urbanization curtailed population growth, this effect would be only partially reflected in the development of the census figures over time. This is an important point to bear in mind. 6.4 the urban graveyard revisited: urban migration and death While the smaller cities of Italy also attracted migrants, debate over the impact of migration concentrates on Rome because the other cities were much smaller and less crowded, with an estimated average of only around , to , inhabitants. This average falls below the population threshold early-modern historians tend to employ to establish what qualifies as a city. The population concentrations involved here were so small that they would arguably have had at most a mild effect on people’s survival chances. The argument for the ‘graveyard effect’ of the capital put forward by ancient historians rests on two thoughts. First, mortality in urban environments was not ‘just’ high, but higher than in the surrounding countryside, because the infectious diseases responsible for a relatively high percentage of deaths are more prevalent when population density and population size increase. Consequently, particularly in the large and exceptionally crowded
Scheidel () with n. , . My % rise is based on Scheidel’s absolute annual rates (Scheidel () with n. , ), which I recalculated into a relative increase. Scheidel’s absolute annual rates are based on a low count population scenario. My relative rate is therefore a conservative estimate that would decrease further if high count population rise figures were used as a basis. If Lo Cascio’s high count interpretation of the Roman census figures were used as a basis, this would decrease percentages by about –%. Cf. De Ligt (). See above n. .
The demographic parameters
city of Rome, a higher percentage of people died of infectious disease than would have been the case in less densely populated rural areas or towns, where the risk of the spread of such infections was lower. Even within the city itself, wide divergences in population density may have caused variation in death risk: those living in the densely packed insulae in the (moreover malarious) area near the Tiber would have been far worse off than their counterparts uphill with more square metres at their disposal. While the general notion of higher mortality in Rome is accepted, debate continues over the exact difference in mortality levels between city and countryside. There is both a qualitative and a quantitative side to this debate. Living standards are the focus in the former case. In his sketch of the ‘slums’ of Rome, Scobie argued vividly that dangers to the health of urban dwellers were omnipresent, lurking in contaminated water and food, dirt spread over the streets, overcrowded, badly ventilated insulae (the ancient ‘equivalent’ of modern apartment blocks), and so forth. Others, by contrast, emphasize the efforts made by the Roman administration, most prominently the aqueducts, sewers and public baths constructed, and the grain distributions to citizens. Because of these, it is argued, urbanites in Republican Rome would not have been worse off than city dwellers in later early-modern times, and perhaps their conditions were even better. These divergent views find expression in quantitative approaches to the problem of elevated urban mortality. Several attempts have been made
Cf. for example modern Bombay, where population density in some quarters of the city is almost double that of the average for the city. See Morley () – and Hubert () for more comparative examples. Scobie (). The lead pipes used to supply private houses with the water brought into the city by the aqueducts have prompted a discussion about their health dangers. The water could have become contaminated with a lead concentration so high as to cause lead poisoning. But the extent to which water absorbs the toxic elements of the substance depends on its hardness. Cf. Scobie () –. Despite the variable degree of exposure, it is generally agreed that ancient Romans were at greater risk of lead poisoning than many other cultures past or present. Capasso () argues that lead poisoning was largely attributable to the presence of high quantities of lead in Roman wine: –. Cf. MacKinnon () for further references. Most private houses, however, were not connected to sewers and used cesspit-latrines instead. But note again Scobie (), for a qualification of the health benefits of sewers and public baths. The sewage system suffered from a backflow of waste-water when the Tiber was high. People suffering from a range of (contagious) diseases and other health problems, moreover, were allowed and even advised to bathe in the unchlorinated public baths. Although under Hadrian the sick entered at special hours, we do not know if provisions for isolated bathing were made during earlier periods as well, nor do we know if the baths were cleaned afterwards. E.g. Lo Cascio (), esp. –. Note the pre-emptive strike against his upbeat account by Scheidel () , n. . Cf. Laurence (), a critique on Scobie () that emphasizes the limitations of our knowledge and the role of interpretative frameworks in shaping descriptions and analyses of life in ancient Rome.
Migration
to estimate the demographic impact of urbanization – more precisely that of the quick growth of Rome during the late Republic. Since historical sources from Roman times provide few clues for quantifying migratory flows, historians have resorted to comparative evidence on the demography of city populations. This comparative evidence forms the second building block of the ‘urban graveyard’ argument. London during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the first early-modern European city to reach a size comparable to ancient Rome. Because, moreover, more (but by no means perfect) demographic evidence is preserved for this metropolis, it long seemed best suited to comparative purposes. Wrigley estimated that London had a surplus of deaths amounting to about per , per year. These figures have been extrapolated to Rome in efforts to quantify the need for migration they suggest. Based on this level of natural deficit, Morley estimated that the need for migrants from the countryside to Rome alone consisted of some , births per year, and consumed much or perhaps all of the overall demographic growth in Italy. Jongman likewise transplanted Wrigley’s figure for London. He argued that Rome’s natural deficit required that the bulk of migration in Italy must have been directed there. Indeed, rural–urban migration would not even have been enough to supply Rome with adequate numbers. Following up on this, Scheidel argued that the presence of malaria in Rome meant that the surplus of deaths in the city was most likely even more pronounced than this and ‘could easily have been twice as large’ as in London. Rome killed its inhabitants, and it was therefore heavily dependent on migrants to sustain itself. Ultimately, however, Scheidel’s
Actual rates varied over time. The per , annual deficit is used by Wrigley as a working figure, but is regarded as on the minimal side: Wrigley () . It is derived from the difference between the registrations of baptisms and burials recorded in parishes and on account of the Bills of Mortality and the Marriage Duty Act of . A problematic point is that all these registers seem to have suffered from under-registration, which precludes firm conclusions being drawn. Morley () –. For an earlier, similarly constructed estimate, cf. Jongman () –, who arrives at a somewhat lower deficit of c., per annum. On Morley’s estimate, the annual transfer rate amounts to .% of the population. This rate is lower than that calculated by Scheidel () (.–.%; cf. below). The difference is attributable to the fact that Morley reckons with a much larger source population than Scheidel: . million (all free inhabitants of Italy) vs c.. million (Romans and Latins living in the countryside only). Jongman () f. Continued overseas immigration to Rome was a necessity in his view. But the notion that rural–urban migration was insufficient rests on dubious grounds: in contrast to Wrigley, Jongman reckons that smaller Italian towns also experienced urban natural deficits. Scheidel () –. He argues that if Rome in the Middle Ages was a ‘vorax hominum’ (as it was according to the view of a bishop of Ostia), during the Roman Empire it must have been a ‘vorax populorum’ or the centre of conspicuous consumption of both goods and bodies. See also Scheidel () .
The demographic parameters
estimate of the number of immigrants required to compensate for the natural decrease in the city and to ensure its growth is about half of those put forward by Morley and Jongman. By implication, the negative impact of urbanization on the potential for demographic reproduction of Italy’s citizen body would be much smaller. But Scheidel’s conclusion was reached on the assumption that the migrants were only adults. Recent archaeological discoveries make this seem doubtful. Among skeletons excavated at two of the graveyards mentioned above, Casal Bertone and Castellaccio Europarco, well over % of individuals identified as migrants were children below age . By implication, the argument that Rome did not need as many migrants as thought loses much of its force. 6.4.1 Revising the urban graveyard model More important, all these models quantifying migratory flows presuppose that migration was uni-directional and permanent. Most likely, however, at least some migrants in Rome stayed only temporarily, or moved back and forth depending on (seasonal) labour opportunities and on the like. As was noted above, migration theories predict that this would be the case, and historical studies have found that even in fairly small communities in preindustrial times, annual population turnover could be as high as .%. That is, .% of the resident population would have wandered out or wandered in over the course of a year. Whether we might expect such a high turnover rate for ancient Rome is doubtful; the rate mentioned above was inflated by the custom of service by young adults. On the other hand, Rome might have been a greater pull for migrants than a small community with less than , people. At the very least, the notion that even small countryside villages in pre-industrial times had a far less stable population composition than previously thought suggests that estimates of migration flows proposed
Scheidel, unlike Jongman () and Morley (), did not work with the assumption that the birth deficit equals the number of migrants needed. Following Lo Cascio (b) –, he argues that a birth deficit of x per year does not need an equal number of adult migrants to be compensated. To neutralize a birth deficit, about half the number of adults would do, because many deaths (around half ) were infant deaths. These adults would bring in a reproductive potential equal to that of a birth cohort twice as big. See Scheidel () . I address the sex and age composition of migrations in more depth below in Section .. Killgrove () , on Imperial Rome. But not all: a high share of childhood mortality occurred in the first year after birth, and it is questionable how often families with children that young would have migrated to Rome. Migrants arriving at an age beyond the highest risk at death, therefore, may still have contributed relatively more to the reproduction of the city than those who were born there. Cf. Erdkamp () ; Osborne () . Cf. also Reher ().
Migration
by ancient historians underestimate the importance of migration. The fact that Rome’s growth was concentrated in the late Republic underscores the importance of this conclusion. Even if we allow for the contribution of overseas immigrants (including slaves who were subsequently freed) to the growth of Rome’s citizen body, migration involved and affected many more citizens and their relatives than previous models implied. Was Rome consequently an even greater urban graveyard than we have been inclined to believe? Intuitively, one might think so. I suggest that, paradoxically, the effects of migration to Rome were likely less detrimental because more people were migrants during part of their life-course: because migration was a more widely shared experience, the ‘demography of death’ could look slightly different. Average mortality rates were certainly higher in Rome than in the Italian countryside, and in that sense there is no reason to doubt the urban graveyard model. But the widely held assumption that mortality among city residents was higher is not based solely on our understanding of the impact of higher population density and a larger population size. In addition to these factors, which encouraged the presence of endogenous infectious diseases, disease fatality scores also play a role in determining an excess mortality rate. Migrants to Rome are thought to have died in larger numbers by natural law. As ‘virgin populations’, they would have been particularly defenceless against such infections, because they had not built up immunity to diseases unknown in the countryside before their arrival in the city. But the notion that migratory flows were bidirectional and frequent rather than one-way trips partially undermines this hypothesis. If migrants moved back and forth, disease pools in Roman Italy would have been less isolated. Travelling spreads diseases. A seasonal worker could catch a virus in Rome, for example, and bring it back to the countryside. Countryside dwellers could therefore be exposed to ‘urban’ microbes and viruses, much in the same way that airplanes can quickly spread new influenza types across the modern world. This would hold true especially for a highly contagious disease like tuberculosis, which remains latent in % of all cases and spreads through the air. Even though some
Noy () – suggests that a minimum of % of inhabitants of Rome were free overseas migrants. Slaves who arrived in Rome as forced immigrants should be added to these. Morley () –. See Wrigley () for this argument on London. The latest estimates argue that currently one-third of the world’s population is infected with the disease. In those cases in which latent tuberculosis becomes active (%), death rates are over % if left untreated. For medical texts showing evidence of the prevalence of the disease in the ancient world, see Grmek () –. According to the author of the Chapter ‘Internal Affairs’ in the Hippocratic Corpus (referred to in Grmek), tuberculosis sufferers died slowly: depending on its manifestation, they lived on – potentially spreading the disease – for – years. Humans also spread
The demographic parameters
diseases could not be sustained endogenously in the less densely populated countryside because their pathogens require a certain number of carriers to be transmitted continuously, countryside dwellers could still die of them when they were recurrently brought there afresh by rural–urban migrants moving back and forth. Short-distance migration tends to be more frequent. Therefore, people living closer to Rome in particular could have been exposed to more similar disease pools. On the other hand, if people who were already subjected to a partly shared disease pool migrated to Rome, the effect of this migration on their health would have been much less pronounced compared to people who grew up in Rome. My preliminary investigations of death rates in in the Quebec area, where a smallpox epidemic raged, point in a similar direction. In this pre-industrial setting, Canadians from the St Lawrence Valley who had migrated from the countryside to an urban area did not suffer from more elevated risks of death than their counterparts who were born in the city. Their urban residence increased the risk of death for both groups, but immigrants in the city were in fact slightly less likely to die than the resident city population (at a relative risk of . compared to the standard of . for city-born people). Unfortunately, the bio-archaeological studies of migrants interred at graveyards around Rome could not identify traces of infectious diseases for methodological reasons. In other words, they cannot inform us about differential mortality between migrants and local-born inhabitants of Rome as a result of diseases that kill rapidly. When it comes to disease loads with less immediate effects which leave traces on the skeleton, however, there are no signs that the health status of migrants was compromised more than that of local-born inhabitants of the area around Rome. In other words, it is not a given that all migrants to Rome suffered disproportionately higher risks at death than their locally born counterparts. But certainly some would have. Migrants who had previously lived in more isolated areas or further from Rome would have been subject to substantially higher excess mortality rates. They were also particularly prone
typhoid fever, believed to be the other of the three main infectious diseases in the ancient world alongside tuberculosis and malaria. It is transmitted by ingestion of food or water contaminated with faeces from an infected person. Cf. Morley () –. It should be stressed that this analysis was tentative, and did not correct for possibly distinctive age compositions between groups (controls for sex and legal status were implemented in the model). I would like to thank the Programme de Recherche en D´emographie Historique and Alain Gagnon at the University of Montreal for allowing me to work with their historical dataset of the Quebec population. Killgrove () –, –.
