Census Procedures and the Meaning of the Republican and Early-Imperial Census ﬁgures

chapter 3 Census procedures and the meaning of the republican and early-imperial census ﬁgures

3.1 introduction As long as the low-count theory remained dominant, with Polybius’ manpower figure for the Romans and Campanians generally regarded as repre- senting the number of adult male citizens registered in the census of 229 bc, ancient historians could feel free to reconstruct the demographic history of the Roman citizen body on the basis of the census figures for the third to the first century bc. There were, of course, endless disputes about the exact meaning of these figures and (to a lesser extent) about the degree of accuracy achieved by the republican censors.1 Nonetheless, even those who held that the censors were only expected to register certain categories of citizen were at least inclined to accept that the census figures for the last 200 or 250 years of the Republic gave some rough idea of long-term changes in the number of Roman men of citizen status. Against this view, Lo Cascio has recently argued that the censuses of republican times are likely to have netted a relatively small proportion of their target population.2 If this theory could be proved to be correct, it would open up the possibility that the Roman citizen population (and thus the population of late-republican Italy as a whole) was far larger than previously thought. This is precisely what Lo Cascio and some other high counters have argued. If we take this sceptical attitude towards the reliability of the census figures seriously, as I think we should, we can no longer simply build our demographic conclusions upon these data. Even if the legitimacy of a purely inductive approach to the republican census figures has become uncertain, we can still try to assess the various assumptions that must be made in order to fit these figures into the general demographic frameworks implied by the low and high counts. While such an exercise cannot be expected to provide us with any incontestable

1 Cf. below. 2 Lo Cascio (2001b). 79

3.1.1 A very short account of the republican census It must be emphasized that no coherent account of the republican census is to be found in any Latin or Greek text of the republican or imperial period. This means that the workings of the census during the third, second and ﬁrst centuries bc must be reconstructed from scattered references in historical and antiquarian works, in various of Cicero’swritings and in a few surviving statutes, of which the late-republican Tabula Heracleensis is the most important. As Northwood has recently noted, a more or less comprehensive reconstruction can be achieved only if we assume that some practices of imperial date were continuations from an earlier stage and that certain reports concerning the early Republic are retrojections of later procedures. The obvious danger of this approach is that we end up with a static picture in which the republican census has no history.4 Despite these methodological difﬁculties, there is substantial agreement about the most basic features of the census procedures of the middle and late Republic. Every 5 years, all male citizens who were sui iuris were obliged to declare themselves and their property before the censors’ iuratores. We also read of citizens declaring their wives and their sons in potestate, and the ages of these sons, at least, seem to have been reported.5 Finally, the fragmentary evidence suggests that declarants were obliged to give a monetary valuation

3 Unlike the authors of some recent publications (cf. Chapter 1, at note 126), I do not think that the viability of the low and high counts can be assessed solely on the basis of Augustus’ use of the traditional phrase capita civium censa in the Res Gestae. Even Lo Cascio (1994), 31, concedes that the demographic debate cannot be settled by means of this philological argument. 4 Northwood (2008), 257. 5 DH 5.75.3, with Northwood (2008), 258,n.5.

3.1.2 The central problem: census procedures and registration rates While scholars such as Brunt and Hopkins assume that the republican censuses succeeded in registering between 75 per cent and 90 per cent of the target population (defined by them as all adult men of citizen status), the high counters argue in favour of a deficiency rate of 45 per cent or higher. In support of this claim, Lo Cascio has developed two arguments. His first contention focuses on the various groups of citizens targeted by the republican censors and challenges the low-count view that the censors of the last three centuries bc were expected to register all adult male citizens. Lo Cascio argues that there is good reason to believe that these magistrates were not expected to register either citizens without the vote or legionaries serving outside Italy, and that they made no attempt to achieve full registration of the no doubt numerous proletarians.7 These omissions would, in his view, go a long way towards explaining how about 45 per cent of all adult male citizens might have remained unregistered by the censuses of the third and second centuries bc. Lo Cascio also claims that up until the time of Caesar the Roman government maintained a fully centralized census procedure.8 This would have meant that citizens optimo iure who lived in the peripheral parts of the Ager Romanus (for example, the viritane settlers sent out to Upper Sabinum, the Ager Praetuttianus and Picenum during the third century bc) were expected to travel to Rome in order to present themselves before the censors. During the second century bc, viritane settlers and colonists of citizen status were also sent out to Apulia, Samnium, Aemilia and Liguria, and by the mid-80s bc all of the formerly allied communities south of the Po and all of the Latin colonies in Transpadana had been enfranchised. The corollary of Lo Cascio’s theory is therefore that the registration rates achieved by the censors became progressively lower towards the end of the Republic. It has, in fact, been calculated that his interpretation of the census figure for 70/69 bc implies a registration rate as low as 30 per cent.9 According to Lo Cascio, this trend continued until 45 or 44 bc, when Caesar introduced the fully decentralized census procedure described in the

6 Mommsen (1887), ii, 388–96; Brunt (1971/1987), 15–16; Northwood (2008), 258–60. 7 Lo Cascio (1999b), 232–3. 8 E.g. Lo Cascio (1994); (1999b); (2001b); (2008). 9 Scheidel (1996a), 168.

3.2 the target population of the republican censuses: iuniores and seniores Since the mid-nineteenth century, some ancient historians have maintained that the republican census figures are to be interpreted as referring exclusively to those adult men who could be called up for active military service (in other words, as referring solely to iuniores).12 In recent years, this interpretation has found very few adherents. A partial exception must be made for Lo Cascio, who has suggested that originally the magistrates responsible for the census might have counted only men younger than 46. His main argument is that Fabius Pictor explained the (no doubt fictitious) census figure for the reign of Servius Tullius as referring to those qui arma capere possent.13 If we follow Lo Cascio in interpreting this expression as denoting only those liable for legionary service under normal circumstances, we must conclude that there was a time when only the number of iuniores was recorded.14 It should be emphasized that Lo Cascio fully endorses the prevailing view that by the late fourth century bc (possibly much earlier) the scope of the census had been widened to include all adult men of citizen status, including seniores.

10 The decentralized nature of the census procedure described by the Tabula emerges clearly from lines 142–6, which read as follows: ‘Whatever municipia, colonies or prefectures of Roman citizens are or shall be in Italy, whoever in those municipia, colonies or prefectures shall there hold the highest magistracy or the highest ofﬁce, at the time when a censor or any other magistrate shall hold the census of the people at Rome, within the sixty days next after he shall know that the census of the people is conducted at Rome, he is to conduct a census of all his fellow municipes and colonists and those who shall be of that prefecture, who shall be Roman citizens.’ (Translation: Crawford and Nicolet, in Crawford 1996, 377.) 11 Lo Cascio (2001b), 591. 12 Mommsen (1887), II, 411. 13 Livy 1.44.2. 14 Lo Cascio (2001b), 569–73; cf. Lo Cascio (1999a), 163.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Target population of the census 83 As Beloch pointed out long ago, one weakness in the theory that the census figures refer solely to iuniores is the simple fact that the phrase civium capita contains no reference to any age limit.15 In the second half of the twentieth century this argument was endorsed by Brunt, who observed that one of the aims of the census was to create a reliable basis for the assessment of tributum, which seniores were clearly expected to pay. Since it is difficult to think of any reason why the censors should have registered tax-payers over 45,thenignored them when reporting the total number of civium capita, the most natural assumption is that seniores were included in the published census figures.16 In my view, Beloch’s and Brunt’s arguments are not in any way contra- dicted by Fabius’ use of the expression qui arma ferre possent in relation to the census allegedly carried out by Servius Tullius. As we saw in the previous chapter, the fact that the Roman legions were normally made up of men aged between 17 and 45 does not alter the principle that, at least in theory, any man below the age of 60 could be called up for military duties.17 This explains why Livy’s description of the comitia centuriata (which must originally have been an assembly of all those capable of bearing arms) refers to the possession by seniores and iuniores of identical military equipment. For the purposes of the present discussion, the most important conclusion is that there is no need to posit any shift from an early census that registered only iuniores to a later system covering both iuniores and seniores. Moreover, if (as may well be the case) the practice of census taking evolved during the first century of the Republic, neither Fabius Pictor nor any of his successors is likely to have had any reliable information about the nature or scope of the census in its earliest forms. As Northwood has pointed out, the few pieces of evidence available tend to suggest that all reconstructions of the early-republican census were actually retrojections of administrative practices of the third, second and first centuries bc,18 and as we have seen, there can be no doubt that during this later period the censors were expected to register both seniores and iuniores.

3.2.1 Citizens sui iuris and citizens alieni iuris Another theory, also dating back to the nineteenth century, postulates that all republican census ﬁgures should be interpreted as referring to the number of adult male citizens sui iuris.19

15 Beloch (1886), 317–18. 16 Brunt (1971/1987), 22. 17 Chapter 2, section 2.2.2. 18 Northwood (2008), 257. 19 Zumpt (1840); Hildebrand (1866). In the twentieth century this theory was revived by Bourne (1952). A recent adherent is Hin (2008) and (2009).