Migration
to die from diseases that were not transferable from human to human, such as malaria, if these were unknown in their places of origin. Lack of immunity certainly contributed to elevated death levels among migrants to Rome. But, because connectivity was stronger than implied by unidirectional migration models, they presumably succumbed less frequently than has been assumed. It should also be considered that many men might have encountered new disease pools prior to moving to a large city when they served in the army. As already noted, this would have caused them to die in larger numbers. But at the same time, those who survived may have brought diseases back with them to their places of origin, introducing them into Italian communities. A spectrum of life expectancies rather than a dichotomy between urban and rural settings should be anticipated, and should be related not only to local environmental circumstances and population size and density but also to the extent of connectivity with other regions. All this implies that urban–rural differences may have been smaller, and that the ‘urban graveyard’ effect has been overestimated. At the same time, a less pronounced urban mortality surplus does not necessarily mean that total mortality rates for the population of Italy as a whole were lower. In terms of total population size, this conclusion may not be of great interest. Since the effects of a probable overestimation of urban mortality and a likely underestimation of rural mortality may well cancel each other out, different models of migration likely do not make much difference in terms of total population size. But the modification of our perceptions of the characteristics of migration flows towards cities could be significant with regard to the estimated effect of increasing urbanization on population size development. If migration to a city had less of an impact on individual life expectancy, the growth of migratory flows during the second and first centuries mattered less demographically. It would not have undermined the growth potential of the population of Italy to the extent that has been proposed. Another reason to think that the natural urban deficit should not be overestimated has been put forward by Lo Cascio, who rightly points
Sallares () and Scheidel (b) – on the particular vulnerability of adult immigrants born in a region where Plasmodium falciparum was not endemic. Compare, for an idea of the scale involved, Shengsheng () on Han China, who argues that –% of soldiers from Central China sent to malarial regions in the South (the Fujian area near Taiwan and the areas of Guangxi and Yunnan west of Hongkong) in the mid-first century ce died as a result of the disease. I am grateful to Richard Sallares for pointing me to this article, and to Zhen Zhang, MPIDR, who kindly communicated its content. I am grateful to Luuk de Ligt and Paul Erdkamp for calling my attention to this point.
The demographic parameters
out that the surplus of deaths over births in the records of pre-industrial societies can be a partial construct or misguided perception created by migration itself. In cases in which net immigration was high, the lists in death registers could be longer than those in the birth registers simply because some people who died in the city were born elsewhere. In other words, the high birth deficits observed could to some extent result from population structure rather than from the environmental characteristics of urban areas that increased death risks. 6.5 marriage and children: a migrant’s fata morgana ? on migration and sex ratios Natural deficits in demography are the sum of birth rates minus death rates. A reconsideration of the urban graveyard hypothesis therefore cannot be complete without discussing the impact of migration on fertility. Migration can impact fertility processes in various ways. Basically, the fertility pattern of any migrant could be altered, regardless of his or her destination, if migration affected his or her ability to find a marriage partner or interrupted sexual unions. Failure of growing numbers of migrants to reproduce has been thought to be one explanation of population decline in late Republican Italy. The phenomenon would have been caused by a disruption of the marriage market: skewed sex ratios in both city and countryside resulting from migration led to increasing rates of celibacy. Increasing migration thus resulted in decreasing overall fertility and thereby, it has been assumed, undercut natural population growth. In this section, I consider this hypothesis in all its aspects. The effects of migration on fertility depend primarily on what it does to local sex ratios, or the numerical balance between men and women. If entire families move around, the impact of migration on marriage markets and fertility rates is minimal. The marriage markets of both the sending and the receiving community remain unaffected, and fertility processes are not interrupted when marriage partners stay together. Individual migration is another story: the effect on fertility rates can be substantial. First, when migration is biased towards young unmarried men or women, the sex balance in local marriage markets is distorted. As a consequence, marriage rates in both the sending and the receiving community may drop. In monogamous contexts, some people experience difficulty in finding a marriage partner and lose the opportunity to marry and create offspring within
Lo Cascio () .
Migration
a family context, because they are members of the surplus sex. A second outcome is that the duration and type of migration modify the impact of individual migration. If migration is temporary, marriage opportunities may be delayed but not foregone, and vice versa. Likewise, the separation of a married couple due to the migration of one partner may have had little effect on their reproductive capacity when the migration occurred over a short distance and the migrant could return frequently. But when frequent absence of one partner made the couple de facto widow(er)s, the number of children resulting from the relationship would have been minimal and undercut total fertility rates. In these ways, therefore, migration could lower the birth rate, the number of births per , people. It was previously regarded as a ‘natural law’ in migration studies that more young men migrate than young women. If this were true, it would solve our question instantly. But the premise is no longer regarded as valid. In recent years, scholars have set a number of studies showing predominantly female migration against earlier examples in which most migrants were men. These include, for example, the parish of Elmdon in Essex (UK) in the fourteenth century, when migration rates were higher for women among both immigrants (.) and emigrants (.). Other studies show a surplus of female migrants in nineteenth-century Stockholm and nineteenth-century Cuenca (Spain). Though not necessarily the result of overwhelmingly female migration, a casual reference in Pausanias states that in the Greek harbour town of Patrae the configuration of labour opportunities created a similarly skewed sex ratio: ‘The
Note that a skewed sex ratio is negatively correlated with marriage rates. There is, however, no positive correlation between skewed sex ratios and high or rising ages at first marriage. Individuals may in fact begin to marry earlier to prevent being left on the shelf, so that the average age at first marriage decreases, or may be lower than in a population with harmonious sex ratios. Finlay () sees the skewed ratio in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London as a factor keeping marriage ages reasonably low. Note that the rate of reproduction is usually measured by other indicators: the TFR or Total Fertility Rate, which measures the number of children born to an individual woman over the course of her life, or the GFR, General Fertility Rate, which measures the number of children born per , women of fertile age. These indicators do not work well in the case of biased sex ratios, because they are sensitive only to female surpluses leading to rising female celibacy, and are unable to display the effect of a male surplus in the population. Osborne () . Matovi´c (): women outnumbered men by % among migrants between and . The larger and more stable labour supply for women seems to have been the cause of this pattern. Reher () with Table .. Moch () f. notes that there is a distinction between Western European cities and cities in the East: In the former, women predominated, whereas in the latter (Russia, Asia, India) men did. For further references to female-biased urban sex ratios, cf. Scheidel (b) , n. .
The demographic parameters
women . . . outnumber the men by two to one’. It has even been argued that European cities are in fact distinguished by low sex ratios, that is, by a surplus of women. That said, the closest comparative evidence we have does display high sex ratios. In later early-modern Rome, men consistently predominated among the inhabitants of the city. Between and , sex ratios varied between . and .. Note that these are the sex ratios of the total population; when families are excluded and lodgers alone are counted, men outnumber women by a factor of .. This ‘lodger-ratio’ arguably provides a better proxy for the migrant population in sixteenthand seventeenth-century Rome than the total population ratios do. But this selection criterion may overestimate the discrepancy because of the potential exclusion of migrant families. Closer in time to ancient Rome, census data from Roman Egypt similarly record a surplus of men in the towns, although the dataset is too small to fully exclude that this is a spurious statistical impression. In sum, the comparative evidence indicates variation and complexity rather than a broad universal pattern. For these reasons, it is important to establish what compositional forms migration took in Republican Italy. In macro-demographic terms, only migration flows that consisted of individuals and were sex-biased are of interest. Therefore, although colonies formed important migration destinations during the late Republican period, we need not pay much attention to the demographic impact of migration to these colonies. There are good reasons to think that the migratory flows towards colonies in Italy did not alter the demography of either the sending or the receiving community. In my view, most (but not all!) colonies within Italy likely received mostly
Pausanias ..: T , * . + A3 !4 , .5 5 / ! . An alternative explanation to female immigration for the low sex ratio could be that the men who lived in the coastal town were heavily involved in shipping and for that reason spent long periods abroad. In that case, the low sex ratio would have been caused by out-migration of men rather than by immigration of women. Cf. Erdkamp () –. De Vries () . Schiavioni and Sonnino () . Data stem from the Listae status animarum almae urbis Romae and its summaries. Cf. Bagnall and Frier () –. There is a near one-in-four chance that this result is spurious: Scheidel (b) (p < .), contra Bagnall and Frier (). Note that (though with some reluctance) p < . tends to be taken as a rule of thumb for assigning reliability to a certain null-hypothesis. Some colonies were created to settle discharged soldiers. It may therefore have been that the men who received a share of land there went to these colonies on their own, unmarried. As noted earlier, most men in the Roman Republican army were likely young and unmarried when they commenced army service, and many presumably were still so when discharged. Perhaps they embarked on the new adventure on their own, without family members co-migrating, and searched for a spouse when they arrived (cf. Brunt () –), or remained unmarried. But given that service could be performed intermittently over the course of many more years than the actual years of service,
Migration
entire families of immigrants during the period after the Second Punic War. The arguments that point in this direction deserve brief consideration. They do so in particular because family migration is at odds with the adult male predominance we think was characteristic of people sent to overseas colonies, and to early colonies within Italy that had a military character. The first argument is that later Roman colonies and supplements sent to Latin colonies were intended to populate areas. Those who promised to move to a colony were reimbursed before departure with a secure title to land. The plots were not always of generous size, but scholars seem to agree that a living could have been made off of them in most cases, albeit a rather minimal living in cases where the plots distributed were iugera or less and there was no additional access to public land or water. The economic risks of migration to this type of destination were, in sum, comparatively low. Moving to a colony would secure a future existence as a farmer, which would allow men to take along their families. Second, in the initial phases, recruitment for colonies was organized by the Roman state. Circumstances such as these, which limit risks and support the process of migration, encourage the migration of families. Third, these theoretical predictions are corroborated to some degree in the Republican evidence for colonies founded by the Romans. Whereas the demographic composition of the original flow of migrants towards the Latin colonies is difficult to establish, a clearer pattern emerges for Roman colonies and supplements sent to the Latin colonies. Erdkamp has observed that the terminology Livy uses in the case of Roman colonies founded in the second century bce is fairly consistent. It suggests that familiae (‘families’)
some veterans could already have been married when they received their entitlement to a plot in a colony. Presumably they would have taken their wives and families to join them on their new plot of land. On the military character and strategic purposes of colonization in Italy, cf. e.g. Flower () f. See Roselaar () –. In the Latin colonies founded in the period after the Second Punic War, veterans received – iugera of land: Erdkamp (). During the same period, citizen colonists received no more than – iugera. Erdkamp () – demonstrates that iugera of land could suffice to feed a family of under normal conditions. The very early Roman colonies in which colonists received only a mere iugera were intended as strongholds and had access to the sea and, presumably, to public land. Note that there were also secondary flows of migrants toward colonies that were not state-organized. The reason colonization was often organized obviously lay in the fact that the Roman state had an interest in stimulating it and in keeping colonies populated. There is some evidence of the latter. A legal inscription that includes a clause probably aimed at keeping residents on the spot by requiring them to build houses corroborates the idea that colonial charters of the Republican period included a provision imposing fixity on migrants to colonies. See Broadhead (). While acknowledging this, Erdkamp () emphasizes literary sources indicative of a large degree of mobility among newly settled colonists. He argues that fixity aims had already become much less important during the second century bce, and were not observed meticulously by the Roman authorities.
The demographic parameters
or homines (‘people’) went to this type of colony to occupy the land. In the two recorded instances in which supplements were sent to Latin colonies, it was also families who went, according to Livy. All in all, the negative impact of colonization on fertility rates was therefore probably not substantial. For this reason, I deliberately pay little more attention to colonization in a chapter focused on the demographic impact of migration. When it comes to urban migration, the story seems to have been different. In what follows, I focus on the effect of urban migration on fertility rates in the sending and receiving communities. It has been argued that the demographic composition of migratory flows and the type of migration meant that migration to Rome in particular eroded the reproductive careers of men and women. This would seem to corroborate the supposition that Rome’s growth curtailed demographic growth not only by elevating mortality, but moreover by affecting fertility processes. While I do not intend to argue that this model should be entirely overturned, my aim is to modify the assumptions regarding the impact of urbanization on reproduction. As with mortality, I point out that the degree to which migration impacted fertility was mitigated by the nature of migration processes. There was no clear-cut division between marriage markets in the countryside and Rome. Negative effects of migration on reproduction were therefore more limited than a dichotomized city–countryside model presupposes. This conclusion affects our understanding of the ‘urban graveyard’ model. 6.5.1 Labour opportunity and the demographic composition of migration flows Scholars of Roman Italy have tended to assume that migratory flows to Rome and other cities were likely composed of relatively more young individuals with no co-migrating dependents. This view is not based solely on (now outdated) general theories of urban migration, but also on our knowledge of the labour market in Rome. Urban migration is largely labour migration. Consequently, it is determined primarily by the nature of the labour opportunities provided. In early-modern European cities, servant labour provided by far the largest share of labour opportunities for women. Young unmarried women migrated predominantly to take jobs as servants, or in other parts of the services sector, for example as vendors. In developing countries in the
Erdkamp (). Livy .. ( bce; Placentia and Cremona) and Livy .. ( bce; Aquileia). Hajnal () –. Cf. e.g. Prowse et al. () ; Noy () –.
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modern world, labour opportunities for women are still concentrated in these sectors. We may expect that some women migrated to Rome for this reason, and because of labour opportunities in other sectors. The work the city provided was mainly hired (manual) labour not performed by slaves, which privileged young men, although it did not exclude women and children. Of the inscriptions from urban settings that record women’s occupations, the overwhelming majority refer to slaves or freedwomen rather than to freeborn Romans. The presence of slavery closed the urban labour market to a large extent to women. As a result, comparatively few opportunities for independent urban labour were left for them in ancient Italy. The fact that the occupations attested for freeborn women are limited to a narrow range confirms this: crafts (or the sale of craft products, including weaving), medicine, obstetrics, wet-nursing and professional entertainment (e.g. prostitution, bar-tending and acting). In addition, migration studies show that the migration of women tends to be channelled in a more circumscribed way than male migration. Marriage and childbearing sharply reduce independent female migratory flows. Once married, women move along with their husbands, but they tend to move independently less. Compared to men, that is, disproportionately large numbers of female migrants have been young and single throughout recorded history, and the same is true today. For men, marriage and childbearing do not have similar effects on individual migration; they continue to migrate to a larger extent at higher ages and in the role of married household heads. This pattern is even more marked in strongly gendered societies. Moving to Rome, or for that matter any other city, was a less secure undertaking than going to a colony. Although, as in other times and places,
Chant () . Evans () – (Appendices). Among the total of women appearing on occupational inscriptions, are attested to as freeborn; as slaves or freedwomen. Status is indiscernible in cases. On the lack of labour opportunities for women in the cities of Roman Italy, see also Erdkamp () – and Ch. , Section ... Note that the inscriptions in Evans’ appendices include women who appear in conjunction with a spouse, so that it is unclear precisely what tasks they performed. Evans claims that they must generally have been ‘co-workers’ whose jobs depended on those of their husbands or on the existence of a family enterprise. Consequently, their migration to a town or city would not have been independent or initiated by the women themselves. Evans () –. See Halfacree and Boyle () . Finch () , refers to a modern study showing that even when couples tried to pursue two careers and developed egalitarian job-seeking strategies, in % of cases the eventual outcome was that the wife moved along with the husband, rather than the other way around. Cf. also Reher () , who observes that women’s migration to or from historical Cuenca (Spain) was related to the mobility of their husbands. Cf. e.g. Chant (), De Haan ().
The demographic parameters
there may have been organizations that recruited migrant workers, they would have had labour to offer, not land. If so, this may have drawn individual adults, but presumably did not encourage the migration of entire families. There are two reasons to think that this happened: first, those offering jobs to individual men only would have had no interest in bringing their family to the city. Second, living costs in Rome (and presumably in other substantial cities) were higher than in the surrounding countryside. To the extent that subsidized grain or the grain dole did not compensate, it would have been more costly for a migrant with a family to support them in the city than if they stayed in their place of origin. Moreover, whether or not one believes that some people were recruited into urban migration, it is very likely that a majority of migrants to cities were drawn by hopes of making a better living, but with no guarantee of success. These conditions favour the migration of individuals willing to take larger risks: those with no dependent descendants, usually young adults. In short, in the context of ancient Rome a female-biased urban sex ratio is highly unlikely. From what we can predict on the basis of theory and comparative evidence, men predominated. 6.5.2 Young men on the move? Bio-archaeology and the profile of migrants How do these theoretical predictions derived from comparative evidence and insights into the structure of the Roman labour market relate to practice? Two main sources inform us about migration: the skeletal material mentioned above, and inscriptions. The inscriptions are discussed in what follows, whereas this section focuses on bio-archaeological evidence. As noted, very few skeletal analyses comparing migrants with local-born individuals have been performed. The studies of the Casal Bertone, Castellaccio Europarco and Isola Sacra burials do not yield large datasets of migrants. This urges prudence in interpreting the demographic characteristics of these three populations. If – hopefully when – the number of such studies increases, the results will inspire greater numerical confidence. For now, the dataset is limited to individuals who were not born around Rome but
In fact, we have no means of knowing whether there were people who were promised something before they migrated, or how immigrants set about finding work in Rome or in other cities to which they migrated: cf. Noy () . To what extent dependent ascendants prevent(ed) migration is a question that receives little attention in migration studies. Noy () does record some instances in which a dependent mother migrated along with her adult son, and one in which a mother refused to comply with her son’s initiative to bring her to his place in the city to settle. E.g. Chant (); Noy () –.
Migration
Table . Demographic summary of migrants identified by bioarchaeological studies Immigrants Sex Age at immigration Remigrated emigrants (Isola Sacra only) Individuals born in Rome area, leaving Rome area after age but returned to the area after age .
Male (%)*
Female (%)*
< 17.5 (.%)
> 17.5 (.%)
Male
Female
Unknown
N (total)
Unknown
N
* Of individuals with identifiable sex (N = ).
did die there: from Casal Bertone and Castellaccio Europarco, and who were buried in Isola Sacra. Lumping together the demographic information about migrants from these burial sites yields three major findings (see Table .). First, the sex composition is biased towards males: for each female, there were . males. The sex of individuals, however, could not be determined, so that the sex ratio is based on only cases ( males, females), and could be a statistical coincidence. Second, findings suggest that many immigrants came to the area around Rome before their third molar was completed. They lived elsewhere until age at least, but went to Rome before age .. Such can be inferred from the chemical composition of their molars, which reflect the oxygen stable isotope ratios ( O) in the environment at the time they were formed. Individuals whose first molars show a O composition markedly different from that prevailing in Rome, but whose third molar-composition is compatible with the water composition in Rome, must have moved there at some point after the formation of the first molar, but before the completion of the third. This was the case for of individuals. The remaining individuals who were not born in Rome (as the chemical composition of their first molar shows) did not arrive there until after their third molar was completely formed. That happens during adulthood, after age .. Third, the research design of the Isola Sacra study also allows us to identify individuals buried in Rome
The % confidence interval stretches from . to ., implying that the larger immigrant population from which this sample is drawn could have consisted of anywhere between % and % males.
The demographic parameters
whose first molars were composed in an area with a O composition similar to Rome’s, but whose third molars were possibly or likely formed in a different O environment. Of the individuals studied from that cemetery, another (in addition to the immigrants) belonged to this group. The different chemical composition of teeth formed between age and . suggests that these individuals moved away from the area around Rome after age , but returned again at some point after age –. and before death. These results both confirm and seemingly contradict aspects of theoretical predictions for the demographics of migration to the urban area around Rome. The sex ratio points in the direction of what labour conditions would predict and ancient historians tend to assume intuitively: there are more men in the sample. Unfortunately, the sample is too small to exclude the possibility that this is a coincidence, and more empirical evidence would be welcome. As for the age distribution of migrants, the investigation of skeletal material yields more young individuals than predicted. What implications does the finding that many youngsters below age . were among the buried immigrants have for the credibility of the theory that migrants to Rome were predominantly young adults without families? The two bio-archaeological studies of migrants come to different conclusions. The authors of the Isola Sacra study argue that ‘the commonly held assumption that migration was a predominantly adult male activity needs qualification’, and hold that the subadult migrants likely came to Rome as children with their parents as a family group. The fact that the share of young migrants was so large (>%) would seriously undermine the notion of Rome as a city of young adult males, as by implication the share of families should have been quite large. By contrast, Killgrove emphasizes that ‘some of these biological subadults were culturally adults and moved around the Empire’ by themselves. In her view, in other words, the group who came to Rome between age and age . were not necessarily part of a family group, accompanied by parents or caretakers. It is also possible that these individuals came mostly towards the end of the –. year age range, and did so alone, in order to work in the city and its environs. The evidence allows for both models. The finding that there
See Prowse et al. () , Table , numbers , , , , , , , , and . They form .% of the sample population from Isola Sacra. Cf. also Prowse et al. () , Fig. . In cases, the O composition of the third molar was within ± . of the local range of - to -, while the other cases lay further beyond that range. Note however the criticism of Killgrove () , who argues that the local range should range between slightly lower values, from -. to -.. This would decrease the number of ‘remigrants’ from to . Prowse et al. () .
Migration
were also a substantial number of individuals who were born in Rome, then moved away and returned during adulthood was left unconsidered in the study of migrants in Isola Sacra. But the finding has important implications, as it seems to confirm the model of a spectre of migration, with people moving back and forth between urban and rural areas. Rome was not a black hole into which people disappeared: they came out and went back in again. The evidence generated by the bio-archaeological studies conducted to date also has limitations. One is that whereas the site of Casal Bertone is within km of the city centre, the other two burial sites are located in the larger area around Rome, not in or adjacent to the city itself. The samples as a whole are therefore more closely linked to the suburbium of Rome than to the city core. This has a bearing on the representativeness of the findings, in as far as we suspect that the demographic shape of the city and the suburbium may have been different. The argument that the demography of the suburbium might have been more similar to patterns in the countryside than to the ‘characteristic’ urban pattern of a substantial share of young males, has recently been put forward by the Roman archaeologist Witcher. 6.5.3 Inscriptional evidence on age and sex ratios among urban migrants Can the second type of evidence, inscriptions, help us determine whether the model of Rome as an adult male city should be rejected and replaced by a historical reality in which immigrants often brought along their families? The age pattern of people who can be identified as migrants on their gravestones peaks between ages and . This predominance of young adults is apparent in a sample studied by Noy. This may seem to confirm the abstract model, but is in fact of little argumentative value. It merely replicates the common tendency for grave inscriptions to be biased towards these ages, a tendency which, as noted in Chapter , precludes using inscriptional evidence for measuring age composition and life expectancy in the Roman world. The body of inscriptions does confirm that there were families, (married) couples and individual children among migrants to Rome. The inscription set up for the -year-old Kornoution from
Witcher () . Noy (). As laid out in detail by Erdkamp (). See also MacMullen (), esp. with Fig. , which plots the contrast in age group distribution between Latin and Greek inscriptions, and shows the marked emphasis of Latin inscriptions on young adults. Noy () , f. and .
The demographic parameters
Sinope on the shores of the Black Sea, who was buried and commemorated by his nutritor in Rome even though his parents were apparently still alive, illustrates how children might have lived in Rome independent of their family. It corroborates Killgrove’s argument that the presence of child migrants does not necessarily imply family migration. A few inscriptions relate to nuclear immigrant families, or to an adult immigrant with a child. Thus we find CIL vi , in which Phoebion and Primigenia have set up a memorial for their deceased son Phoebus, who, they add, was from Spain (Hispanus natus). Another inscription (CIL vi ) honours a soldier from Philippopolis in Thrace. His wife Tataza Mucapora, was – judging by her name – not Roman by origin, and had probably come with him from Thrace, although we cannot be certain. The absolute number of inscriptions recording multiple members of a single family is low, but we do not know their share among migrant inscriptions, or how this share would relate to the share of ‘family inscriptions’ among non-migrant inscriptions in Italy. Establishing this would require substantial research efforts. Even then, findings would be vulnerable to the argument that ‘the epigraphic habit’ skewed observed distributions of inscriptions in differential ways that tell us nothing about the actual structural composition of migrants as compared to locally born residents. Epigraphic databases cannot be used as random demographic samples that provide accurate quantitative information. They are a troubled and thorny type of evidence, because recording biases related to ‘the epigraphic habit’ may present a distorted view of reality. When looking at sex ratios on inscriptions for immigrants in Rome, we encounter one so high that if it were to reflect the actual gender composition among migrants to the city, it would be hard to unify with a substantial presence of migrant families. Of the individual migrants counted by Noy, .% are men, whereas only .% are securely identified as women. This works out to a sex ratio of . men to woman. Some scholars have argued that the epigraphic habit concerning gender commemoration was also so quirky that observed variations in sex ratios demonstrate ‘most likely . . . simply variations of epigraphic practice’.
Inscriptiones Graecae Urbis Romae . On the phenomenon of epigraphic habit, see e.g. MacMullen (), who first noted the issue; Meyer (), who set out an explanatory model of epigraphic habits; McWilliam () and , for the commemoration of children in Imperial Italy; and Mouritsen () –, with an emphasis on freed(wo)men. Mouritsen () on observed sex ratios of between and for children below age .
Migration
Table . Sex ratios among migrants on grave inscriptions from Rome* Sample
Males
Rome, all pagan migrants Rome, all pagan migrants with ages Rome, all pagan migrants aged – Rome, all pagan migrants aged –
Females
Total (N)
Sex ratio
. . . .
* Source: Noy ().
Could Rome’s elevated sex ratio among migrants simply reflect a culturally or socially inspired preference for commemorating men? There are various reasons to believe that the male surplus among migrants was not as high as the evidence suggests. When we count only migrants whose age at death is also recorded on their memorials, the sex ratio still points to male predominance, but falls significantly from . to . (N = ). The alteration in the sex ratio across age groups, displayed in Table ., again points to the role of recording biases. The pattern is exactly opposite what one would expect: particularly among young adults, say age to age , labour opportunities should privilege men, and the sex ratio should therefore be highest among this group. But the sex ratio among this age group is instead lower than that of migrants of all ages combined. The higher sex ratio in the sample that includes all ages as compared to that including only ages – seems to reflect a combination of factors leading to predisposed commemoration. Among the higher ages, marriage patterns may explain why relatively fewer women received grave inscriptions: spouses were more likely to have been commemorators than others, and more women over age would have already lost their husbands than vice versa. In reality, the sex distribution among migrants aged + may consequently have been more even than the records suggest. For groups under age , where sex ratios are also higher than among young adults, under-reporting or under-representation of females could provide the explanation.
Many local datasets including people of all ages document a surplus of men, for example, in Carthage and Mactar in Africa. See Clauss () –, Table . Cf. Scheidel () – for the view that we cannot be sure that the high sex ratio is not altogether a fiction. Cf. Saller () –. Such seems to be the explanation of the extremely high sex ratio for the age groups – in the cities of Roman Egypt: Scheidel (b) –. In various modern underdeveloped nations, this reflects the ignoring of unmarried daughters. This could be a satisfactory explanation of the ‘missing girls’ in the gravestone database analysed by Noy () as well.