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 84 Meaning of the census figures At first sight, this theory is attractive. As we have already seen, the republican censors compiled their lists of citizens using the information supplied by citizens sui iuris (or their representatives) and it seems clear that these were the only declarants. The reasons for this are obvious. Since all Roman citizens were either sui iuris or subject to another citizen who was sui iuris (that is, to a pater familias), accurate information collected from all of the citizens sui iuris would have included every male citizen and could in theory have included the entire citizen population, if those supplying the information were also expected to list every female subject to their potestas. Another practical reason for requiring only citizens sui iuris to present themselves before the censors was that under Roman law these were the only citizens who could own property. Full registration of the citizens sui iuris would therefore have given the censors all of the information they needed to assign adult males to the appropriate property classes. The same information could, of course, also have been used to determine the amount of tributum to be imposed and (in the case of widows and orphans) to determine liability to the aes equestre and the aes hordiarium, used to defray the costs incurred by the equites equo publico.20 Despite these attractive features, the theory that the republican census figures refer to adult men sui iuris raises certain questions that are difficult to answer. It is, for instance, not easy to understand why the censors should simply have published the total number of citizens whose property had been assessed. It is true that such a figure would have revealed the number of adult male citizens upon whom tributum could be imposed, but it seems likely that the Roman authorities would have been more interested in a figure that revealed Rome’s military strength. This reading of the republican census figures would be in keeping with the prevailing view that the census must have originated as a periodic review of the republican army.21 The view that the censors were expected to report the number of men who qualified for military service rather than the number of adult men sui iuris is supported by certain indications in the literary and epigraphic sources. As Beloch points out, one of these is the existence of the technical term duicensus, which Festus explains as cum altero, id est cum filio census.22 The most natural interpretation of this term is surely that it referred to the counting of both a father and his dependent son.23 It is also striking that the

20 E.g. Mommsen (1887), iii, 236, 256–7; Gabba (1949/1976), 8; Kaser (1966a), 105. 21 E.g Wiseman (1969), 59; Lo Cascio (2001b), 569–74. 22 Festus 58L. Cf. Beloch (1886), 316; Brunt (1971/1987), 22; Nicolet (1988), 68; Lo Cascio (2001b), 575; Northwood (2008), 259. 23 Note that Hin (2008), 216,n.96, is unable to come up with a convincing interpretation of the term duicensus.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Target population of the census 85 Tabula Heracleensis orders the local magistrates of Italy to register all those (males) ‘who shall be Roman citizens’ (quei cives Romanei erunt), without narrowing down the target population to citizens sui iuris.24 Similarly, in Cicero’s De Legibus the duties of the censors are described as follows: censoris populi aevitates, suboles, familias, pecuniasque censento (‘the censors are to record the ages, the offspring, the families, and the property of the populus’).25 Here not only the declarants but also their offspring (suboles) are the object of censento. Such passages show that in technical contexts to do with the census the Latin verb censere need not (and often does not) refer specifically to a valuation of property. It is, in fact, clear that in such contexts censere often means ‘to register’ (one of its primary meanings, according to the Oxford Latin Dictionary).26 In my view, this is the key to Livy’s brief reference to the census of 465 bc, of which he reports that ‘the number of civium capita registered (censa), apart from orphans and widows, is said (dicuntur) to have been 104,714’.27 We must surely infer that although orphans and widows were not included in the republican census figures, they were regarded as censi in the sense of ‘having been registered’, evidently because financial burdens could be imposed on them.28 Similarly, dependent sons aged 17 or over had to be registered because they had the right to vote in the centuriae iuniorum of the comitia centuriata.29 Another important argument is that Livy clearly interpreted the republican census figures as referring to all adult men. The best illustration of this is perhaps his well-known digression on the likely outcome of a hypothetical war between the army of Alexander the Great and the Roman armies of the later fourth century bc. As Livy explains, this question can only be answered by comparing the ‘opposing’ forces, taking into account numbers

24 Tabula Heracleensis, lines 145–6 (cf. note 10), as interpreted by Northwood (2008), 259. 25 Cic. Leg. 3.3.7. 26 OLD s.v. censeo. 27 Livy 3.3.9. In my view, the term dicuntur militates against Scheidel’s theory (Scheidel 2009b, 656–7) that the phrase praeter orbos orbasque was added by Livy himself when he wrote Book 3. The fact that Livy uses a different expression (praeter pupillas et viduas) to denote orphans and widows in referring to the census figure for 131/130 bc (Per. Livy 59) is another hurdle for Scheidel’s theory. Instead of focusing on the dates of composition of Books 3 and 59 of the Ab Urbe Condita, we should consider the possibility that Livy copied these expressions from his annalistic predecessors. For this reason, these passages cannot be used to buttress Hin’s theory that, unlike the census figures for the last two centuries of the Republic, those for 28 bc, 8 bc and ad 14 must have included all citizens sui iuris, including orphans and widows. 28 For the financial obligations of orphans and widows cf. above, at note 20. According to some sources (e.g. Plut. Cam.2.2), these taxes were introduced in the early fourth century, but Livy 1.43.9 states that they dated from the reign of Servius Tullius. 29 E.g. Livy 1.43. Cf. Nicolet (1988), 49. Northwood (2008), 259,n.8, suggests that sons were assigned to the same classes as their fathers.

30 Livy 9.19.1. 31 The figure of 250,000 may well be unrealistically high (e.g. Brunt 1971/1987, 27–8; Hopkins 1978, 20, n. 26), but this does not affect my argument. 32 Hin (2008), 202–3, and (2009), 173, suggests that the term capita may refer to the number of units (i.e. households headed by a pater familias) registered. This meaning is not found in any other source, however, whereas there are many texts (especially amongst the works of the Roman jurists) in which caput means ‘individual’ or ‘person’. See Heumann-Seckel (1926), s.v. caput. The latter meaning may also be found in Livy 22.57.11 (a shortage of capita libera after Cannae), in Livy 40.38.6 (40,000 libera capita of the Apuani, including women and children, deported to Samnium), and in many other passages (cf. Giovannini 2008, 52–3). The term capita therefore supports the view that the republican census figures should be read as ‘head counts’ of those able to bear arms, i.e. all men aged 17 or older (cf. below, at note 112), although during the middle and late Republic the number of ‘heads’ was derived from the declarations made by the patres familiarum rather than counted in a literal sense. 33 Livy 3.3.9. 34 E.g. DH 5.20.1 (508 bc) and 5.75.3 (498 bc). In 11.63.2 Dionysius says that in 443 bc the number of hoi en hêbêi was unknown because no census had been taken for 17 years. Bourne’s theory (1952, 130) that Dionysius must have calculated the number of adults from the number of men sui iuris enumerated by the censors strikes me as highly implausible. It is true that in another passage (9.36.3) Dionysius interprets the relatively low census figure for 474 bc as referring only to adult men sui iuris, but I believe that here he is drawing on a source which attempted to explain why the figure for this year is so much lower than those for 508 bc, 498 bc and 493 bc. The annalist

3.2.2 Cives optimo iure and cives sine suffragio During the second half of the twentieth century, some scholars developed the theory that the Roman census figures for the third and second centuries bc did not include the cives sine suffragio (inhabitants of those Italian communities that had been given Roman citizenship, but not the right to vote or to present themselves as candidates for Roman magistracies).37 Although this theory has never attracted many adherents, it has recently been revived by Lo Cascio. An early attempt to disprove the theory that the republican census figures should be interpreted as including only cives optimo iure is to be found in Chapter Eight of Beloch’s Die Bevölkerung der griechisch-römischen Welt. His main arguments were (a) that Polybius gives a single manpower figure for the Romans and the cives sine suffragio of Campania and (b) that citizens without the vote must have been registered because they served in the legions and paid tributum.38

responsible for this ingenious reading must have been inspired by the fact that, even in his own time, the census records were compiled on the basis of declarations made by citizens sui iuris. This anomalous passage does not, of course, diminish the crucial significance of the phrase hoi en hêbêi. 35 The census figures for the late sixth and early fifth centuries bc are widely regarded as artificial creations (e.g. Brunt 1971/1978, 26–7; Alföldi 1977, 125–7; Scheidel 2004, 4,n.17). This makes it difficult to maintain that the annalists of the second and first centuries bc had access to reliable information regarding the census procedures of the early Republic. Nor are they likely to have invented the existence of a procedure completely unrelated to the administrative practices of their own time. Precisely for this reason, it is quite reasonable to use references to the early republican censuses to illuminate later practices (contra Hin 2008, 204–6). 36 Calculated from Hin (2008), 199, Table 1. The hypothetical figure of 13 per cent applies only if we assume that during the Republic adult men whose fathers were still alive never became independent by means of emancipatio. This assumption is clearly unrealistic. 37 E.g. Shochat (1980), 13–16, 36. Shochat supported his theory by pointing to the discrepancy between the census figure for 234 bc and Polybius’ figure for the Romans and Campanians. See Chapter 2,at notes 47–9, for a completely different explanation. 38 Beloch (1886), 318–19.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 88 Meaning of the census figures Neither of these arguments is entirely convincing. As various scholars have pointed out, the Romans and Campanians are not the only groups listed together by Polybius; he also groups together the Etruscans and the cives sine suffragio of (Upper?) Sabinum. As we saw in Chapter 2, Lo Cascio has inferred from this that the Polybian manpower figures are based on regional groupings without regard to the juridical distinctions between citizens, Latins and Italian allies. This theory can easily be refuted.39 Even if we interpret Polybius’ account as being based on a clear distinction between Romans and allies, however, it might perhaps still be possible to argue that, precisely because his basic categories seem to be juridical, his description of the preparations of 225 bc need not reflect the workings of the normal Roman levy. The argument that the censors must have counted cives sine suffragio because these citizens served in the legions is equally insecure. As Mommsen observes, a passage in Festus explicitly states that citizens without the vote served in legione, suggesting that they had the technical status of legionaries.40 Mommsen finds it significant that we never read of alae or turmae (allied units) made up of citizens without the vote, and that Polybius gives a single figure for ‘the Romans and the Campanians’. He also notes that the Roman levy as described by Polybius seems to have been based exclusively on the thirty-five tribes from which the half-citizens were excluded.41 From these facts he concludes that cives sine suffragio and full citizens must have been recruited in separate levies and that the former group must have performed some special form of military service of which no trace survives in the sources.42 With some minor variations, this overall interpretation has been adopted by many twentieth-century ancient historians.43 Against this theory, Lo Cascio has argued that the year 332 bc witnessed the introduction of a new census-taking procedure based on the tribes. Although he concedes that the censors may have been expected to register cives sine suffragio before this reform, Lo Cascio reasons that the fact that these citizens had no tribe must mean that they cannot have been registered by the censors after 332 bc. Instead, he suggests, they must have been registered by local magistrates who carried out censuses independent of those periodically undertaken by the Roman censors.44 Building on these observations, Lo Cascio goes on to construct a very similar argument with

39 Chapter 2, sections 2.2 and 2.2.1. 40 Festus 117 L. 41 Plb. 6.20. Cf. Mommsen (1887), iii, 586. 42 Mommsen (1887), iii, 587. 43 Humbert (1978), 319–20, argues that the cives sine suffragio served in separate units, but nevertheless had the same legal status as Roman legionaries. 44 Lo Cascio (2001b), 579.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Target population of the census 89 respect to the system used to recruit citizen soldiers for the legions. In his view, since the cives sine suffragio could not have been levied by means of the tribe-based system, they must have been expected to serve in the allied contingents. This alternative interpretation implies that Festus’ statement that citizens without the vote were expected to serve in legione must refer to the system of recruitment used before 332 bc45 and that all other references to cives sine suffragio serving in legions should be regarded as non-technical.46 One obvious weakness of this ingenious theory is that the suggestion that local magistrates were responsible for the registration of cives sine suffragio is entirely compatible with the view that the results of these local censuses were sent to the censors in Rome, who could then have combined them with their own figures to calculate the total number of Roman citizens. In this context we should note the existence of the tabulae Caeritum, which contained not only the names of the cives sine suffragio, but also the names of those citizens whom the Roman censors had deprived of the right to vote.47 Since these lists were kept in Rome, it may be inferred that the Roman censors had access to tabulae listing Rome’s half-citizens. Since almost all of the technical clues we have either are open to alternative interpretations or can be eliminated by assigning them to purely hypothetical earlier stages in the history of the census, the only way to resolve this old debate is to take a fresh look at the balance between people and territory implied by the theory that citizens without the vote were not included in the census figures for the third and second centuries bc. The census figure for 280/279 bc, when 287,222 capita civium were registered, provides us with a useful starting point.48 In this year the Ager Romanus covered some 15,295 square kilometres. A very large proportion of this area consisted, however, of regions that had recently been annexed and whose inhabitants had been given the status of cives sine suffragio. Adding up Afzelius’ figures for the areas inhabited largely or exclusively by citizens without the vote gives us an estimate of no less than 12,750 km2, leaving only about 2,545 km2 for those areas originally inhabited by cives optimo iure.49

45 It may be objected that before 332 bc there were very few cives sine suffragio apart from the Campanians. Note that Velleius Paterculus 1.14.3 dates the bestowal of citizenship without the vote on the Campanians to 334 bc rather than to 338 bc, the date suggested by Livy 8.14.10 (Taylor 1960, 60). 46 Lo Cascio (2001b), 582–3. 47 Strabo 5.2.3; Gellius 16.13.7. 48 Per. Livy 13. Of course, all census figures relating to the period before the First Punic War can be dismissed as fictitious (Chapter 1, note 12), but Lo Cascio (2001b), 566, thinks it possible that at least some of the early census figures were based on written records that had survived in family archives. 49 Afzelius (1942), 181, 190–1. At this early date, the main areas in which citizens without the vote are likely to have made up the majority of the population were the Ager Gallicus (2,580 km2), Sabinum

(4,340 km2), the areas confiscated from the Aequi and the Aequicoli (1,225 km2), Aveia and Peltuinum (640 km2), the Ager Praetuttianus (1,390 km2), the Ager Campanus (1,075 km2) and the areas inhabited by the cives sine suffragio of Latium (at least 1,500 km2). I have excluded Forum Clodii and the praefectura Statoniensis in South Etruria (annexed between 284 bc and 280 bc, according to Afzelius 1942, 69, and Forsythe 2005, 349), and the Umbrian praefecturae of Tadinum, Nuceria, Fulginiae and Plestia, where prefects seem to have dispensed justice mainly to the descendants of viritane settlers. See Afzelius (1942), 117; Brunt (1971/1987), 528,n.5; Sisani (2007), 218. 50 287,222 x 3.3 = 947,833. Those subscribing to Lo Cascio’s theory that the republican censuses missed a large proportion of the target population must necessarily posit a much larger citizen population. We must also take into account an unknown number of slaves. Mine are minimum figures. 51 E.g. Toynbee (1965), 104. 52 270,713 x 3.3.=893,353. According to Afzelius (1942), 192, the Ager Romanus (not counting the Ager Picentinus south of Salernum) comprised some 25,800 square km in 234 bc. From this area the following regions must be subtracted: Caere (420 km2), the Ager Praetuttianus (1,390 km2), Upper Sabinum (3,305 km2), the Ager Gallicus (1,930 km2) and Picenum (2,900 km2), the four ex-Samnite praefecturae (1,715 km2), the territories confiscated from the Aequi, the Aequicoli and the Vestini (1,225 + 640 km2), the Ager Campanus (1,075 km2) and the areas belonging to the cives sine suffragio of Latium (at least 1,500 km2). Total: 16,100 km2. Since the evidence for the early incorporation of the territory of Aufidena is very uncertain (e.g. Sherwin-White 1973, 208,n.1; Galsterer 1976, 24), I have excluded it from my calculations. In the case of Upper Sabinum, I have followed Afzelius, Taylor and Toynbee in assuming that the original inhabitants of Upper Sabinum were still cives sine suffragio in 225 bc (cf. Chapter 2, note 102). In my view, this remains the most natural explanation for the fact that Polybius 2.24 groups the Sabines together with the Etruscans and also for the curious fact that Livy 28.45.19 mentions Reate, Nursia and Amiternum alongside Caere and a number of allied towns in a list of communities that provided Scipio with men, equipment and grain in 205 bc. Even if the indigenous inhabitants of Upper Sabinum had already been given the vote by this date, this region is unlikely to have had more than 50,000 inhabitants (based on a density of 15 inhabitants per square km). It follows that the uncertainties surrounding the legal status of the Sabines cannot affect my argument, especially since my hypothetical figure for the number of viritane settlers sent out to the areas conquered by Dentatus is very high.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Target population of the census 91 the Ager Praetuttianus, southern and eastern Umbria and the praefectura Statoniensis in Etruria had risen to 100,000 by this date,53 we still end up with a density of c. eighty-one people per square kilometre for the remaining parts of the Ager Romanus. Although this figure is much lower than the density that can be calculated for 280/279 bc, it is still formidably high,54 especially if we take into account the presence of numerous slaves and the likelihood that all republican census figures for the third and second centuries bc were seriously defective. This last argument ought to be particularly compelling to the high counters, whose overall reconstruction of the demographic history of Italy is based on the assumption that a very large proportion of those adult male citizens who had the vote remained unregistered by the censors of this period.55 In the case of the high count, these difficulties are compounded by the fact that the very high population densities implied by the theory that the cives sine suffragio were not included in the republican census figures would make it impossible to model any further population growth in central- western Italy. This would create serious conflict with the archaeological evidence from southern Etruria and Latium.56 For all these reasons, the only possible conclusion is that the Roman censors of the third and second centuries bc were in fact expected to report a total figure covering all adult male citizens, including those who were cives sine suffragio. As we have seen, the problem of whether or not cives sine suffragio were included amongst the number of capita civium reported by the censors is closely bound up with the question of whether or not these citizens served in the legions. This notorious conundrum can, in my view, be resolved by taking a fresh look at the date of the recruitment procedure described by Polybius. As we have seen, Mommsen assumes that Polybius’ account must

53 For viritane assignations carried out in Umbria and Etruria and in the territories of some Volscian towns, see Taylor (1960), 84–6; Galsterer (1976), 32–3; Bradley (2000), 139–44; Sisani (2007), 134–5, 214–16. 54 Judging from Beloch (1937–1961), i, 254 and 268, ii, 211, and iii, 380–1, densities of between thirty-five and fifty-five persons per km2 were the norm in central and southern Italy before the arrival of New World crops. The areas corresponding to Roman Campania had higher densities (e.g. Beloch 1937– 1961, i, 235), but since Lo Cascio thinks that the Campanians were excluded from the census, this does not affect my argument. Note that Lo Cascio himself (1999a, 168) operates with a density of fifty-six free inhabitants per square kilometre of ager Romanus in 225 bc. Since this time Campania is included in his calculations (cf. Chapter 2, at notes 22–7), those areas inhabited by cives optimo iure ought to have had fewer than fifty-six free inhabitants per square km. 55 Lo Cascio’s theory that there were some 474,000 adult male citizens in 225 bc (1999a, 169) implies that the censors of the third century bc registered approximately 55 per cent of the target population. His estimates for the second century imply a registration rate of between 43.5 and 53 per cent. Cf. Chapter 4, at notes 149–50. 56 Chapter 6.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 92 Meaning of the census figures have been valid not only for his own time but also for the third century bc.57 A variant of this theory has been defended by Brunt, who argues that Polybius’ description of the levy contains a number of anachronistic elements. The most obvious of these is perhaps that Polybius gives the standard size of a Roman legion as 4,200 men, whereas the evidence supplied by Livy suggests that most or all Roman legions were 5,200 strong from the early second century bc.58 Brunt also draws attention to various indications suggesting that Polybius must have adapted an existing written source. One clue pointing in this direction is that Polybius’ description of the levy as ending with the raising of the cavalry is followed by the statement that the cavalry is ‘nowadays’ actually reviewed first.59 Brunt’s conclusion is that Polybius must have used an antiquarian description of the levy that did not accurately reflect the conditions of his own time.60 Although some of Brunt’s arguments are sound, his final conclusion cannot be accepted. At this point, I should like to underline the crucial importance of an article by Elizabeth Rawson that has not really been digested by the recent literature, despite the fact that it is often referred to. To my mind, Rawson has convincingly demonstrated that even though Polybius’ account is clearly based on an earlier written source, there is good reason to believe that this source cannot have been more than 20 years old. More specifically, she interprets the curious fact that the levy is consistently described from the point of view of the military tribunes as an indication that this source must have been a handbook for this class of officer, rather than some antiquarian account containing many anachronistic elements. This implies that, contrary to Brunt’s contention, Polybius’ description is in fact a more or less reliable guide to the realities of his own time.61 In this context it may be noted that it is highly misleading to insist on the fact that Polybius’ figure for the size of a normal legion (4,200 men) falls short of the 5,200 men implied by Livy’s figures for the period 184 bc–167 bc. The simple reason for this is that, although Polybius begins by speaking of

57 Above, at notes 40–2. 58 Brunt (1971/1987), 674–6. 59 Plb. 6.20. 60 Brunt (1971/1987), 627, followed by Galsterer (1976), 106. 61 Rawson (1971). As she points out (ibid. 14), it is doubtful whether any antiquarian account of the levy existed as early as 160 bc, and even if one did, Brunt’s hypothesis would not explain the curious emphasis on the activities of the military tribunes. Dalby (2002, 215,n.16) suggests that Polybius may have composed his account of the levy and the Roman army at the time when his friend and patron Scipio Aemilianus was serving as a military tribune. This alternative hypothesis would imply that Polybius is describing the levy as it was in the 160s bc. Using a slightly different approach, Dobson (2008), 55, argues that Polybius used a source that can be dated to c. 216 bc, but that his account is broadly valid for his own time because he took account of later developments.