The demographic parameters
Another reporting bias particular to migrant women of all ages could have boosted the overall male predominance in the data on migrants: the identification of individuals as migrants depends on the specification of their original place of birth. More frequently than their male counterparts, women may not have been identified as migrants in the records if, for some reason, designation of their origin on their gravestone was deemed less important. I suggest two possible causes for such under-registration of women as immigrants. First, if they migrated as a spouse, they probably did so at a younger age than their husbands. Their migration was thus even further in the past and may have been less likely to be accorded emphasis on a gravestone. Second, and presumably more important, in the patrilocal Roman marriage system, ‘migration’ of women that cut previous ties had been habitual and was not noteworthy. This could be another reason why their place of origin was recorded less frequently on their graves than on those of their male counterparts. In sum, several potential causes of distortion may boost the male bias in the sex ratio. It should also be emphasized that Noy’s study focused exclusively on immigrants in Rome born outside of Italy. Among these, soldiers and individuals who went on embassies to Rome are over-represented. This suggests that the inscriptions of the group of migrants among whom the sex ratios are so high reflect a combination of a distinctive demographic profile (soldiers and envoys all being men) and perhaps also a cultural epigraphic habit that privileged the commemoration of men. The latter might explain the presence of so many soldiers and individuals on embassies in the records, even though they certainly were not the only foreigners who died in Rome. Both the migrant groups from overseas and the way they commemorated themselves on inscriptions, in other words, may not be representative of all migrants (particularly not Italian migrants) or of the city of Rome as a whole. 6.5.4 A city of young men, or a recording bias? One way to test whether the elevated sex ratios on migrant inscriptions were induced by distinct cultural habits or by a demographic profile markedly divergent from that of the average inhabitant of Rome is to compare the sex ratios on inscriptions between these groups. The comparison is deliberately focused on young adults aged – for migrants in Rome, and aged – for all other areas, including Rome as a whole (see Table ., ID
Noy () xi.
Noy () –.
Migration
Table . Sex ratios of Roman grave inscriptions for deceased individuals aged 20–34 (All data except no. 1 taken from Saller (1994), pp. 28–31; see for no. 1 Table 6.2) ID no.
Region
Rome, foreign migrants Rome, all Northern Italy Southern Italy Gaul# Danubia Africa, Theveste region Africa, Mauretania Caes Spain Total (excl. Rome) Weighted av. (excl. Rome)
Total (N)
Males (–)
Females (–)
Percent male
Sex ratio
.% .% .% .% .% .% .% .% .%
.*** .*** .** . . . .*** .** .* .
# Note that Saller () , Table D includes both inscriptions from Narbonensis and Aquitania for men, but only inscriptions from Narbonensis for women, consequently overestimating the sex ratio for Gaul. *, **, *** One star means a significantly biased sex ratio at % confidence level; two stars signify a bias significant at % confidence; and three stars symbolize significance at the .% confidence level.
number ). One reason for doing so is that the bias towards freed persons, who tended to be characterized by an anomalous demography, is weaker in the subsample for these ages. Inscriptions for Rome as a whole tend to privilege freedmen and freedwomen. But during the period from which the inscriptions come, the legal minimum age for formal enfranchisement was . Before that, slaves could only be freed informally, in which case they had no legal entitlement to Roman citizenship. For all we can tell, in the age group between and , most female slaves and a considerable share of male slaves were not freed (yet). As a result, the bias towards freed people is mitigated. That the share of freed(wo)men is less prominent in this age group arguably enhances the representativeness of the sample.
Mouritsen () . See Mouritsen () . Cf. Scheidel () – with Fig. on the enfranchisement rates of slaves. After age , the attestations of male slaves drop significantly – more so than the number of female slaves. See however Mouritsen () –, who now argues for common enfranchisement of young slaves (particularly in their s), on the grounds of attestations of young enfranchised slaves on inscriptions. He argues that Augustus’ minimum age for legal manumission attempted to counteract prevailing practices.
The demographic parameters
The first two rows of Table . show the results of a comparison between the general population of Rome and the specific sub-group of migrants. The sex ratio among foreign migrants is not higher than the observed sex ratio for Rome as whole, including any resident regardless of origin. Indeed, it is slightly lower at . versus . for Rome as a whole. This suggests that the epigraphic habit of foreign migrants and/or their demographic profile was not markedly different from that of the inhabitants of the city of Rome as a whole. For both groups, the sex ratio is remarkably high. I suggest that there is no immediate need to attribute a large role to elusive, culturally determined and highly variable ‘epigraphic habits’ to explain the high sex ratio on inscriptions from Rome. My reason for arguing this is encapsulated in the remainder of Table ., which is based on an earlier study by Richard Saller. It displays the observed sex ratios for Italy, Gaul, Spain, Danubia and two African regions. Although we see variations in the observed sex ratios between all these regions, the overall pattern is remarkably consistent. In all regions where the number of observations is high enough to present a statistically reliable binomial distribution between the sexes, there are more gravestones for women than there are for men between ages and . Southern Italy, represented in Figure . below as ID number , is the only region apart from Rome in which more men than women are recorded. Here, however, the number of observations is too low to inspire confidence: the confidence interval for this sex ratio crosses the straight line in the graph that represents an even distribution of % of each sex. This means that the observed sex ratio of . could by chance have been drawn from a population in which there was an equal number of men and women, or even from a population in which there were more women. In other words, Rome is the only place where there were really more men than women recorded on inscriptions. Wherever else sample size inspires statistical confidence in the distribution, women dominate the gravestones. It should be emphasized that the very low sex ratios in some of the databases could be the result of selection biases enhancing the predominance of women in the records. Whereas in some regions the skew is more marked than it should be, overall it is consistently in the same direction as
In Africa there was a particular preference for commemorating aged men who are not included in the sample here, so that these ratios should not be taken at face value, Saller () –. A further explanation of the low number of men recorded lies in the selection made for Saller’s database: he excludes gravestones on which people were commemorated by non-kin. Commemoration by other than blood-relatives was particularly common among men. Therefore, exclusion of this type of commemorators lowers the rate of men recorded across all regions in the table. See for this observation, Noy () .
Migration
90 1
Percentage males on inscriptions
80 70
2
4
60 50
40 6 30 5 20
9
3 8
10
7
0 10
100
1000
Number of inscriptions (by region) Observed % male
Expected %
95% c.i. limit (low)
95% c.i. limit (high)
Figure . Box-plot of the observed, possible (% c.i.) and expected percentage males aged – on funerary inscriptions from the Roman Empire Values on the y-axis represent the % men in a binomial distribution (men–women). Each number in the plot represents a region of the Empire following the ID numbers in Table . above: = migrants in Rome, = Rome, = Northern Italy, = Southern Italy, = Gaul, = Danubia, = Africa Theveste, = Africa Mauretania Caes, = Spain
mortality patterns would lead one to predict. As noted in Chapter , across pre-industrial societies for which we have data, mortality among women of reproductive age was higher than that among their male counterparts. Whatever the cultural preference and epigraphic habits that privilege the commemoration of men over that of women, for the age group of young adults at which we are looking here, such a tendency did not predominate across the various regions of the Roman Empire. Instead, the memorial patterns are broadly consistent with what the demography of pre-industrial mortality would imply for a population with a normal distribution of men and women among the living. Rome alone stands out, and stands out markedly. In my view, this must at least partially reflect an underlying reality, unless we have good arguments for thinking that epigraphic habits with regard to gender in this age group were markedly different in the big city, not just among migrants but among the population as a whole. I can think of no
The demographic parameters
cogent reason why recording biases according to sex should differ so much as to fully explain the gap between Rome on the one hand, and the rest of Italy as well as cities in several western Roman provinces on the other. There is no good reason to argue that ‘culture’ created this specific opposition – at least it seems hard to defend the notion that the epigraphic culture of a metropolis would favour commemoration of men by a factor of . or so as compared to rural areas in the Empire. Data-selection criteria, furthermore, cannot explain the variance, since all the subsamples in Saller’s database were selected on the same criteria, and the sex ratio in Rome is still much higher. It seems to me that two options remain. We might assume that the above-mentioned potential unevenness in the reference to the place of origin of migrants explains why women are missing from the data, and why both the migrants-only and the mixed dataset are biased towards men. This seems a counsel of despair, since it requires us to assume that migrants also dominate Saller’s mixed dataset. Alternatively, the conclusion must be that, even though the differences are boosted, the data indicate a reality of elevated sex ratios in Rome among young adults. On the basis of the comparative data set out above and the labour opportunities available in the city, I am inclined to believe that the latter provides at least part of the explanation. In sum, epigraphy offers a glimpse into the demography of a migrant city, but only a partial answer to the question of whether Rome was a city of young men. Epigraphic habit precludes any conclusions about the age profile of populations, simply because commemoration privileged certain age groups in ways we cannot account for. But when it comes to understanding the sex composition of migration flows, a comparison of epigraphic data on young adults across regions proves more helpful. It reveals that Rome produced an inscriptional record that differed notably from that of any other region in its emphasis on young men over young women. That ‘epigraphic habit’ alone underlies this pattern seems unlikely. In my view, the explanatory framework must take into account the fact that Rome was more likely a city of young men than one of young women. The inscriptional material dates – as it usually does – from the early Imperial rather than the late Republican period. But labour markets are crucial in shaping the demographic composition of migration flows, and there is no good reason to think that these privileged women rather than men during the preceding period, from bce to Augustus. If anything, Rome’s rapid
The hypothesis that there were more free men than free women in Rome was already put forward in Beloch () –.
Migration
growth would imply that there were comparatively more recent migrants in the city during the late Republic. There are therefore good reasons for thinking that Imperial data can serve as a proxy for the Republican period, and would not lead to biases that would overstate my case for the Republic. 6.6 sex and the city. did migrants reproduce? If there were in fact more free young men than women in Rome, how did this affect population reproduction? As noted, the dominant view is that a skewed sex bias would have been detrimental. This view is based primarily on comparative evidence from early modern cities with uneven sex ratios. In these cities, migrants contributed less to fertility than locally born residents, so that immigration curtailed fertility. In early-modern European cities, there was often a surplus of females rather than of males. Women migrated there to take jobs as servants in wealthy households, and many married very late or not at all. For a woman working and living in someone else’s household as a servant, a pregnancy usually meant the end of a career, because employers were not eager to accommodate further family members. As a result, the contribution of migrants to fertility (that is, the birth registers) in the cities was below average, although to some extent this trend was countered by extramarital births. Data for London studied by Finlay show that marriage was by no means universal in both poorer (Allhallows) and richer (St Peter Cornhill) London neighbourhoods in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. The daughters of Londoners married early, but the overall data show that at age , many women were still single. We can infer from this that migrant women married significantly later and less frequently, thereby depressing overall fertility.
De Vries () . Cf. Hajnal () on the reasons why female servants in particular tended to be unmarried. Noting that a variety of data bear out his words, Hajnal quotes Hume: ‘All masters discourage the marrying of their male servants, and admit not by any means the marrying of the female, who are then supposed altogether incapacitated for their service’. Sharlin (). Finlay () f. points out the higher marriage ages and lower marriage rates of migrants in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London. Hajnal () considers the availability of servant labour to have been crucial to making late female marriage and lower fertility possible. Cf. also De Vries () –, f. and –, where he questions the negative impact of migration on urban fertility, emphasizing that migrants skewed the age composition in cities toward young adults, so that, even if migrants had fewer children, the ‘reproductive value’ of the population may still have been higher as a result of the compensating effects of migration on age distribution. Cf. Erdkamp () . Mortality rates among extramarital children, however, were high because they were often abandoned and ended up in foundling homes, where mortality rates were above average. Finlay () –. Cf. also Matovi´c () , who observes a similar pattern of high celibacy among female migrants in historical Stockholm.
The demographic parameters
In Rome too, migrant women may have produced fewer offspring than their locally born counterparts. But, as we have seen, in Roman Italy it was predominantly men who migrated to the cities to work. Hence the women present in Rome had plenty of men to choose from and may well have reproduced. Instead, many surplus men may have failed to do so, at least with legitimate wives who would have produced a new generation of Roman citizens. The divergent profile of migration in Roman Italy as compared to early-modern European cities has important implications. If migrants in particular tended to marry less and beget fewer offspring, male marriage and reproductive behaviour are more important to the analysis of the impact of migration on fertility. This undermines the validity of the use of the early-modern European cities as a comparative model for Rome. It also raises the question of whether male migration had the same impact on reproduction rates as the migration of women did. A setting in which men left rural Italy to gain an income implies that there must have been more women outside Rome, if the overall Italian sex ratio was about even. Did the fertility potential of women outside cities indeed go underused as a result of the concentration of men in the cities? Did migrant men fail to marry and reproduce in a marital setting in the same way that early-modern women did? Although there is hardly any evidence for their lot, I argue that the various hypothetical scenarios that can be derived from comparative evidence and their implications suggest that migration did not distort marriage (prospects) and fertility dramatically. The impact on fertility of (male) urban migration in Rome was therefore probably more limited than the ‘London model’ adopted by previous scholarship suggests. How, then, could the fertility effects of male migration have been mitigated? As noted, one option may have been that, because rural marriage markets were flooded with women, some of them were left without marriage partners, eroding fertility rates. But such a scenario assumes that there was no interconnection between marriage markets in the city and elsewhere in Italy. To my mind, this is a dubious assumption. As Brettell observed in a historical study of migration in Portugal, in a system of partible inheritance, migration often occurs in the context of an expectation of return.