62 Plb. 6.20.8. 63 The consistent use of the present tense in Plb. 1.16.1–2, where the standard size of a legion is also given as 4,200, supports Rawson’s view that Polybius’ account is valid for his own time. Toynbee (1965), II, 50–1, argues that only those legions that are explicitly stated to have been made up of 5,200 men had been reinforced, with legions of 4,200 men still being the norm during the first half of the second century bc. Although this theory seems over-ingenious, there is some reason to believe that the praesidial legions sent out to Sardinia and Cisalpine Gaul numbered no more than 4,200 men (Afzelius 1944, 77; cf. Livy 32.8.7 for the size of the allied force guarding Sicily in 198 bc). Supplementa of 4,400 and 4,200 men for the legions in Spain are recorded for 195 bc, 184 bc and 182 bc (Livy 33.43.7; 39.38.10–11; 40.1.6–7). It must also be realized that the reliability of Livy’s Roman army figures is open to doubt. According to the sceptical German tradition exemplified by Gelzer (1935/ 1964) and Gschnitzer (1981), all references to military arrangements in the western Mediterranean stand a good chance of being late-annalistic inventions, with explicit statements about troop strength and casualties being particularly suspect. Note that the late-republican annalists were capable of inventing legions of 5,300 men for the mid-fourth century bc. See e.g. Livy 8.8.14, where (pace Daly 2002, 73) the accensi are clearly a regular component of the legions rather than ‘hastily armed servants’. The most reasonable conclusion may be that although legions of 5,200 men had become common by around 160 bc, the notion of a standard legion of 4,200 men was still alive at this time. Cf. Dobson (2008), 49, for the suggestion that legions of 4,200 continued to be levied during the second century bc, although the larger legion size came to be more usual. 64 Plb. 3.107.12. 65 E.g. Afzelius (1944), 62–3; Ilari (1974), 174–5; Brunt (1971/1987), 681. 66 For the meaning of this term cf. Marquardt (1881), 380. 67 As observed by Brunt (1971/1987), 681.Notehisfinding that ‘Polybius’ generalization that Romans and allies served in equal numbers is seldom borne out by specificinstancesexcept c. 170 b.c.’ (1971/1987, 683, my italics). The seemingly enigmatic ratio of 3:1 between allied and Roman cavalry can be explained by assuming that in Polybius’ time allied contingents of cavalry included Numidian and Gallic auxiliaries. For Numidian cavalry serving in Roman armies operating outside Africa, see e.g. Livy

31.19.3–4 (Macedon, 200 bc: 1,000 Numidians); 42.35 (Macedon, 171 bc), Sall. BJ 7.1 (Spain, 134 bc). The troops supplied by Masinissa for the Spanish war in 150 bc (Val. Max. 5.2,ext.4)mustalsohave included cavalry. We also read of Gallic cavalry serving in the Third Macedonian War (Livy 42.58.13, 171 bc). Increasing reliance on non-Italian cavalry would help to explain why we have no references to Italian communities contributing three-quarters of the cavalry after the end of the Second Punic War (Brunt 1971/1987, 683). For auxiliaries being accommodated in the Roman camp, cf. e.g. Livy 21.48.1 (Gauls, 218 bc); Livy 26.12 (Numidian deserters, 211 bc). 68 Cf. the allied units that were combined into larger ﬁghting forces at points of assembly determined by the consuls (Plb. 6.21.4–5). The fact that the survivors of the legio Campana that had massacred the men of Rhegium and seized their town were scourged and beheaded in the Forum Romanum (Plb. 1.7.12;DH20.5.5) also suggests that these men had the status of legionaries. 69 E.g. Brunt (1965/1988), 103–4, and (1988), 136; Humbert (1978), 346–54; Nicolet (2001), 730. 70 Cf. Chapter 4, at note 25. 71 Mouritsen (2006), 421,n.19, and (2007), 143–8, correctly insists that we hear only of the enfranchisement of Fundi, Formiae and Arpinum (Livy 38.36.7–9). Cf., however, Taylor (1960), 93, for the plausible suggestion that this unique report was preserved because the proposed assignment of these communities to the tribus Aemilia and Cornelia was controversial. We must also consider the relevance of practical considerations such as the desirability of simplifying the recruitment of legionaries in areas with mixed populations of cives optimo iure and citizens without the vote.

3.2.3 Legionaries serving outside Italy It is often assumed that the censors were not normally expected to register citizens who were on active service in the legions, especially if these were operating in the provinces. Although this theory would seem to be supported by a considerable amount of evidence, it is in fact extremely fragile. In his Italian Manpower, Brunt calls attention to Livy’s account of the year 378 bc.72 As Livy explains, in this year the main problem on the domestic front was that many citizens were deeply in debt. We are also told that Spurius Servilius Priscus and Quintus Cloelius Siculus were appointed censors to clarify the financial position of the Roman citizens. When the Volscians invaded Roman territory, however, and two legions needed to be enrolled, apparently no census could be taken. Brunt interprets this story as meaning that it was not possible to count Rome’s citizens when most of them were already under arms. In my view, this inference gives Livy’s story a general significance that it does not have. What Livy means is quite clearly that, with a large proportion of the adult male population in the field, it was impossible for the censors to call in property-owners in order to determine their assets and liabilities. He is certainly not implying that it would have been impossible to determine the number of men aged between 17 and 60. Two other passages that are often referred to in this context are Livy 27.36, where we read that only 137,108 capita civium were counted by the censors of 209/208 bc, and Livy 29.37, which records a figure of 214,000 capita civium for 204/203 bc. As we have already seen, the censors of 204/ 203 bc sent special officials out to the provinces ‘in order to determine the

The fact that many communities that had obtained civitas sine suffragio between 338 bc and 268 bc continued to use Oscan right until the Social War cannot, of course, be used as an argument against early enfranchisement. As Mouritsen (2007), 148–50, has convincingly demonstrated, the bestowal of the right to vote cannot be seen as part of a general policy of Romanization, for the simple reason that there was no such policy. 72 Livy 6.31.2. Cf. Brunt (1971/1987), 70,n.2.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 96 Meaning of the census figures number of Roman citizens serving in the army’.73 Brunt suggests that the low figure for 209/208 bc can be explained if we suppose that some 75,000 adult male citizens serving in the legions or in the fleet were omitted.74 He regards the decision of the censors of 204/203 bc to register soldiers serving in the provinces as unusual. One obvious weakness of this theory is that Livy describes the census figure of 209/208 bc as ‘somewhat lower’ (minor aliquanto) than the pre-war figure, which must have been higher than the census figure for 234/233 bc. Since the discrepancy between the figures for 234/233 bc and 209/208 bc is more than 130,000, we must surely reckon with the possibility that we are dealing with a scribal error.75 Moreover, even if we accept Brunt’s explanation of the census figure for 209/208 bc, it does not follow that legionaries serving outside Italy must normally have been excluded from the census. It must be borne in mind that the censorship of 209/208 bc appears to have been the first during which a very substantial proportion of the adult male population was serving outside central and southern Italy. For this reason alone it is unwarranted to assume that the approach taken by the censors of these years was typical of later censorial policies.76 In this context it must also be borne in mind that the years between 209 bc and 207 bc were still a time of military crisis. It can therefore be argued that the line taken by the censors of 209/208 bc was atypical, and that it was the all-encompassing approach adopted by the censors of 204/203 bc that set the norm for the next couple of decades. In considering the question of whether legionaries serving in the provinces were normally omitted from the census, we must also pay attention to the practical aspects of the process of census-taking. As Mommsen noted more than a century ago, it seems extremely improbable that every new census would have been begun entirely from scratch. Instead, each new pair of censors is likely to have used the records assembled by their predecessors as their starting point.77 In my view, this hypothesis is supported by a feature of the census figures for the third and second centuries bc whose significance has never been fully appreciated. A look at the list of census

73 Above, at note 32. 74 Brunt (1971/1987), 63, 68. 75 As argued by Beloch (1886), 349–50. If we want to uphold the census ﬁgure for 209/208 bc, Brunt’s explanation is clearly superior to Frank’s suggestion (1924, 330) that Livy’s phrase is ironic. 76 Brunt’s own theory implies that legionaries serving in Italy were omitted in 209/208 bc, whereas they were normally included (cf. Brunt 1971/1987, 68). 77 Mommsen (1887), II, 370, followed by Suolahti (1963a), 33, Nicolet (2001), 723, and Northwood (2008), 265. The privately kept documents referred to by DH 1.74.5 must be the underlying documentation rather than the ﬁnal census lists.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Target population of the census 97 figures put together by Brunt is enough to show that, if we except the years 209/208 bc, there are no sudden decreases in the number of capita civium registered.78 Conversely, we do observe a number of sudden increases (for instance, in 204/203 bc,in169/168 bc and in 125/124 bc). This suggests to me that during certain periods a considerable proportion of the target population remained unregistered, but that it was difficult for those who had been registered in one of the more successful censuses to escape registration during the next two or three censuses. The most obvious explanation for this is that, with the possible exception of the censors of 209/208 bc,79 all of the censors of the third and second centuries bc made use of the records compiled by their predecessors. In the case of soldiers serving overseas, we must also consider the potential political side effects of omitting these men from the census records. Can it reasonably be supposed that all men on active service outside Italy were invariably excluded from the census lists and thereby deprived of the opportunity to exercise their political rights (for instance, as voters in the comitia centuriata) for a period of 5 years? It is in my view far more likely that the names of those doing legionary service abroad were copied from the records compiled during the previous census, and that they were assigned to the same class to which they, or their fathers, had belonged during the previous 5 years. It is against this general background that we must interpret the case of the poet Archias, a client of Cicero, who was accused under the lex Papia of 65 bc of having illegally usurped Roman citizenship. In his speech on behalf of Archias, Cicero admitted that his client had been registered neither in the census of 86/85 bc nor in that of 70/69 bc, since he had been abroad first with Sulla and then with Lucullus.80 Various twentieth-century ancient historians have claimed this example as proof that Roman citizens on legionary service in the provinces were not normally registered.81 In fact,

78 Brunt (1971/1987), 13–14. The census figure for 194/193 bc is generally held to be corrupt. 79 In principle the censors of 209/208 bc could have built on the records compiled by the censors of 220/219 bc, but in the specific circumstances in which they had to operate it must have been extremely difficult for them to find out how many of the men sent out to Spain, Sardinia and Cisalpina were still alive, and military concerns are likely to have over-ridden purely administrative considerations. Another problem must have been that the enormous casualties of the first years of the Hannibalic War had resulted in redistributions of property on an unprecedented scale, making it impossible for the censors to achieve a reliable distribution among the classes. The census of 204/203 bc can be seen as an attempt to make a fresh start after a period of partial administrative breakdown. In my view, this explains why the Roman government took the census of 204/203 bc as its starting point when it ordered all Latins who had illegally been enrolled as Roman citizens between 204 bc and 187 bc to return to their home towns (Livy 39.3.4–5). 80 Cic. Arch. 11. 81 E.g. Jones (1948); Brunt (1971/1987), 36, 41.

3.2.4 Assidui and proletarii Another important question concerns the registration of those citizens whose assets fell short of the property qualiﬁcation for military service. As we have seen, Fabius Pictor states that the legendary ﬁrst census supposedly held by Servius Tullius registered only those citizens ‘capable of bearing arms’. Although the reliability of this tradition seems doubtful, it might be taken to support the view that in early-republican times those too poor to provide their own arms (that is to say, the proletarians) were excluded from the census.85 There are, however, reliable indications that the censors of the

82 Cf. Brunt (1971/1987), 42; Lo Cascio (2001b), 595. 83 Cic. Arch. 8. 84 Kron (2005a), 453,n.69, claims that Cicero’s allusion to the destruction of the Heraclean records proves that copies of such records were not transferred to Rome for incorporation into the Roman census. Since the said destruction took place before 86 bc, however, in this case no copies could have been transferred. The surviving records of the other towns at which Archias was enrolled could not be used to prove his Roman citizenship because his registration as a Roman citizen (during the failed census of 89 bc) had been based exclusively on his enrolment at Heraclea, in conformity with the provisions of the lex Plautia Papiria. 85 Thus Herzog (1877), followed by Gabba (1949/1976), 8.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Target population of the census 99 middle and late Republic did in fact register a significant number of proletarian citizens. The most important clue here is of course the existence of the term capite censi, which is synonymous with proletarii.86 The absolute number of proletarians remains elusive. In his description of the centuriate organization allegedly created by Servius Tullius, Cicero says that the single century of proletarii contained more men than almost the whole of the first class. In two passages also purporting to describe the ‘Servian’ system of classes, Dionysius writes that Servius put the proletarians, who were apparently ‘more numerous’ or at least ‘not less numerous’ than the five property-owning classes combined, into a single century and exempted them from service in the army and from every form of tax.87 These passages have been used as evidence that proletarians made up more than half of the citizen body. In my view, this inference is insecure. As Rich has noted, we can only guess whether the statements of Cicero and Dionysius were true of any historical period. According to him, they were not true of the Second Punic War, when most freeborn citizens (and almost all of the freeborn citizens living outside the city of Rome) seem to have been assidui.88 It is also worth noting that Cicero and Dionysius write as if all adult male Roman citizens turned up at the meetings of the comitia centuriata, and that they take the numerical strength of the various voting groups as accurately reflecting the social composition of the Roman citizen body. It may therefore be speculated that their accounts, or the accounts that they found in their sources, were inspired by the composition of the crowds attending the meetings of the centuriate assembly. We can be certain that the social makeup of these crowds did not in fact mirror the social composition of the citizen body. It is clear, for instance, that large numbers of proletarians lived in Rome. At the same time, there are good grounds to believe that the highest classes contained relatively few citizens and that many rurally based members of the third to fifth classes did not always take the trouble to attend elections or legislative assemblies in Rome.89 Given all this, urban proletarians must

86 Nicolet (1988), 78, suggests that a distinction was made between capite censi, who had only themselves to declare, and those who also had children to declare, but this theory has been universally rejected. See e.g. Toynbee (1965), I, 455,n.1; Gabba (1949/1976), 173,n.23; Rich (1983), 299. Rathbone (1993a) leaves open the possibility that the term capite censi might have been used speciﬁcally of those proletarians who had no property to declare, but rejects the theory that there were distinct property thresholds for proletarians and capite censi. Note that Festus 253 L(proletarium capite censum) identiﬁes both terms as describing the same group. 87 Cic. RP 2.40;DH4.18.2 and 7.59.6. Cf. DH 13.12.2, with Northwood (2008), 268,n.39. 88 Rich (1983), 294 and 291,n.21. 89 E.g. Mouritsen (2001).

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 100 Meaning of the census figures easily have outnumbered voters belonging to one of the five property classes, even if they did not constitute the majority of the electorate. In the absence of any reliable information that could be used to estimate the number of proletarians, it is difficult to determine what proportion of the proletarians was registered by the censors of the third and second centuries bc. As has often been pointed out, the censuses of the republican period served a threefold purpose: they revealed the number of adult males who could be called up for military service, provided a basis for impositions of tributum and permitted the construction of lists of voters for the use of those responsible for the smooth functioning of the comitia centuriata and the comitia tributa.90 Since proletarians were not normally called up for legionary service and were not expected to pay tributum, it seems reasonable to suppose that most censors of the third and second centuries bc did not attempt to achieve full registration of this particular section of the citizen body. On the other hand, it is possible to identify some factors likely to have pushed up the number of proletarians on the census records. To begin with, at least some sub-groups amongst the proletarians are likely to have dis- played an active interest in being registered. It does not seem far-fetched to suppose, for instance, that many urban proletarians might have registered themselves with the censors in order to be able to give their votes to powerful patrons from whom they hoped to secure favours.91 Another factor we must consider is that although proletarians were not normally called up for service in the legions, they were liable for service as rowers in the fleet.92 It is therefore to be expected that the Roman government would have been interested in the number of proletarians available for service not only in times of exceptional danger (such as that of the Gallic invasion), but also in those periods during which large Roman fleets were needed for active warfare or to guard the coasts of Italy and Sicily against the Carthaginians or other enemies. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it must always be borne in mind that the number of proletarians was determined not only by the distribution of wealth, but also, and primarily, by the threshold for membership of the fifth class of the comitia centuriata. In practical terms, this meant that the

90 For the practical purposes served by the republican census, see e.g. Mommsen (1887), ii, 388–412; Nicolet (1988), 82–6; Hin (2008), 207–14. 91 The numerous leges de ambitu of the second and ﬁrst centuries bc (e.g. Nadig 1997) presuppose that ﬁnancial generosity could buy a large number of votes. For a good discussion of the factors encouraging and discouraging registration, see Northwood (2008), 264, 268. 92 Plb. 6.19.3.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Target population of the census 101 number of proletarians could be reduced simply by lowering the minimum amount of property qualifying a Roman citizen for legionary service. Whenever such a step was taken, any proletarians now artificially transformed into assidui must have become a target group of some interest to the censors. The overall effect would have been a significant decline in the rate of under-registration. In my view, it is actually possible to draw some interesting conclusions about the number of proletarian citizens and about their share in the citizen population as a whole by taking a closer look at the historical evolution of the property qualification for legionary service. As is generally known, this is an extremely difficult topic, not only because our evidence is fragmentary, but also because the few snippets of information that do happen to have survived must be interpreted against the background of the historical development of the Roman monetary system, whose reconstruction is bedevilled by a number of technical difficulties. Fortunately, we can rely on a detailed study by Rathbone that sets out the technical problems with exemplary clarity and offers a comprehensive reconstruction of the financial aspects of the Roman system of classes and of its development during the third and second centuries bc. Building on an earlier article by Lo Cascio,93 Rathbone argues that before the outbreak of the Second Punic War the property qualification for membership of the fifth class (the threshold for access to the legions) must have stood at 1,100 libral asses, corresponding to 5,500 sextantal asses of the period 212 bc–140 bc.94 We also happen to know that by the time at which Polybius wrote the sixth book of his Histories this threshold had been reduced to 4,000 sextantal asses.95 According to Rathbone, the most likely explanation for this discrepancy is that the threshold for legionary service was lowered in about 212 bc. It seems plausible that this change was prompted by the introduction of a new monetary system in which the heavy asses of the pre-Hannibalic period were replaced by asses that were five times lighter. Since the new threshold for membership of the fifth class was 27 per cent lower in terms of silver, it seems reasonable to suppose that the Roman government was also trying to increase its recruiting capacity during a critical phase of the Hannibalic War by transforming a substantial number of proletarians into assidui.

93 Lo Cascio (1988). 94 Rathbone (1993a), 139–41, followed by Rosenstein (2002), 168–9. Cf. also Lo Cascio (1988), 289–90. Gabba (1949/1976), 5–6, believes that a reduction from 11,000 to 4,000 sextantal asses took place in 214 bc. For further discussion of this topic, see Chapter 4, at notes 142–7. 95 Plb. 6.19.3.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 102 Meaning of the census figures As a second step, Rathbone points out that the settlers sent out to a number of Roman colonies during the first decades of the second century bc received between five and ten iugera (1.25 to 2.5 ha) of land apiece. Sincetheseallotmentsmusthavebeenlargeenoughtomakethe recipients liable for military service, it can be inferred that the threshold of 4,000 sextantal asses indicated by Polybius corresponded to the value of four or five iugera of arable land.96 If we accept Rathbone’s theory that the threshold for membership of the fifth class stood at 1,100 libral asses before 212 bc, it follows that at the outbreak of the Hannibalic War the own- ership of seven iugera was enough to qualify a Roman citizen for legionary service.97 If this reconstruction is correct, the number of proletarian citizens equalled the number of urban proletarians plus the number of rural citizens owning less than 1.75 hectares of land (during the third century bc) or less than 1.25 hectares (during the first half of the second century). Of those citizens belonging to the former category, the vast majority must have lived in the city of Rome. Unfortunately, the surviving evidence does not permit any safe conclusion as to the size of Rome’s population at any point during the second century bc. This explains why the few estimates that have been attempted vary from between 150,000 and 200,000 in around 200 bc to between 200,000 and 400,000 at the time of the Gracchi.98 If we start from the highest figure ever suggested, reckon the servile population at 25 per cent of the total urban population and assume that adult male proletarians made up one-third of the free population, we obtain a rough estimate of c. 100,000 urban proletarians for the final decades of the second century bc.99 With reference to rural citizens, Rosenstein has pointed out that precisely because the property qualification for military service was so low, large numbers of poor citizens are likely to have benefited from the colonial schemes of the late fourth and third centuries bc and from the viritane distributions carried out by figures such as Dentatus and Flaminius. In his view, the proportion of the adult male citizen population qualifying for