Reproduction with female slaves is, of course, not an academic possibility. To some extent, this could have produced new citizens who were incorporated into the census, if they were enfranchised and granted citizenship status. Needless to say, children born to slaves would have contributed to the number of inhabitants of Italy. The contribution of freedwomen to the birth rates of free children is disputable, since the evidence suggests that they were generally enfranchised only after most of their reproductive years had passed: see Scheidel (). Brettell () .
Migration
In other words, many men did not migrate intending to begin a new life in a foreign country (or another city). For Roman Italy, this suggests that whereas some young men may have sought a marriage partner in Rome itself, others retained strong ties with their community of origin and wished to marry a girl there. In the nineteenth-century Portuguese village studied by Brettell, this is what happened. The women who stayed behind either waited for a man with whom they were already involved and married him after his return, or they married one of the older men in the village – men who had returned and ended their temporary career as a migrant. There is reason to suspect that in late Republican Italy as well, there was no absolute breach between the marriage markets of the giving and the receiving communities. Migration from countryside to city was, as we have seen, often a seasonal phenomenon. Moreover, while the means of transportation were certainly not fast, the distances travelled were ultimately manageable. In this respect, migrants moving within Roman Republican Italy differ substantially from what often seems the implicit model for comparison, later overseas migrants moving from Europe to the US. In Roman Italy, ties with the home community could be maintained, albeit loosely, at least for some migrants. Second, that the prospects of success in the marriage market could drive men to turn to their place of origin rather than to their new home town, is an assumption worth considering. Comparative research has pointed out that men or women who entered a city as migrants had a hard time finding partners in their place of destination, where – as ‘farmers’ from the countryside – they were less attractive partners than the indigenous city inhabitants who were their competitors. By contrast, in their home towns they were, or expected themselves to be more successful. Their status was enhanced now that they had been to, or had ‘made it’ in the city. This is another reason why migrants did not necessarily become disconnected from what was their marriage market by geographic origin. Alternatively, men could have already been married before they migrated, leaving their families behind. While no instances are recorded for the Republic, there is evidence of this type of (temporary) migration for the Imperial period, when men who died in Rome were commemorated by
Brettell () –. Such motivations drove women in Stockholm to marry in the village from which they came: there was less competition there, and their status was higher compared to their counterparts who had stayed in the village. In the city, they were out-competed by city-born women and suffered from the low sex ratio. See Matovi´c () .
The demographic parameters
nuclear family members who had remained in the provinces. On a smaller geographic scale, the same phenomenon occurred within provinces. A papyrus from Alexandria quoted earlier in connection with infanticide was written by a man to (among others) his presumed wife, who had not joined him in the city, but who was promised ‘gifts’ to be sent to her in Oxyrhynchus as soon as he collected them. Likewise, many sojourners in later Qing Beijing, where men dominated the ranks of the urban population, are known to have left families behind in their native places. The same phenomenon is known for historical Russia and India. In this case, migration could still interrupt fertility patterns: the longer the absence of husbands, the less likely women would have been to conceive in a certain year. Early-modern women married to men who were absent for most of the time came to be known as ‘widows of the living’. The effects of a man’s absence on fertility would have depended heavily on the frequency with which he returned home. In Italy, where migration occurred over shorter distances and work was often seasonal, the impact of work in Rome on the ultimate fertility of a wife in the countryside may have been less dramatic than one might imagine. Fourth, the presence of female enfranchised slaves in the cities could also have partially mitigated a shortage of freeborn women on the marriage market. Presumably, however, the effect of this was minimal, because most women were manumitted only when they were far beyond the average age of marriage. Nonetheless, some men may have accepted the disadvantage of a relatively older wife for lack of better candidates, or have been forced to do so when they lost the competition for more attractive freeborn marriage partners. In sum, the points to bear in mind are: first, that the men who flocked to the urban areas of late Republican Italy could – but need not – have been unmarried. Second, their options for finding marriage partners would not have been as limited as suggested by the urban sex ratio, if marriage markets were interconnected rather than strictly separate. Conversely, such connectivity would imply that girls in the countryside were less in competition over men. In other words, we can identify the mechanisms through which the effects of male-biased migration to Italian cities, and to Rome in particular, could have been mitigated. In terms of evidence, we have
E.g. CIL xii , set up for a man who died in Ostia by his sons in Gratianopolis (Gallia Narbonensis). Cf. Noy () . Skinner () . P. Oxyrhynchus . See Valetov (), Section in a study of the composition of urban populations in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Russia. India during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: De Haan ().
Migration
just enough to confirm that the uniform outlook of a migrant population fairly similar in terms of ages and sex may conceal a variety of historical demographic relationships and configurations. For Italy, this means that we cannot simply conclude that a one-sex surplus led to celibacy and postponed marriages among both sexes to the same extent that it did in early-modern London. Conclusions about the fertility impact of migration to Rome derived from simple extrapolation of data on early-modern cities are potentially misleading. This is confirmed by a study of migration in Germany, in which Grant concluded that there was no consistent relationship across the various regions between migration and rates of marriage. In some regions migration had a negative impact on marriage, but in others it did not. In other words, at the very least scholars would be wise to bear in mind that underlying differences in the sex composition of migration flows and in the nature of the job market may have led to a different outcome in ancient Rome than in early-modern London. Female servants in early-modern cities would have had much stronger reasons to postpone marriage and childbearing than men migrating to Rome. In the former case, social settings forced migrants to choose between work and reproduction, because work-providers preferred single individuals. There is no indication that such factors played a role in the Roman context. This is not to say that migration had no impact on fertility in late Republican Italy, as should be clear from the above. Skewed sex ratios could have been one factor in this, economic conditions another. These are in fact regarded as an explanation of the fuzzy relationship between migration and rates of marriage in historical Germany. But social (or socio-cultural) factors would not have contributed to depressing fertility among migrants in Rome in the same way they did in early-modern cities. Ancient Rome therefore differed in an important respect, and one that suggests that migration there would have had less of an impact on fertility than elsewhere. In other words, while it is correct to assume that the city of Rome could not reproduce itself and depended on migration for ‘reproduction’, the picture for Italy as a whole is different. Migrants who did not contribute to sexual reproduction in the city may well have done so elsewhere. To the extent that we are willing to believe that a differential life expectancy between countryside and city is likely, even if less pronounced than previously assumed, a model in which
Grant () – with Fig. , and –. Grant (), who argues that overall economic conditions rather than migration itself underlie different relationships between migration and marriage. This could be one reason why the grain dole may have been important to supporting natural reproduction among part of the population in Rome, as suggested by Morley () .
The demographic parameters
fertility tended to be concentrated in the countryside can even be considered beneficial to population growth. This holds true in particular if the mortality effects of urbanization were most severely felt among newborn infants, which some demographers believe was the case. 6.7 resident population reproduction In the debate about urbanization and the urban graveyard, the residential population of Rome also plays a role. The term ‘residential’ is taken to mean those men and women who were born in Rome and spent their entire life course there – that is, those who never migrated. Emphasis on the existence of such a group of permanent residents, perhaps to be equated with the recipients of the corn dole, has arisen in the wake of the envelope model introduced by Sharlin. He argued that there is a separation in or divergence of demographic characteristics between resident urban populations and the migrant populations living in cities. Resident urban populations would have been more likely to reproduce themselves than migrants in the cities for two reasons: because they were more accustomed to life in a harsh disease-ridden environment, and because sex ratios would be more even among the resident population. Extensive discussion of the argumentation underlying these assumptions has little to do with the impact of migration on mortality and fertility in the Roman population, and is beyond the scope of this chapter. Nonetheless, there is little reason to question these ideas in general terms. At the same time, it has been emphasized that, notwithstanding this, urban populations as a whole died earlier and produced no more or even fewer offspring than countryside dwellers, and in fact faced natural deficits. This hypothesis, derived from comparative evidence, is of obvious interest to the question of the impact of urbanization on overall population development. The next section considers this issue of urbanization and macro-demographic developments in Italy in greater detail. In contrast to the preceding sections, the demography of resident and migrating subpopulations in both urban and rural contexts is there treated as a whole. 6.8 the macro-dimension: internal migration and population development in italy In the previous sections of this chapter, I discussed some aspects of the demographic impact of internal migration. Briefly summarized, we can
See e.g. Woods ().
Sharlin () and ().
Migration
assume the following. Migration to cities, Rome in particular, disrupted the main demographic determinants more profoundly than migration to colonies did. There are reasons to assume that urbanization increased mortality rates, although perhaps not as drastically as has been assumed. Higher fertility rates among urban newcomers are not to be expected; instead, theirs were probably somewhat lower than those among the rural population and the sedentary urban population – but again, differences have likely been overstated. Urbanization thus exacted a demographic toll, and in that sense the evocative use of the concept of the ‘urban graveyard’ is fitting. Urbanization slowed population growth. This idea has paved the way for an absolute statement often found in the literature on Roman Italy, that urbanization slowed natural demographic growth, or even led to overall demographic decline, because Rome experienced an absolute birth deficit and was therefore a black hole on an unprecedented scale. The underpinning of this hypothesis is the argument that ‘as mortality in the city was noticeably greater than in the countryside; assuming that fertility was no higher, Rome must (my emphasis) have experienced the same “urban natural decrease” as other pre-industrial cities’. This is a widely accepted but critically flawed argument. One problem is that the reasoning is tenable only if the population of the country was stationary. As Finlay rightly stressed, unless the countryside population itself did not experience natural growth, the argument on the demographic peculiarities of large cities demonstrates only a relative ‘decline’, not an absolute decline. In other words, although mortality in Rome was higher than in the countryside, and birth rates were not correspondingly higher, so that Rome ate into demographic surpluses, this does not automatically imply that the city suffered urban natural decrease. This is not to say that the hypothesis is inherently unlikely, only that it is not demonstrable. Whether we like it or not, its truth or fallacy depends on what are ultimately three unknowns: initial natural growth in the countryside, total population size, and the rate of urban population development. Because we lack the requisite numerical data, there is no hope that we can carry our understanding of the impact of urbanization beyond a combination of plausible assumptions. What we can address with the help of further analysis, however, is one of the more reprehensible effects of this misconception. The concept of the ‘urban graveyard’ has been attributed the strength of a natural law in ancient history, and the continuing discussion of urban–rural mortality differentials among urban demographers has
Cf. again Lo Cascio (), for extended criticism on the concept of urban natural decrease. Finlay () . Morley () .
The demographic parameters
Percentage ever married among women at age X; Rome vs London 100 90
% ever married
80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 15
20
25
30
Age London, St Peter Cornhill
London, Allhallows
Rome
Figure . A comparison between percentages of women ever married in London and Rome* * Note that percentages of women ever married for London are directly attested, whereas in the case of Rome they are inferred from the percentage of grave inscriptions on which a deceased woman is commemorated by a husband. See also Chapter . Sources: London data are derived from Finlay () , Table .. Data on Rome stem from Scheidel (d) (based on Saller’s () analysis).
received little attention. It is true that in many early-modern European cities, births fell short of deaths. This is perhaps still a strong argument for regarding the natural urban decline model as the most viable for the ancient world. On the other hand, we may be overplaying our confidence with respect to Rome, not because mortality patterns would have deviated much from early-modern cities in a positive sense, but because marriage patterns were fundamentally different from those observed in the best documented cases of urban natural decrease. A pronounced difference from overall marriage patterns in London emerges when the former are set against the data on marriage in ancient Rome derived from the commemorative shift inscriptions addressed in detail in Chapter . The divergence between Rome and early-modern London is depicted in Figure .. Clearly, women in Rome were much more inclined to marry, and to marry early, than their counterparts in London. This would have had a bearing on their total fertility rates, unless the
See Woods ().
Migration
differences were offset by lower marital fertility among Roman women. But given that, as far as we can tell, marriage in Rome took place much earlier and was more widespread than in early-modern London, the difference in the spacing of childbearing within marriage would have had to be substantial to offset the London backlog. By age , % of women in Rome had been married for at least years, as compared to a mere % of their counterparts in London. It is easy to see how, under a natural fertility regime with little difference in life expectancy, women in Rome in all likelihood did not reproduce less than their female counterparts in London, but more. With regard to the problem of ‘urban natural decrease’, the fundamental difference with respect to marriage habits should be taken into account. It undermines the validity of direct derivation from the London scenario. Because the proximate determinants of fertility rates were fundamentally different in Rome, we cannot simply assume that the per , surplus of deaths over births would have been valid for Roman Italy as well. In this light, it is noteworthy that in East Asia, where fertility determinants seem to resemble conditions in ancient Rome more closely, urban natural decrease has been documented less securely. It has been suggested that, in this context, urbanization was less destructive demographically than it was in Europe. The relevance of the fundamentally different marriage patterns in Asia and in Roman Italy is that, all else being equal, they theoretically provide a larger scope for natural replacement of at least the resident city population than did the later-and-limited-marriage models characteristic of north-western Europe. This undermines the methodological validity of deriving absolute urban natural decline in late Republican Italy from comparative material. What we need are quantitative models that do not transplant a single population development figure, but work with two independent hypotheses on urban levels of mortality and of fertility, measured both in absolute terms and as compared to their respective rural rates. The question is whether, in the Roman context, elevated urban mortality would have resulted in urban natural decrease at all times. It is surely wrong to assume that low life expectancy populations are by definition incapable of producing substantial natural growth. Whereas a population with a life expectancy at birth of years can achieve a theoretical maximum annual growth of .%, a population with an overall
The debate on this issue is ongoing: see Woods (). See Lee and Wang () on China, where women married young and in large numbers as well. Note that it is only the fertility potential that is larger; actual fertility would not need to be so. Checks on population growth simply worked differently, with a larger role for infanticide and birth spacing in limiting the number of surviving offspring in the Chinese and Roman contexts.