96 Rathbone (1993a), 145, followed by Rosenstein (2002), 167–9. 97 It is, of course, tempting to speculate that the numerous accounts of viritane settlers receiving seven iugera (e.g. Val. Max. 4.3.5b; Vir. Ill. 33; Plin. NH 18.4.18), along with the tradition that this was the size of the farm owned by the Roman general Atilius Regulus (Val. Max. 4.4.6), reﬂect the existence of this hypothetical threshold. 98 See De Ligt (2004), 742 for further discussion and references. 99 If the population of Rome was characterized by a skewed sex ratio (as suggested by Beloch 1886, 400–1), adult male citizens would have made up a larger share of the free population, but of course not all urban citizens were proletarians.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Target population of the census 103 service in the legions is likely to have been closer to 90 than 50 per cent throughout most of the third century bc.100 As we shall see in the next chapter, the large-scale viritane assignations carried out in the years 200–199 bc and 173 bc, along with the foundation of a number of Latin colonies and coloniae civium Romanorum between 194 bc and 177 bc, must have raised many former proletarians to the status of assiduus and must also have helped recipients who were already of that status (or whose fathers were already of that status) to maintain it. If the minimum amount of private land required for legionary service had indeed been reset at five iugera by this period, the proportion of the adult male population belonging to the five classes must have been even higher than it had been before the Hannibalic War. In my view, these interlocking developments must be part of the key to an enigmatic passage in Polybius in which it is claimed that in around 160 bc the Romans were no longer able to man as many ships as they had during the First Punic War.101 As is well known, Polybius says that he will explain this in his account of the Roman constitution, but no such explanation has ever been identified. Polybius’ account of the First Punic War suggests that he is speaking of fleets made up of between 330 and 350 ships. A fleet of this size would have required at least 100,000 men.102 Just before making his surprising com- ment on Rome’s reduced capacity to assemble large fleets, Polybius notes that some 700 Roman quinqueremes were lost between 264 bc and 241 bc.103 Let us assume that this is the number of ships he has in mind and that some 200,000 rowers were required to man them.104 Even if the majority of rowers came from the socii navales and other allied communities, the number of rowers of citizen status cannot have been much lower than 80,000.105 As we have just seen, Polybius appears never to have returned to the subject of the decreased number of rowers that must lie behind his surprising observation of Book 1. He does, however, explicitly state that Roman

100 Rosenstein (2002), 166, 177. As he points out, the surviving sources strongly suggest that the large- scale distributions of land carried out after the Roman conquests of the late fourth and early third centuries bc ended the Struggle of the Orders. For the number of assidui at the time of the Second Punic war, cf. above, at note 88. 101 Plb. 1.64.1–2. 102 Plb. 1.25.7; 1.36.10.In1.26.7 Polybius assigns 140,000 men to a ﬂeet of 330 ships, but his estimate may be on the high side. 103 Plb. 1.63.6. 104 If we opt for a lower ﬁgure, this only strengthens my arguments. 105 The proportion of citizens implied by this guesstimate is much lower than the 55 per cent assumed by Brunt (1971/1987), 65. Cf. ibid. 669.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 104 Meaning of the census figures proletarians could be called up for service in the fleets.106 If we combine this statement with his claim that Rome was no longer able to man fleets of the same size as those sent out during the First Punic War, the inescapable conclusion is that at this time the number of registered proletarians was considerably lower than, say, 80,000. Polybius’ statement is often interpreted as suggesting that he believed the number of adult male Roman citizens to have declined.107 As we have just seen, however, the shortage of proletarians eligible for service in the fleet to which he alludes may simply have reflected the fact that the reduction of the threshold for membership of the fifth class and the land distributions carried out between 200 bc and 173 bc had transformed large numbers of proletarians into assidui. If this is the case, the only demograph- ical inference that can be drawn here is that proletarians cannot have made up more than half of the registered census population in the mid-second century bc. Of course, this leaves open the possibility that large numbers of proletarians remained unregistered. In my view, the only way to come to grips with this problem is to ask how many landless proletarians and poor peasants owning less than one or one and a quarter hectares of arable land could reasonably have been accommodated within the agrarian economy of central-western Italy during the second century bc.Since estimates of the total number of adult male citizens living in Italy in the mid-second century bc range from 400,000 inthecaseofthelowcountto 700,000 in the case of the high count, the traditional view that proletarian citizens made up more than half of the Roman citizen population necessarily implies that between 100,000 and 250,000 adult male proletarians made a living by working other people’s land as wage labourers or as tenants.108 Since wage labour in the agrarian economy of republican Italy was almost exclusively seasonal, the former scenario seems unrealistic.109 The idea that tenancy was already a phenomenon of some importance in

106 Plb. 6.19.3. 107 E.g. Brunt (1971/1987), 88–9 (admittedly arguing against a scenario of fast growth); Crawford (1978), 102. 108 On the assumption that some 100,000 adult male proletarians can be assigned to the city of Rome. Rosenstein (2004), 77–8, suggests that many rural citizens may have had access to plots of ager publicus. As Rathbone (2003) and Roselaar (2010), 206–7, have pointed out, however, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that ager publicus was readily available to poor peasants of citizen status, especially in central-western Italy, where most citizens lived. 109 De Ligt (2007b), 7–8.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Target population of the census 105 the second century bc is less problematic.110 Nonetheless, it is difficult to believe that a large proportion of the citizen population derived most of its sustenance from leaseholdings at this early date. As we have just seen, this problem is all the more acute because even during the first half of the second century bc many assidui appear to have owned tiny plots of land that cannot possibly have covered their families’ subsistence needs. This means that, even without the very large number of poor rural citizens postulated by the high counters, a large number of poor citizens must be fitted into our reconstruction of the agrarian economy of the second century bc. Another important argument against the existence of a very large number of rural proletarians is the rapid expansion of rural slavery during the last two centuries bc. As we shall see in the next chapter, the most convincing explanation for the brisk growth of rural slavery after the Second Punic War is that during the first decades of the second century the free population was thin on the ground. In other words, the setting up of slave-based estates for the production of wine, olive oil and grain can be seen as a rational economic strategy in a period during which free labourers were relatively scarce and therefore expensive.111 It should be noted that this is precisely the demographic and economic situation envisaged by the low count. The importation of many tens of thousands of foreign slaves cannot easily be explained if a very large proportion of the Roman citizen population was made up of proletarians owning fewer than four or five iugera of land. Before we round off this brief discussion, it must be conceded that it remains extremely difficult to assess the strengths or weaknesses of a theory positing the existence of several hundreds of thousands of people who were, by definition, invisible. Nonetheless, it seems possible to conclude that the demographic impact of the Second Punic War, the large-scale land distributions carried out between 201 bc and 173 bc and the rapid expansion of rural slavery sit very uneasily with the theory that even after the threshold for membership of the fifth class had been lowered to 4,000 sextantal asses more than half of the Roman citizen body was made up of urban and rural proletarians, most of whom remained unregistered by the censors of the second century bc.

110 Rosenstein (2004), 181–2, suggests that there were almost no tenants before the ﬁrst century bc, but his arguments are weak. In my view, we must begin from the assumption that tenancy was always an option (De Ligt 2000) and then try to explain why this option was used more often in some historical periods than in others. Unlike Rosenstein, I do not think that a preference for social and economic independence can explain the failure of tenancy to take off in the second century bc. Cf. Chapter 4, at notes 78–82. 111 Chapter 4, section 4.2.4.

3.3 centralized and decentralized census procedures before the social war It has often been suspected that the original aim of the republican census was to establish Rome’s military potential and that this aim was originally achieved by ordering all men aged between 17 and 60 to assemble in the campus Martius, whereupon the number of ‘those able to bear arms’ would be established by means of a simple head count.112 If this hypothesis is correct, the lustratio of the populus with which the census was still concluded in historical times must originally have had a military connotation. Since these inferences are based on interpretations of certain features of the census as it existed during the middle and late Republic, they are necessarily speculative. Despite this, it seems likely enough that the census in its original form required the personal attendance of those required to register. There are several indications that the registration in absentia of certain categories of citizen was permitted at a later stage. It is, for example, generally accepted that in historical times a son-in-power was normally registered by his pater familias.113 It seems reasonable to infer from this that such sons did not have to present themselves before the censors. From the limited perspective of Italy’s demographic history, the most important question is whether the basic rule of personal attendance was maintained after the Ager Romanus had begun to expand beyond central- western Italy. If it could be proved that citizens living in the peripheral districts of the Ager Romanus could be registered locally by magistrates who were then expected to send the results of their local censuses to Rome, it would follow that the republican census figures, for all their obvious short- comings, cannot have been hopelessly inaccurate. On the other hand, if it could be demonstrated that all those under the obligation to register themselves (and their sons in potestate) had to present themselves before the censors in Rome, it would become easier to posit a deficiency rate of the order of 50 per cent.114 According to this view, the census figures for the

112 According to Varro, LL 6.86, the republican censors summoned omnes Quirites pedites armatos to attend the census. Gabba (1949/1976), 8, suggests that originally only assidui were taken into consideration. 113 Above, at note 5. 114 Note, however, that this issue is intimately linked to the number of proletarians. According to the high counters, many of those who did not travel to Rome are likely to have been citizens whose assets fell short of the (low) property qualiﬁcation for legionary service. Lo Cascio (1999a), 167–8, and (1999b), 232–3, claims that such people might even have been formally released from the obligation to register themselves with the censors.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Centralized and decentralized census procedures 107 third and second centuries bc can be used only to establish the minimum number of adult male citizens alive at the time of any specific census.115 Unfortunately, we have almost no evidence that might help us to decide which of these conflicting theories is correct. One of the few certainties in this field is that the citizens of the maritime colonies of the fourth and third centuries bc were excused from legionary service because they were supposed to guard strategically important points on the coast.116 It is generally accepted that they must therefore also have been exempt from the customary obligation to appear before the censors in Rome.117 Brunt has argued that this arrangement must have been extended to the non-maritime citizen colonies founded in northern Italy during the 180s bc, and subsequently to provincial coloniae civium Romanorum such as Narbo Martius in Gaul. In fact, we are told that Gaius Gracchus’ plan to found a colony of Roman citizens on the site of Carthage was opposed on the grounds that this initiative would constitute a break with the time- honoured policy of requiring all Roman citizens to travel to Italy at the time of the census.118 With the self-governing municipia, a category that contained both communities of cives optimo iure and communities of citizens without the vote, we move into far more difficult territory. Imperial-era censores are recorded in some former communities sine suffragio (such as Caere), and from this fact it has plausibly been inferred that these communities must have conducted local censuses before the Social War.119 This inference is accepted by Lo Cascio and by some of his supporters. In their view, however, these censuses might have been purely local affairs that had nothing to do with the Roman census. This view is in line with Lo Cascio’s theory that a centralized census procedure was maintained until 45 bc or 44 bc and also with his contention that the census figures for the third and second centuries bc do not include cives sine suffragio. Against the latter theory, I have already pointed out that the hypothetical population densities that it implies are implausibly high. For this reason alone, it seems preferable to adopt the view that the censores of Caere and other municipia were expected to send the results of their local censuses to the censors in Rome, who then added

115 Lo Cascio (2008). 116 Livy 26.3.38. 117 Brunt (1971/1987), 40; Kron (2005a), 452. 118 Brunt (1971/1987), 40; Galsterer (2006), 300. Vell. 2.7.7: civis Romanos ad censendum ex provinciis in Italiam revocaverant. The explicit reference to Italy, not Rome, seems signiﬁcant. Wiseman’s suggestion (1969, 60,n.18) that the phrase in Italiam is an anachronism is clearly inspired by the preconceived idea that there was no decentralized census under the Republic. 119 E.g. Brunt (1971/1987), 40–1; Ilari (1974), 81–2; Moatti (1993), 73–4. In those communities accorded citizenship in or after 90 bc, the standard term for local censorial magistrates was iiiiviri quinquennales. See Brunt, ibid.; Bispham (2007), 337–64.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 108 Meaning of the census figures them to the results of their own census. As we have seen, this would explain the presence of the tabulae Caeritum in Rome. A similar discussion centres on the municipia of cives optimo iure. In this case, too, the existence of local magistrates responsible for census operations is widely agreed upon.120 Again the high counters have argued that the results of these local censuses cannot have been transmitted to Rome because the Roman census was fully centralized. Since all of the municipia optimo iure that existed before the Social War were in central-western Italy, it would perhaps not have been unreasonable to require all Roman citizens belonging to these communities to travel to Rome once every 5 years. The force of this argument is, however, surely undermined by the fact that no such obligation was imposed on the cives sine suffragio of Caere. It seems, moreover, most unlikely that Rome would have deprived the new municipia created after 90 bc of the local administrative machinery that had been in operation for centuries. As has often been observed, the new municipalities continued to perform the function of ﬁnding soldiers for the Roman army.121 It would seem to follow that they must have had lists of those qualiﬁed to serve. Such lists can only have been created by means of local censuses, and it remains hard to understand why men who had already been registered locally should still have been required to travel to Rome for a second registration.122 Finally, a few words must be said about the praefecturae established in areas to which viritane settlers had been sent. We know that there were praefecturae in Sabinum, in Picenum and in the territories of the Vestini, and they must surely also have existed in other areas subject to large-scale assignationes viritanae, such as Liguria, southern Samnium and Apulia.123 If a wholly centralized census procedure had indeed been maintained until the time of Caesar, Roman citizens living in these areas would have been obliged to travel hundreds of kilometres to present themselves before the censors in Rome. Such an arrangement would not have been very practical. At the same time, viritane settlers and their descendants must have been a target group of some interest to the central Roman authorities, if only because a high proportion of them would have been assidui. Under these circumstances, it would have made sense to create some kind of local or

120 E.g. Kron (2005a), 452,n.60. 121 Brunt (1971/1987), 41. 122 According to Kron (2005a), 450–3, this requirement would have served to prevent the vast majority of the former allies from exercising their political rights as citizens, but in my view any policy of exclusion (if one was ever implemented) must have run out of steam by the time of the census of 70/69 bc. Cf. below, at notes 143 and 157. 123 For traces of praefecturae in Apulia, see Grelle (1999a) and (2009).

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Centralized and decentralized census procedures 109 regional census procedure. An explicit reference to such a procedure, run by the highest-ranking magistrates of the praefecturae, may be found in the Tabula Heracleensis.124 Since we have, however, no evidence whatsoever for the involvement of prefects or other magistrates in local or regional censuses at any earlier date, we cannot categorically rule out the possibility that before the time of Caesar Roman citizens who lived in areas not administered from self-governing coloniae or municipia were required to travel to Rome for the census.125 Conversely, it is equally impossible to rule out the possibility that the system described in the Tabula was rooted in much earlier practices.126 Since the ancient sources have little to say about such mundane topics as the practical aspects of the census, it is extremely difficult to back up any assertion concerning the existence of a centralized or decentralized census procedure with textual evidence. The most significant exception to this rule is Livy’s description of the measures taken in 169 bc to improve the efficiency of the levy.127 As Livy explains, in this year there was great concern about the levy for the Macedonian campaign because even the iuniores were not answering the usual call-up. The task of remedying this problem was entrusted to the praetors, assisted by the censors elected for the census of 169/168 bc. These censors added to the customary oath taken by all citizens a special oath for the iuniores in which they were required to affirm that they were under 46 years of age, that they had presented themselves for enlistment in accordance with the edict issued by the censors and that they would continue to do so for the next five years. The censors also issued an edict concerning soldiers who had been enlisted for Macedonia in or after 172 bc. Any of these men who were in Italy (qui eorum in Italia essent) were ordered to return to Macedonia within thirty days, after first appearing for assessment before the censors themselves (censi apud sese), while anyone who was alieni iuris was required to be registered by his pater familias. The censors also announced that they would personally investigate the reasons for any discharge that might have been given to any of these soldiers, and that they would order the re-enlistment of anyone who had been discharged without valid grounds.

124 Tab. Heracl. 142–6. 125 As noted by Crawford and Nicolet in Crawford (1996), 388, this uncertainty also exists in the case of the fora and conciliabula. 126 In favour of early decentralization: Giovannini (2008), 61. According to Humbert (1978), 313–17, praefecti iure dicundo must have been responsible for regional censuses as early as the third or second century bc, but as Bispham (2007), 96,n.108, points out, we have no evidence that praefecti performed any non-jurisdictive administrative task. Certainty here appears impossible. 127 Livy 43.14.2–10.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 110 Meaning of the census figures When this edict, accompanied by letters, had been sent to all market centres and places of assembly (per fora et conciliabula), a large number of iuniores assembled in Rome, so that the unusual crowd (insolita turba) caused a great deal of inconvenience.128 This unique account contains some interesting details. It seems significant that there is no indication whatsoever that the new oath imposed on iuniores had to be sworn in Rome.129 Livy’s account is therefore compatible with the view that large numbers of iuniores were normally registered by local magistrates, and that it was before these magistrates that they were expected to swear the new oath formulated by the censors. Nevertheless, Livy’s text suggests that a different procedure was followed in the case of soldiers who were on leave and those claiming to have been discharged, since the edict concerning these men clearly ordered them (or their patres) to come to Rome. We are also told that this second measure applied to any soldiers from the Macedonian legions who were currently in Italy. It is therefore tempting to interpret this as a general measure affecting the entire Ager Romanus. One small detail, however, seems to militate against this interpretation. As various scholars have observed, Livy reports that the second edict was circulated per fora et conciliabula, rather than per totam Italiam. The significance of this lies in the fact that Livy and other sources often use the expression fora et conciliabula as a technical term to denote those parts of the Ager Romanus that were not administered by self-governing coloniae or municipia.130 From this terminological detail it has been inferred that the second edict affected only those parts of the Ager Romanus for which the censors were directly responsible (in other words, the fora et conciliabula). It has also been pointed out that Livy’s account of the measures taken by the central Roman government in 212 bc to stamp out draft-dodging suggests a similar geographical division of labour between central and local magistrates. On this occasion, two triumviral boards were instituted to inspect the entire range of free men in pagis forisque et conciliabulis. Again, the municipia and coloniae are missing.131 In my view, this makes it difficult to argue that Livy’s consistent failure to mention these communities in accounts

128 Livy 43.14.8–10. 129 Lo Cascio’s claim that Rome was the only place where this oath could be sworn (Lo Cascio 2008, 252) has no support in the text. 130 Beloch (1880), 104–5; Galsterer (1976), 25–9; Bispham (2007), 93. 131 Livy 25.5.6. Cf. Galsterer (1976), 106; Humbert (1978), 323–4; Crawford and Nicolet, in Crawford (1996), 388; Bispham (2007), 89.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Centralized and decentralized census procedures 111 concerning measures dealing with recruits and legionaries is attributable to the repeated use of inaccurate formulations.132 As noted above, the only suggestion that the second edict affected the entire Ager Romanus is offered by the phrase qui eorum in Italia essent.As Galsterer demonstrated more than 30 years ago, however, there is good reason to believe that during the second century bc the term Italia was sometimes used to denote the non-municipalized area immediately around the city.133 One interesting example of this usage may be found in Livy’s account of the activities of the censors of 204 bc. According to Livy, ‘In Rome and throughout Italy (per totam Italiam) salt was selling for a sixth of an as. The censors put out contracts for it now to be sold at the same price as before in Rome, at a higher price in the fora and conciliabula, with prices varying from place to place.’134 In this text, the area denoted by the term Italia is clearly identical with the fora et conciliabula. Another instance is to be found in Livy 40.19 and 40.36–7: when pestilence raged in the fora et conciliabula, the Roman authorities ordered a supplicatio to be held per totam Italiam.135 This brief terminological survey demonstrates that Livy’s use of the term Italia cannot be used to set aside the reference to the fora et conciliabula. Even if anyone should want to accord a broader meaning to the term Italia in the speciﬁc context of the measures taken in 169 bc, several parts of Livy’s text would continue to militate against the conclusion that it was normal for all adult male citizens to be ordered to travel to Rome for the census. It could be argued, for instance, that Livy’s use of a number of phrases emphasizing the personal involvement of the censors (in particular, censi apud sese) indicates a departure from standard administrative procedures. It might be speculated that the censors took the unusual step of ordering all soldiers on leave and all those who had been discharged from the legions in Macedonia to come to Rome because they wanted to make it entirely impossible for any of those enlisted for service in Macedonia in or after 172 bc to escape their military duties.

132 Cf. Crawford (1996), 388. 133 Galsterer (1976), 37–41. Note Galsterer’s suggestion that this usage lies behind Appian’s claim that the Gracchan land reforms were meant to stem the numerical decline of the Italiôtai. Galsterer acknowledges that in some other passages Livy uses the expression Italia to denote the entire Ager Romanus. More recently, Bispham (2007), 57–68, has convincingly demonstrated that from the second or third quarter of the third century bc onwards ofﬁcial documents began to use this term to refer to Italy as far as the Arno-Rubicon line and occasionally as far as the Alps. The epigraphic lex agraria of 111 bc (Crawford 1996, 113–80) is an obvious example. The only possible conclusion is that the meaning of the term Italia was ambiguous during this period. 134 Livy 29.37.3. 135 On these texts, see Bispham (2007), 89 and n. 81.