The demographic parameters
life expectancy of years at birth can still achieve a growth rate of .%, and .% at e = . Such populations never reach such extremes, and a long-run growth rate of .% annually is already quite high for the preindustrial period. But the reason is not that overall base mortality is too high to achieve high population growth rates. Instead, for various reasons, fertility fails to compensate, and mortality frequently spikes or may even be ‘artificially’ elevated (i.e. as a result of specific human behaviours). Italy too experienced mortality spikes and excess deaths induced, for example, by warfare and infanticide, processes that curtailed growth. At the same time, fluctuations in excess and spike mortality produce irregularities in mortality rates beyond baselines, for example because warfare was intermittent and the percentage of soldiers recruited in Italy varied over time. Such fluctuations are to be expected in both urban and rural areas, and this implies that even if the ‘urban graveyard effect’ was always present, it need not always have been equal to an absolute natural urban deficit. In other words, whereas urbanization constantly slowed overall natural growth, simultaneous natural growth in city and countryside is not beyond conceptual limits. For all we can reasonably expect, however, in practice this would be a temporary exception, and any urban natural growth would most likely be minimal, given that rapid natural growth in the countryside is unlikely. 6.9 the final factor: migration across the alps In addition to the growing urbanization of the Italian population, the balance of in- and out-migration rates would have affected population numbers in Italy and their development over time. Our focus on internal migration flows has concealed their importance up to this point. Ultimately, the aggregate effects of migration on the population development of late Republican Italy depended on both internal migration and movement in and out of Italy. The net effects of migratory flows across the peninsular ‘border’ were spasmodic. We know little about the magnitude of these flows. Speaking in very general terms, however, we can conclude that the net migration rate, the sum of immigration and out-migration, changed from plus to minus over time. The Republican period of conquest was characterized
Coale and Demeny () , , . Note in this context Sharlin () and (), who argues that the resident population of London, as opposed to the migrant population, was capable of reproducing itself. A further entry into the unresolved discussion of urban natural reproduction: Woods ().
Migration
by large inflows of slaves to Italy. Although estimates of the number of foreign slaves in Italy during the Republican period have been adjusted considerably downward in recent years, the more modest new totals still imply a significant contribution of involuntary migration to population numbers in Italy. Out-migration from Italy in all likelihood was not equally high. Immediately after the Punic War, colonization schemes, stateorganized migration flows, predominantly resettled people within Italy itself. Only six colonies are known to have been settled in the provinces before the Civil Wars of the mid-first century bce: Palma and Pollentia on the Balearic Islands (Mallorca) near Spain in bce; Narbo Martius (Narbonne) in bce; and Aleria (Corsica, by Sulla), Mariana (Corsica, by Marius) and possibly Valentia in Spain ( bce?), although the latter was perhaps not established until Augustus. The sizes of these colonies are not securely attested, but they seem to have included somewhere between , and , settlers apiece. Distributions to individual discharged soldiers and convent¯us in which ex-recruits lived are also recorded for the provinces during the Republican period, for example in Spain. To their numbers we should add independent migrants, who moved to the provinces on their own account for various reasons, for example to conduct business as negotiatores, or as publicani. It is thought that a convent¯us could also consist of individual migrants who gathered together in a conventus civium Romanorum, a type of settlement organization found in first-century bce western provinces that was not recognized as having public status. Only later, under Augustus, were these communities promoted to municipal
See Ch. , Section ... Earlier estimates amounted to as many as three million slaves; now there is a tendency to think in numbers below two million, or even as low as . million. Gaius Gracchus’ plans to found the colony Carthago Junonia were torpedoed in bce by his political opponents. They successfully played on sentiments that hinted at the novelty of the plans to found a colony overseas: it would have weakened the cohesiveness of the citizen body to settle part of them overseas; it denied Romans their birthright, dragging them off into exile; the gods were against it. Salmon () –. Velleius Paterculus .. claims that it was actually founded, as the first Roman colony in the provinces, just before Narbo Martius: Prima autem extra Italiam colonia Carthago condita est. Subinde Porcio Marcioque consulibus deducta colonia Narbo Martius. Brunt () follows Paterculus. Velleius Paterculus ... Cf. Salmon () . Strabo ..; Brunt () . For these three, see the appendix of colonies by Salmon () –. All provincial colonies founded during the Republican (as well as the Augustan) period can be found in Brunt (), Appendix . So Brunt () . The Latin colonies established in Italy itself are thought to have included between , and , settlers: see Rathbone (), , n. . Cf. Salmon () . Brunt () , (e.g. Carteia, Italica and Corduba in Spain). Wilson () remains the most extensive study of private emigration from Italy in Republican times. Cf. also Brunt () , , .
The demographic parameters
or colonial status. That the presence of Romans in provinces during the Republican period could be of a long-term character is shown by a passage in Livy relating to bce. In that year, a delegation from Spain came to the senate to request a town to inhabit. The delegation consisted of representatives of , non-citizen hybridae, children from mixed marriages between Roman fathers and indigenous, non-Roman women: And there came another delegation from Spain, of a new kind of people. They identified themselves as born from Roman soldiers and Spanish women between whom there was no legal marriage. They were over , people, and they asked if they might be given a town in which to live.
It is hard to imagine, however, how this type of migration could have been of equal quantitative importance, at least for most of the Republican period. The numbers of free foreigners who moved to Rome on their own initiative in the early Imperial period can perhaps serve as a reference point for the scale involved. Not many more than , individuals moved to the capital from elsewhere in the Empire of their own accord. One would be hard put, in my view, to argue that unorganized flows in the opposite direction, from Italy to the provinces, would have been of a different order of magnitude. It is questionable whether towns and cities in the provinces would have been more attractive to citizens living in Italy than Rome was – to them or to outsiders. A very large number of inhabitants of Italy would have needed to leave for the provinces to turn the migration balance negative, given that, as noted above, during this period large numbers of slaves entered Italy. Brunt claimed that Italians overseas (including colonists) totalled some , to , around bce – a guess, as he hastens to emphasize. It is hard to tell how many of these would have been first-generation emigrants and how many their offspring. In other words, the balance of in- and out-migration was most likely positive during the period following the Second Punic War, so that immigration would have been a source of population increase in Roman Italy during the late Republic. Around the mid-first century bce, the equilibrium shifted. Imperial conquest was largely complete, and as a
Wilson () –, . Livy ..–. (Trans. S. H.). The senate decreed that they were to be settled on the ocean shore at Carteia, which was to become a Latin colony, under the name ‘Colony of the Libertini’. Thus the estimates of Noy () –, and Scheidel () . Brunt () .
Migration
consequence the influx of slaves slowed. By contrast, rates of outmigration increased markedly after the launch of Caesar’s colonization programme, which settled large numbers of inhabitants of Italy in the provinces, and was extended by Augustus, who seems to have founded more than twice as many colonies. According to Suetonius, Caesar settled , citizens from the capital alone in the provinces. Hence migrant outflows from Italy increased. It should be emphasized, however, that most colonists settled in overseas provinces were former soldiers, who were now being recruited in ever-increasing numbers in those same provinces, so that these settlement programmes consisted at least in part of redistribution of provincials rather than of the emigration of Italians from the Imperial heartland. There is also some evidence that locals were included in the colonies as citizens. Even so, there is no doubt that the period from the Second Punic War to Caesar left more opportunities for non-natural population growth by a net influx of people into Italy than did the last or years of the first century bce.
Harris () f. emphasizes the role still played by slave imports in the Imperial period, pointing to Ephesus as a hub of the slave trade. It is difficult to distinguish, however, between the two on the grounds of the titulature of the colonies, and because of a lack of more precise data about the foundation of colonies, precisely this titulature is often the reference point. Colonies ascribed to Caesar could therefore have been founded by Octavian before he became Augustus, and vice versa. According to Vittinghoff () – Caesar founded colonies, Augustus , mostly in the western provinces. Cf. also Salmon (), Appendix; Brunt () . Suetonius, Divus Iulius .: Octoginta autem civibus milibus in transmarinas colonias distributis. As was the case, for example, when Piso settled his discharged soldiers in Macedonia in bce: the men had been recruited in Macedonia. Cf. Brunt () –. Brunt ( ) .
part iii
Population size
c h ap t er 7
Counting Romans
7.1 introduction: the debate over the population size of roman italy The title of this chapter reveals its main purpose: ‘Counting Romans’ attempts to offer insight into the population size and population development of the Roman citizen body during the late Republican period, through an inductive approach to the census figures. In the preceding chapters, we have seen how economic, climatic and demographic settings and background conditions relating to mortality, fertility and migration shaped Roman Italian society at this stage of its history. This focus has provided a better understanding of the structural and incidental conditions prevalent in the last two centuries bce – conditions that shaped the lives of Roman citizens and had a bearing on the demographic choices they made. It has also allowed us to study the relationship between social structures, social developments and demography from a fresh perspective that kept the charged traditional debate about ‘the population size of Roman Italy’ at arms’ length. This was a deliberate choice. The debate about the population size and population trends at the heart of the Roman Empire, in its core citizen body, began early in the history of modern scholarship. Because of its early origins and the nature of the macro-demographic evidence available, scholarly discussion of the topic abounds in consideration of minute philological and technical detail, and is unlikely to engage the non-specialist reader for long. Debates about (historical) population size and population trends also tend to be sensitive to interference by implicit ideological, ideational or political notions
An earlier version of this chapter was published as Hin (). Note that I obtained De Ligt () too late to include a response in this chapter. Among others, two giants of early classical scholarship engaged with the topic and set out the basic theories on which all subsequent scholarship has built: Beloch () and Mommsen (, , ).
Population size
and value judgements. It is not a coincidence that demography as a scientific perspective had its roots in political arithmetic, and that political or moral concerns drove the first efforts to describe and analyse population trends. This is evident in the works of the most prominent and most cited of all early researchers writing on demographic issues, Thomas Malthus. As we have seen, two stances have generally been adopted by historians who study the population size and population development of Roman Italy. One dominant interpretation is influenced by minimalist or, one might say, ‘pessimist’ accounts of Roman history. This view takes it that the political and social turmoil that characterized part of the late Republican period coincided with population recession. Roman historical sources, which do not inform us about actual rates but do express depopulation fears, lend support to this so-called ‘low count’ scenario or interpretation. But such fears do not always reflect actual population developments, nor do statements lamenting a lack of manpower – or advertising the opposite – necessarily represent reality. History has produced many instances when politicians had their facts wrong or used the image of population decline or growth to make a rhetorical case. It does not serve much purpose to go into detail about this here, other than to remark that the list includes men such as Montesquieu, who wrongly thought the population of mid-eighteenth century France was dwindling and had been since Roman times. A second strand of scholarship casts doubt on the scenario of natural decline in the body of free citizens in Roman Italy. Developing an alternative ‘high count’ scenario, the proponents of this view argue that the evidence speaks instead in favour of a natural increase in the number of Roman citizens. At the heart of the argument lies a different interpretation of whom Roman population census figures included. Underlying it are more optimistic views of the economic performance of Roman Italy, favouring, for example, higher agricultural production rates than ‘low counters’ deem possible or plausible. This alternative account of Italy’s history during the late Republic, in other words, is sceptical of Keith Hopkins’ dramatic conclusion that Rome’s conquest of large parts of Europe and beyond was detrimental to the original Roman citizen body, with farmersoldiers from Italy ‘fighting for their own displacement’, socio-economic inequality skyrocketing, and the agricultural population left in poverty and despair.
Stangeland () . Malthus () and (). Hopkins (a) . See in particular Lo Cascio and Malanima ().
Counting Romans
7.2 why count romans again? This brief sketch of the two major approaches to Roman population history cannot and does not aim to lay out each scenario in all its subtlety and detail. What it does provide is a sense of how intertwined the population debate is with accounts of the social and economic history of Republican Italy, and how statements about Italy’s population size and development could accordingly become part of a heated, polarized debate. The academic dispute over the ‘high’ and ‘low’ counts has created a mindset that leaves little space for thinking outside these two scenarios, notwithstanding the fact that the mixed nature of archaeological evidence previously unaccounted for creates an urgent need to move away from an ‘either’/‘or’ choice. A recent study by Walter Scheidel that explicitly points out a number of logical problems with both main interpretations intensifies the need to consider a broader range of perspectives and contextual information, for example on the process and purposes of census taking. This is my purpose in this chapter. I am not embarking on a historiographical research project that follows the development of the two main population scenarios (and their ‘subscenarios’) and analyses their respective strengths and weaknesses. In my view, we have enough studies of this kind. Instead, I focus on setting out an alternative scenario. To be clear about where this interpretation is situated compared to the ‘low’ and the ‘high’ count in numerical and developmental terms, I refer to it as the ‘middle count’. The interpretation I lay out suggests a population for the territory of Italy around the time of Augustus of more than million but less than million people in total, and a developmental scenario of moderate natural growth. That said, it is vital to emphasize again that the scientific context in which we find ourselves prohibits definite and detailed conclusions on this issue. Unlike scholars working on early-modern societies, Roman historians are not in a position to unravel the ‘real’ historical scenario, because the quality and quantity of the evidence does not permit this. That is not to say that the current exercise is pointless. Indeed, the debate is of vital concern to the field of ancient history, and is fundamental to long-term perspectives on European history. For these reasons alone, the question of population size and trends deserves careful evaluation from a broader perspective than is usually adopted.
Scheidel in ‘Roman population size: The logic of the debate’ (b). See Ch. . In addition to Scheidel (b), articles that provide a good entry and/or are seminal to the debate are Kron (); Lo Cascio and Malanima (); De Ligt (); Rosenstein () Chs. and ; Lo Cascio (); Brunt (); Hopkins (a); Frank () and Beloch ().
Population size
There are three major advantages to the intermediate scenario developed here. First, my interpretation of the classical sources gives due consideration to a range of potential motivations for registering subjects in a census, including taxation. This moves beyond two ideas that seem to rest too heavily on what is, in my view, essentially a nineteenth-century, context-specific interpretation of Roman history: the notion that the Republican census was and remained merely a procedure carried out to count potential soldiers, and the idea that a census purporting to represent citizens, if not carried out by Augustus, must qualitate qua or ‘naturally’ represent adult men. As Greek historians have begun to argue, we must come to see the census as a multidimensional, flexible and context-specific tool designed to help organize a dynamic society. To think of it as a static device or institution that did not change significantly during the roughly five centuries before the transition from Republic to Empire may be convenient and economical for ancient historians, but also seems absurd. Second, the population size and development trends implied by the ‘middle count’ harmonize with the argument made in the previous chapters regarding the prevalent economic and demographic parameters and conditions in Republican Italy. These conditions, in conjunction with the behavioural strategies favoured and adopted at the time, indicate that moderate population growth was economically sustainable, and that such growth was possible. At a theoretical level, therefore, a scenario of limited population growth fits better with the historical setting than rapid growth and fairly high population totals, on the one hand, or population decline, on the other. Finally, only the ‘middle count’ interpretation values three important but neglected statements in the ancient sources describing who was included and excluded from the census totals preserved for us. 7.3 outlining a new hypothesis At this point, it seems wise to devote a few words to how I will set out my ‘middle count’ hypothesis. As noted, one main source of evidence at the heart of the debate lends itself to quantification: the census figures. These are population tallies relating somehow to the Roman censuses held in Italy during Republican and early Imperial times. Section . begins by placing these censuses in context, asking why Romans conducted censuses, and with what purposes they may have embarked on the tedious
This view is evident throughout Brunt’s Italian Manpower (), for example at , n. . It goes back to the debates between Beloch and his academic rivals. Cf. Van Wees ().
Counting Romans
undertaking of adding up a vast amount of individual data to construct a total figure – whatever this figure represents. Asking these questions reveals that the range of purposes the collection of census data was meant to serve precluded the use of a single listing or ‘census file’ in all administrative contexts. There must have been various lists circulating simultaneously. This forces the ancient historian to consider whether and how assumptions about the make-up of the recorded tallies fit with the purposes of census taking. Then, in Section ., I consider the process of census taking, drawing attention to the make-up of the original filings from a comparative perspective. Against this contextual background, Section . brings together the various interpretations of the census figures proposed – low count, revised low count, high count and middle count – by summarizing their main assumptions. In Section ., I set out the main arguments in favour of a middle count scenario. This scenario depends on seeing the late Republican census figures as representing legally independent (sui iuris) adult men, and the Augustan censuses as including a larger group of people, namely all citizens sui iuris, whether men, women or children. How this hypothesis tallies with demographic parameters and historical developments relating to the legal position of women and children is brought to the fore in Sections . and .. Section ., along with Section ., also draws attention to the fact that the multiplier used by scholars to infer Italy’s total population size from the citizen censuses is a far more flexible entity than students of the population size debate have seemed to realize. This implies that whatever base scenario one chooses, considerable margins must always be taken account of. In Section ., the final section before the conclusion, I set out more precisely the lower and upper limits for a middle count scenario. In all this, two things are missing: a certain extent of detail that some readers might wish to see in a discussion of this sort, and reference to the archaeological dimension of the debate. For the first, I refer the reader to my earlier article on the topic, the second comes to the fore in the next chapter. 7.4 the roman interest in measuring population Why should the Roman state have wanted to register (parts of ) its population, whom was it interested in, and why did it make sense to list their names or total numbers? What purposes, in other words, underlay the
Hin ().
Population size
massive project of census taking carried out regularly by state officials under the supervision of a special magistrate appointed as the censor? There is a generally accepted answer to this question: the state had an interest in collecting information about its citizen subjects because it wanted them to serve in the army and pay various taxes that filled the treasury, and because it wanted to give voting rights exclusively to those with citizenship rights. The Roman census thus had a threefold purpose: it served to identify citizens with voting rights, citizens who could serve in the army, and citizens liable to taxation. While ancient historians have acknowledged and advertised this, the dominant interpretations attribute great importance to the origin of the earliest census as a headcount of men able to fight, and accordingly interpret all Republican censuses over the ensuing five centuries as representing adult men, counted for the purpose of military recruitment. Against this, it should be emphasized that information on different subsections of the population was in fact needed for each of the three main purposes of census taking. The implications of this are twofold. First, there must have been multiple census listings, because a single listing could not serve all purposes at once. The totals or tallies we know as ‘the’ census figures may therefore be linked with an enumeration for one of the three aforementioned purposes, or may be an independent tally based on documentation gathered during the census taking process. Second, when subsequent census totals are or seem irreconcilable, this may point to variations in the success rate of registration. But one may also seek an explanation in the inclusion or exclusion of smaller or larger shares of the population as a result of shifting purposes for the census, or because of changing requirements of the users of the census data. We will return to both issues in Section .. First we must establish which people, which subsections of the population, would be targeted by the census in the context of each of the three purposes, of military recruitment, securing liability for taxation and distributing voting rights. In order to assess the state’s military potential, it was vital to identify those who could be recruited and serve in the Roman army. Individuals of interest to the censors and the politicians ordering the census would therefore have been men who were both healthy and ‘of military age’ – that is, between and years old. We may imagine that the census was also used for keeping track of younger men who would in due course
For these threefold purposes, e.g. Wiseman (). Hin () deals extensively with the question of why ‘those of military age’ should be – years old.
Counting Romans
become liable for service. Men older than , on the other hand, were no longer liable for military service, and those permanently unfit (mentally or physically) would obviously be of no use for the army. As we have seen, the latter group was probably substantial: it is estimated that, given the demographic background conditions, people spent on average nearly one-sixth of their life in a state of severe disability, mostly as a result of communicable disease. The need to identify potential soldiers on the basis of census information was pressing until the end of the second century bce, but dwindled after the Roman army slowly but steadily grew from a drafted citizen army into an army of volunteer professionals under Marius and Sulla. For assigning voting rights, the target group would be slightly different. Once again, only citizen males would need to be identified for this purpose, but in this case all males over age were of interest. The Roman Republic was far from a democracy, but there were nonetheless political institutions for and in which citizens could vote. The comitia tributa, or ‘citizen assembly’, is recognized as the most important among them, because the votes of poor and rich counted equally in it. The comitia tributa, however, could only accommodate a minor and rapidly diminishing share of the growing body of Roman citizens. In other words: de iure, the creation of a roster of the electorate would have had a function as a legal instrument to ensure that voting procedures took place in legitimate fashion for as long as the Republic lasted. But de facto such an undertaking would have entailed considerable effort to little effect: very few of those registered would be able to cast legitimate votes at any point in time. It is, moreover, much debated whether there were in fact procedures to formally identify voters before a vote. The thesis that there were, or would have been, ballot lists
Note the interesting characterization in the returns from the Maryland census of , in which all white American men above are described as ‘defective white males above age sixteen’. Quoted in Scott Smith () –. See Ch. , Section ... On the transition of the Roman army from citizen militia to professional army, cf. e.g. Cagniart () with further references. See e.g. North () f.; Jehne () – and Mouritsen (), Ch. . Although men with citizenship rights were also entitled to vote in the comitia centuriata, the vote of the rich counted more heavily there (cf. North () ). For the decline in theoretical maximum rates of political participation among the Roman citizenry over time, see Scheidel () – Figs. and , and –. See e.g. Millar () f., who argues that the number of voters and the composition of the body of voters depended heavily on chance, circumstance and/or organization by interest groups who determined which tiny minority would in fact be present at the Forum and vote.
Population size
made on the basis of census declarations and used for voting is thus far from universally supported in modern scholarship. Yet another subsection of the Roman population was of interest for taxation purposes. The term ‘taxation’ is somewhat misleading in the context of Roman Italy, because the main ‘tax’, tributum, was not a permanent imposition established by law, but an irregular levy decreed and collected by the Senate according to circumstances, and could be repaid when the treasury was in surplus. These needs were determined largely by military expenditure. Tributum was a flexible imposition not only in terms of the amount that citizens could be charged, but also with regard to the number of individuals charged. Only those ‘in their own right’, and not under the legal supervision or authority of another (usually an older male relative) could own property, and only they could therefore be taxed. Land, property on land, movable assets (including slaves) and cash could all be taxed, and tax burdens rose with increasing wealth. The evidence is inconsistent on whether the poorest citizens were exempted – which might imply that Roman policy on this varied according to need. Because the defence of the Republic was not deemed a woman’s responsibility, women were, it seems, by default not liable to provide the Roman army with financial means under normal conditions. Such may be inferred from accounts in Livy, Appian and Plutarch. Taxes were collected by publicani who gained the right to collect taxes for the duration of a period between two censuses, through winning bids written out by the censor(s). The army tax was characteristic of Republican Rome until it was officially abolished in bce, when the burden of paying for the army was officially transferred to the provinces Rome had conquered. Until bce, therefore, it is easy to see why Roman administrative bodies might
Nicolet (b) – is positive about the existence of an identification procedure; Virlouvet () f. and Mouritsen () both negative. Evidence is scanty; controversy rests mainly on divergent interpretations of Varro, Res Rusticae .. and Plutarch, Marius .–. See also Hin () –. Northwood () –. See Nicolet (a) and Mersing (). Livy ..– (voluntary contribution of women during the Second Punic War); Appian, Bellum Civile .–; . (attempt to impose tributum on the , richest Roman women, averted by Hortensia); Plutarch, Publicola (widows and children not liable to taxation). On their nonliability, cf. Mommsen () –. Widows and orphans, on the other hand, were liable to provide means to sustain the army’s horses, at least during the early days of the Roman Republic: Livy .. ( bce) and Festus L. Plutarch, Camillus ( bce) refers only to orphans, stating that they were made liable to taxation because war costs required this. Badian () and –. Roman citizens who lived in the provinces overall did not escape military tributum. There were some exceptions, because tax policy in the provinces was diverse, but in principle ‘overseas’ citizens continued to be liable: see Neesen () f.
Counting Romans
have wanted to know exactly who was liable for taxation and could be taxed when needed. But the end of military taxation did not turn Roman Italy into the tax-free heaven it is sometimes thought to have been. First, the exemption from tributum applied only to the Ager Romanus, and, from bce on, to the territory of Italy. Other land was taxed, and Roman citizens who lived in Italy but legitimately owned property outside the Italian Ager Romanus were liable to taxation on it. This meant that there was still a need to maintain oversight of the amount of taxable land owned by citizens. In addition, Roman citizens living in Italy had to pay a number of other taxes. The vectigalia were a levy on the use of public land (ager publicus) by individuals who did not own the land. There was also a % tax on the manumission of slaves, the so-called vicesima libertatis (see e.g. Livy ..), and, from the time of Augustus, a % tax on inheritances. The collection of the tax on the manumission of slaves, however, did not necessarily require assessment on the basis of census information. How much tax a slave owner (or the slave himself ) needed to pay as a transaction fee to obtain freedom under the vicesima libertatis law, for example, might well have been established at the moment of enfranchisement, on the basis of what the slave seemed to be worth. The practicalities of the process of tax collection are largely a matter of conjecture, and whether the collection of census data played an important role in fiscal processes is thus open to debate. Some scholars think that for all taxes, the responsible tax farmers made on-the-spot assessments or estimates of the amount individuals needed to pay. But the census certainly provided vital information for establishing land rights and property, and could therefore be used to check the value of inheritances and individuals’ liability to property tax. In my view, it is likely that publicani used such existing data, because they had to prepay the taxes they wanted to collect and therefore needed a general idea of the value of taxation rights prior
Cf. Badian () . On taxation in the Roman provinces, see e.g. Cicero, In Verrem .. and .., who refers to Asia, Macedonia, Spain, Gaul, Africa and Sicily, and to the different systems of extraction that coexisted. For the liability of Italian citizens who owned land outside of Italy, see one of the remaining sections of Ulpian’s On the Census, preserved as Digest .. Cf. also Nicolet (a) – with n. and , n. ; Levick () – and Burton () . Specialists debate the extent to which the vectigalia were enforced: see most recently Roselaar () –. That slaves paid the enfranchisement tax themselves from their peculium is attested in various sources, most notably Petronius’ Cena Trimalchionis .. See G¨unther () –. Cf. G¨unther () – and (on the vicesima hereditatium). Note in this context Brunt () , who sees the census as vital for taxation law. Cf. also Tan () .
Population size
to bidding for them. On-the-spot assessments would be too late and too labour-intensive to yield broad quantitative insights; census enumerations would provide the most efficient way to get an overview and enable rough predictions of proceeds. They clearly did not allow for fine estimates, since several variables in the equation would remain blank, but at least they would allow for significantly better predictions than would be possible without them. The census would not allow one to determine, for example, where and when slaves would be manumitted, but at least it provided insight into diachronic trends in the number of slaves. Obviously, censors too had an interest in such data, since they were responsible for farming out taxation rights. In sum, even if census listings did not directly serve tax collectors at the moment of collection, they facilitated determination of the approximate amount of tax available for collection. This would enable tax farmers, publicani, to estimate anticipated revenue. It would also enable the state to auction the right to collect taxes to publicani for approximately the ‘right’ amount, thereby securing income for the treasury without maintaining the bureaucracy required to collect it. In provinces where or at times when censuses were not held, tax farmers would have based their bids for the job on other sources. But where and when censuses were available, they were a detailed source of information that included various types of property, among them amounts of land, number and ages of slaves, and (if we can believe Ulpian) the harvests and land usage of past years. For Roman political leaders, moreover, the question of how to secure a steady flow of money into the treasury remained a source of concern. This may have provided a motivation to keep track of both the means of income citizens lived off and the number of slaves they owned. Although actual taxation policy does not seem to have changed before the end of the Republic, there is evidence that politicians – Julius Caesar and Augustus in particular – attempted to devise methods to increase the state’s income, and sought to target new groups of people for taxation from
For the bidding procedure and the extent to which it was formalized in the leges censoriae, see Badian () –. Magistrates, often censors, set the conditions for bidding the contracts. Cf. Levi () –. See also Scramuzza () –, who argues that tax farmers used lists of property as a basis for their bids on taxation rights in third- and second-century bce Sicily. On tax farming in the late Republic, see e.g. Hollander () ; Levi (). Ulpian, Digest ..: ‘The census regulations provide that landed properties are to be registered for census purposes in the following manner . . . how many iugera of the arable land were sown within the previous ten years; how many vines the vineyard has; of olives how many iugera and how many trees they have; how many iugera of meadowland were mown within the previous ten years; the estimated iugera of pasture-lands; and likewise that of woodland for felling’.
Counting Romans
the mid-first century bce on. As we will see in more detail in Section .., Augustus made or contemplated repeated attempts at fiscal reform throughout his political career. This preoccupation with tax reform might underlie changes in the recorded citizen totals, as I argue in due course. Options he considered included a % inheritance tax and a land and property tax for Roman citizens. Throughout the Republican period and during the transition to Empire, in other words, the Roman state and its political kingpins were concerned to know where resources could be got and how large they were. Counting people also served government decision-making regarding resource allocation. During the late Republic, populist measures began to absorb ever larger shares of state income. Public handouts of grain in Rome are the best example. Information needed to control state expenditures such as these was not necessarily included in the ordinary census. The Tabula Heracleensis from Rome, which defined the preconditions for receiving public grain, shows that eligibility was determined on the basis of declarations provided by the household head in compliance with Roman law. These declarations seem to have been collected independently – or at least it is not clear that they were part of the census declarations as we know them. Nonetheless, the example shows that controlling state expenditures and securing tax inflows could both be motives for counting people and their resources. The bottom line, then, is that censuses served manifold purposes, and that their relevance and their target populations could vary according to circumstances. 7.5 the process of census taking The informative value of population data increases, as demographers are keen to emphasize, with greater insight into the data acquisition process. In the context of the debate over what the Roman census data represent, therefore, two elementary questions deserve more attention than they are usually given: how did the Roman administration perform the census operation, and how did it process the data it obtained?
Cf. G¨unther () on Octavian’s claim that his new taxation legislation went back to an idea in Julius Caesar’s memoirs. Inheritance tax in ce: Appian, Bellum Civile .f., .; Dio Cassius ..–, ..–. Augustus’ request to the Senate to first investigate all other possible sources of revenue is regarded as mere lip service by Dio Cassius ..–, who stresses that he already had his own plans. Change of inheritance tax to land tax in ce: Dio Cassius ..–. See also G¨unther (). Tabula Heracleensis l. –. Text, translation and commentary in Crawford () –. Cf. Nicolet () .
Population size
Roman census officers were in office for months and seem to have registered the population in sections. Three ancient authors – Dionysius, Cicero and Gellius – as well as the inscription known as the Tabula Heracleensis inform us about how the census taking was organized. Roman citizens who were sui iuris had to make a declaration under oath before a census official. The concept sui iuris is probably most closely equivalent to the English ‘legally independent’. A citizen sui iuris was not under the legal authority of another person, but ‘in his own right’, which meant that he or she could own property, have dependants and – if he was a man – exercise legal authority over others. The declarant had to provide information about the amount and nature of his property (including slaves, who counted as such) and the dependants who were part of the household. Whether one was liable to file a declaration with the census was thus determined by one’s legal status as a civis sui iuris, a legally independent citizen or the head of an (occupied or empty) household. These were the citizens who could own property. In theory, this meant that women and children who were sui iuris were also liable to making a declaration for the census. Under the demographic regime prevalent in Roman Italy, with young women marrying older men and a low life expectancy, a considerable share of women would have been widows, and orphanhood was relatively widespread. Nor was divorce uncommon. Divorcees, widows and orphans who had fallen under the authority of a husband and father now dead and had not come to belong to someone else’s household were also sui iuris, and would therefore head a household and be property owners. Three clauses added to census figures, however, state that they were not included in the tallies derived from the census. The census figures for bce and bce tell us that the number of citizens censused was, respectively, praeter orbos orbasque and praeter pupillas et viduas. The earlier census of bce is said to have counted , ‘widows and orphans being excused from taxes’:
. . *2 ! *G
3 , )" 5 .5 7
Cicero, Archias : primis Iulio et Crasso nullam populi partem esse censam, ‘in the first year under Julius and Crassus no census of any section of the population was held’ (i.e. in bce). Cf. also Livy .. for separate registration of equites, apparently post-dating the lustrum of bce. Dionysius Halicarnassus ..; Cicero De Legibus ..; Gellius ..; Tabula Heracleensis ll. –. Cf. Bourne (a) . See Brunt () for further references. Livy .. ( bce): praeter orbos orbasque; the same phrasing appears in the Periochae of Book . Orbae may refer to both orphaned girls and orphaned women, as is illustrated by the fact that the Loeb translator chooses ‘besides orphans and widows’ for .. but ‘besides male and female wards’ for the Periochae. Cf. OLD and TLL vol. . ‘orbus’ Ab and Ab. Vidua can refer to widows as well as divorced women: see Treggiari () , n. . Livy Periochae . ( bce). add. Mommsen.
Counting Romans
* 5 ! +" . It has been suggested that the phrases imply that in the census following bce, widows and orphans came to be included, but as I have argued elsewhere, this theory should be abandoned on quantitative demographic grounds. Citizens denoted as in potestate or alieni iuris (‘in the power of/in the right of someone else’) were registered by their household head, because they fell under the authority of the latter. These would most often be children and wives. But not exclusively, since adult children whose fathers (or grandfathers) were still alive would need to be released from their power by means of a formal procedure of emancipatio to become independent. Until this unfixed moment in time, they would be alieni iuris and declared by their household head. This is in line with common practice elsewhere: in ancient, early-modern and contemporary censuses, data are usually collected at the household level and group people according to household membership, as belonging to a unit headed by a household head. Roman censuses do stand out historically, in that they used an individual enumeration procedure, which described and provided information about every individual included. To get from these individual enumerations to listings and tallies serving the strategic objectives of the census, the data needed to be processed. Given that the Roman census was held regularly, but with an interval of about five years on average, the census information and listings also required regular updating to be useful. The Roman census figures transmitted to us are
Plutarch, Publicola .. The census figure of , for bce is also referred to at Dionysius Halicarnassus . (see Appendix ). Suolahti () –. Hin (). Some have interpreted the term duicensus, defined in Festus L as dicebatur cum altero, id est cum filio census, as implying that adult sons who were declared by their father (and hence presumably alieni iuris) were nonetheless counted separately from them. See e.g. Lo Cascio (b) and . But Dionysius Halicarnassus .. undermines this hypothesis. He refers to sons alieni iuris as registered by their fathers but excluded from the final census figure. This undermines De Ligt () . Cf. in general Wolfe () and Alterman (), though the latter tends to be uncritically descriptive. State- or region-based case studies of the nature of censuses include Bagnall and Frier () on the census of Roman Egypt; Loewe (), Ch. and Durand () on the Chinese census in the Qin and Han periods; Hammel and Wachter (), esp. and on Slavonia (current Croatia) in (where women were only included if they were widowed household heads, not if they belonged to a husband’s household); Presser () and Scott Smith () on the US censuses; Winther () on Japan. Many early censuses, including the first American censuses taken between and , listed household heads but only the number of their dependants in various categories (e.g. by gender, age and civil status). Other members of the household, in other words, were not listed individually or known by name. Often the precise nature of their relationship to the household head also remained unclear. See for the US Anderson () –; Scott Smith () . For similar practice in seventeenth-century England, cf. Scott Smith () with Fig. .
Population size
outcomes of a particular data processing operation. As already noted, logic requires that the census officials or other bureaucrats composed several lists on the basis of the household enumerations, each created to meet one of the various needs the census was intended to fulfil. Data scarcity forces us to hypothesize this where Roman Italy is concerned, but we can find some comfort in the fact that a variety of derivatives is well-documented for the censuses held in Egypt during the Roman period – censuses that also drew on household records as the primary registration enumeration. Obviously, the information gathered during the process of data collection was meant in the first place to serve internal governmental aims. But findings also spread through external information channels, as they were picked up by contemporary historians and other writers. That Augustus included the data to embellish his ‘memoirs’ known as the Res Gestae, makes clear that leading politicians were also keen to use population information as a propaganda tool. 7.6 figuring out the meaning of some figures: alternative population accounts Knowing all this – that the census had multiple purposes, that politicians were well aware of its utility as a political tool in various realms, and that the census tallies available to us come with little explicit background information about each particular tally – it is easy to understand why the size of Italy’s population and its development are difficult to infer from the census tallies, and why alternative population accounts diverge so widely. Surviving census tallies cover the period between bce and ce, but with varying intervals between individual figures. Because the scope of this book is more limited, my focus is on the figures dating to between bce and ce. This has the additional advantage that we need not worry too much about what was going on before, in a period when the census figures show no consistent series. For this early period, the figures are considered unreliable by most scholars, not only because of their numerical fluctuations, but because the indications in the Greek and Roman sources as to what they represent vary almost by the census: from ‘those in their youth’ in bce, to ‘men’ or ‘people’ in bce, to
On the basis of the household enumerations, scribes created person-by-person copies, summaries, lists of minors, lists of katoikoi and lists of those excluded from the tax estimate. There is evidence for this in P. Mich. xi (/ ce), which seems to be a collective employment contract for a group of nine scribes and gives an account of the tasks they need to perform. Cf. also Bagnall and Frier (), which draws on earlier work by Hombert and Pr´eaux ().
Counting Romans
‘citizens assessed’ in bce, to ‘citizens assessed and their adult children’ in bce, to ‘the heads of free people’ in bce, to ‘citizens’ in bce, to ‘heads’ in the next surviving tally of bce. For the period between bce and ce, most figures come from Livy. They are far more consistent, and are generally introduced with a single definition with only minor variations in word order: censa sunt capita civium (x), meaning ‘the heads of (x) citizens have been censused’. But even these later census figures are not without difficulties. Livy’s descriptions of whom the census tallies included are not entirely uniform. One figure from the Punic War seems to have a different base, and an often overlooked explanatory remark accompanies the figure for bce. A few figures are handed down to us by other, much later authors via chronicles and copies or excerpts of them dating to between the third and the ninth century ce. That descriptions and numbers mentioned in these not even remotely contemporary works are more problematic is unsurprising. The main problem in attempting to reconstruct Roman Italy’s population size, however, is in interpreting Livy’s phrase censa sunt civium capita, and in understanding how the three Augustan tallies from the Res Gestae can use the same description but nonetheless be an order of magnitude larger in numerical terms. Because the opposing population scenarios rest on differential interpretations of the descriptions added to the numerical data, the discussion of the size of Italy’s population has strong philological overtones. The proposed population scenarios also draw in part on a different, additional source: not a census figure, but two figures relating to military manpower provided by the historian Polybius. Table . compares three population scenarios proposed by ancient historians: the low count, the revised low count and the high count, as well as my own suggestion, the middle count. The table summarizes the main differences between the various scenarios, and shows how these divergences ultimately reflect different interpretations of Greek and Latin clauses added to the census and manpower figures. The three sources rendered here are not the only relevant ones available, but they are highlighted because these figures have been central to the debate and have been used to buttress different views of Italy’s population size and demographic development over time.
For the precise descriptions in Greek and Latin and the number of people registered in these years, as well as those of other years referred to in this section, see Appendix . They concern the figures for bce (in an Armenian translation of the Greek Chronicle by Eusebius of Caesarea who lived c.– ce); bce (in Hieronymus’ Chronicle, c. ce) and bce (known through a ninth-century excerpt by George Syncellus of a Greek work by the second-century ce author Phlegon of Tralles).
Table . Population size and population trends in a nutshell: main interpretative scenarios as derived from key figures DATA SOURCES Type of source
census figure
military manpower figures Polybius . / Q - 3K L / ;