3.4 the census figure for 86/85 bc During the past century, those interested in the workings of the republican census during the second and early first centuries bc have put a great deal of intellectual energy into attempting to interpret the census figures for 86/85 bc and 70/69 bc. As is generally known, the first of these figures relates to the first census taken after the end of the Social War, during which Roman citizenship, initially offered only to those allies who had remained loyal or had laid down their arms, had eventually been extended to all of the Italian communities. The last two groups to receive citizenship seem to have been the Samnites and the Lucanians, who are thought to have received it in 87 bc.137 It follows from this that, if the censors of 86/85 bc were attempting to register every citizen they could, the results of their operations should shed some light on the size of the free population of mainland Italy south of the Po. It is extremely regrettable that Livy’s epitomator does not record the census figure for 86/85 bc. The only figure we have is the one that appears in Jerome’s Chronicon, in which we read that the census tally for 85 bc was 463,000.138 Since Livy’s epitomator reports census figures of c. 395,000 for

136 In my view, the time limit of 30 days cannot explain why a crowd of ‘unusual’ size should have appeared in 169 bc (contra Kron 2005a, 452,n.59). Since the second edict applied only to legionaries and ex-legionaries from Macedonia, it would have affected no more than a few thousand men. Even if we take into account the fact that many men would have come to Rome for the ordinary dilectus, the unusual nature of the gathering described by Livy remains unexplained. According to the high count, there were about 475,000 adult male citizens as early as 225 bc. With a hypothetical registration rate of 55 per cent (Chapter 4, at notes 149–50), this would imply that some 260,000 adult male citizens had to come to Rome within the 18 months during which the censors held ofﬁce, an average of about 14,450 per month. 137 E.g. Bispham (2007), 187. 138 Hier. Chron.p.151, Helm (1926): descriptione Romae facta inventa sunt hominum cccclxiii milia.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 The census figure for 86/85 bc 113 the years 125/124 bc and 115/114 bc, when citizenship had not yet been extended to the allies, this tally seems impossibly low. It is also odd that Livy’s epitomator should inform us that the Senate bestowed the suffragium (that is, the right to vote) on the new citizens in 84 bc.139 The obvious problem created by this statement is that one would expect the new citizens to have been given the right to vote and to have been registered as belonging to tribes before the start of the census of 86 bc. Since the late nineteenth century, various solutions to these anomalies have been proposed. The simplest of these is that Jerome’s figure is corrupt and should be emended to 963,000.140 One argument in favour of this solution is that many of the other census figures reported by Eusebius and Jerome, or by later chroniclers drawing on them, are demonstrably incor- rect.141 There is therefore a real possibility that the same is true of the figure for 86/85 bc. On the other hand, it seems methodologically unwarrantable to reject a census figure just because it is anomalous, without having explored the viability of other possible explanations. A fortiori, we should resist the temptation to get rid of any problematic figures by emending them in such a way as to make them compatible with some preconceived theory about the numerical development of the Roman or Italian population, or the efficiency of the census. For these reasons, I suggest that we should take the figure for 86/85 bc seriously, without losing sight of the possibility that we may be dealing with a scribal error. Perhaps predictably, many adherents of the high count have claimed that the low number of capita civium registered by the censors of 86/85 bc can be fully explained if we assume that the Roman census continued to be fully centralized until the mid-40s bc. In their view, a variety of factors such as the persistence of parochialism, the negligible influence of the majority of the population in the comitia centuriata, the prospect of loss of work and the difficulties and costs of overland travel can be expected to have dissuaded about two-thirds of the theoretical target population from travelling to

139 Per. Livy 84. 140 Beloch (1886), 352; Brunt (1971/1987), 92. But then, why not 863,000 (with dccc misread as cccc), as suggested by Bennett (1923), 44–5? The figure of 463,000 is accepted by Frank (1924), 336, Taylor (1960), 105–6, Galsterer (2006), 299–300 and Bispham (2007), 198,n.185. 141 In the manuscripts of Jerome’s Chronicon, the census figure for ad 14 is distorted to 9,370,000 (cf. below, at note 173) and that for ad 47/48 (5,984,072, according to Tac. Ann. 11.25)to6,944,000 in the Latin text and to 6,941,000 in the Armenian version (Hier. Chron.p.180, Helm (1926) and in Syncellus (p. 404, Mosshammer). As Beloch (1886), 352, points out, most manuscripts containing the text of the Periochae of Livy give ccccl (instead of dcccc) as the census figure for 70/69 bc, evidently because the copyist overlooked or misread the initial d. Of course, Eusebius/Jerome may faithfully have copied a figure that had already been distorted.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 114 Meaning of the census figures Rome, if this was the only place where adult male citizens could register themselves.142 It has, in fact, even been suggested that a fully centralized census procedure requiring all household heads to come to Rome was deliberately kept in place after the conclusion of the Social War in order to prevent as many as possible of the new citizens from exercising their newly won political rights.143 The main weakness of these arguments is that they assume what has yet to be proved, namely the existence of a fully centralized census procedure, without looking for alternative explanations. Focusing on the enigmatic reference to the bestowal of the suffragium in 84 bc in the text of Livy’s epitomator, other ancient historians have suggested that the various grants of citizenship laid down in the lex Iulia of 90 bc and in the later legislation dealing with the dediticii populi were not immediately implemented, in the sense that it took some years of political wrangling to sort out the distribution of the new citizens among the thirty- ﬁve tribes. In the view of these historians, the information supplied by Livy’s epitomator implies that it was only in 84 bc that the majority of Italians were given the opportunity to exercise their political rights as Roman citizens.144 This assumption allows it to be argued that it was a delay between the various grants of citizenship made in abstracto and the implementation of these grants that was responsible for the omission of the vast majority of the new citizens by the censors of 86/85 bc. Against this interpretation it has been pointed out that, following Sulla’s march on Rome and his departure for Asia, Marius and Cinna had formed an alliance with the Samnites and recaptured the city with the help of troops and money supplied by the Italian allies.145 It seems likely that the allied communities in question were won over by the promise that, once in power, Marius and Cinna would rescind Sulla’s annulment of the lex Sulpicia of 88 bc (which had prescribed the enrolment of the new citizens in the old

142 In favour of a fully centralized census: Taylor (1960), 105; Wiseman (1969), 67–9; Lo Cascio (1994), (2001b), 587, and (2008); Kron (2005a), 450–3; Bispham (2007), 360,n.141. Against: Mommsen (1887), ii, 368–9; Brunt (1971/1987), 38–43; Humbert (1978), 322–5; Crawford and Nicolet, in Crawford (1996), 388–9; Mouritsen (1998a), 96,n.29; Northwood (2008), 263. 143 Kron (2005a), 450–3. According to Kron, ibid., 448, Lepidus’ claim that Sulla was barring a considerable number of the allies and of the people of Latium from citizenship (Sall. Hist. 1.55.12 = 1.48.12 McGushin) must mean that no census was held in order to prevent the allies from exercising their newly won political rights. This would certainly be the most natural reading if we could be sure that the census of 86/85 bc was a failure. But perhaps Lepidus’ words are to be understood as referring to the fate of those communities that Sulla had deprived of citizenship (as suggested by McGushin 1992, 118–19), which may have included Praeneste (cf. Santangelo 2007a, 137–42). Alternatively, the passage can be read as referring to the large number of prominent men who had individually lost their rights as citizens (cf. App. BC 1.96). In any case, this passage has no bearing on the interpretation of the census ﬁgure for 70/69 bc. 144 E.g Harris (1971), 233–6; Mouritsen (1998a), 168,n.45; Lovano (2002), 62. 145 App. BC 1.65–8.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 The census figure for 86/85 bc 115 tribes).146 From this chain of events, it has plausibly been inferred that it would have been politically impossible for Marius and Cinna to renege on their earlier promise and to exclude the majority of Italians from the census by postponing their registration in the tribes.147 It would then follow that the new citizens must already have been distributed between the tribes before the census of 86/85 bc, and that the grant of suffragium made in 84 bc must have been no more than a senatorial decree confirming the right of the new citizens to vote amongst the thirty-five tribes.148 Although these objections must be taken seriously, it would be wrong to conclude that no satisfactory explanation for the low census figure reported by Jerome can be found unless we accept the existence of a fully centralized census procedure. In my view, there is absolutely nothing to contradict the view that the censors of 86/85 bc had asked all or most of the self-governing communities between the Po and the Ionian Sea to hold local censuses and to send the results to Rome. If such local censuses were indeed held, it seems reasonable to suppose that all municipal lists would have had to be verified, either by the censors themselves or by other magistrates assisting them.149 Since this would have been the first pan-Italian census, a whole range of practical problems could have arisen at this point. For instance, the censors or their assistants might well have rejected the results of local censuses on the grounds of inaccuracy, deviation from normal Roman procedures or suspected invalid grants of citizenship to foreigners. This hypothesis is particularly plausible in the case of the census of 86/85 bc because one of the censors, L. Marcius Philippus, is known vehemently to have opposed Livius Drusus’ proposed extension of citizenship to the Italian allies.150 It could therefore be argued that the figure for 86/85 bc was low because most of the locally compiled census records had been rejected and that the grant of suffragium was a follow-up measure that validated these local lists (or improved versions of them) as entitling the men on them to cast their votes at Roman assemblies. Since the censors of 86/85 bc would already have assigned the 463,000 citizens registered on local lists to the classes, the

146 Law of Sulpicius: App. BC 1.55–6; annulment by Sulla: BC 1.59. 147 Taylor (1960), 104–5; Bispham (2007), 178–80, 193–4. 148 Bispham (2007), 194. 149 It appears from Cic. Arch. 9–10 that the censors of 89 bc had entrusted three of the praetors with the task of verifying the registration of people who had received honorary citizenship in more than one Italian town, the so-called adscripti. Wulff Alonso (2002), 150–3, argues that these praetors must also have been responsible for the veriﬁcation of all municipal lists sent to Rome. In his view, some of the praetors of 86 bc and 85 bc might also have performed this task. Although this theory is speculative, the underlying idea that local census lists would not have been incorporated into the Roman census without prior veriﬁcation seems plausible. 150 Brunt (1971/1987), 93; Bispham (2007), 195.

3.5 some other pieces of evidence Apart from the figure in Jerome’s Chronicon, our only snippet of evidence concerning the census procedures followed in the years after the end of the Social War is a passage from Cicero’s speech on behalf of Cluentius. In this passage Oppianicus, who offered his services to Sulla in 83 bc, then installed himself and three of his friends as quattuorviri of his home town after Sulla’s victory, is accused of having falsified the public census records of Larinum (tabulas publicas Larini censorias).152 Lo Cascio argues that the census referred to in this passage must have been a local one conducted by the town of Larinum in 82 bc, when Oppianicus could have been performing censorial duties in the role of a quattuorvir quinquennalis.153 The difficulty here is that there is absolutely nothing to suggest that the magistracy held by Oppianicus in 82 bc or 81 bc was that of a quinquennial quattuorvir; we have, moreover, no evidence that any local census was taken in Larinum during his term of office. It seems, therefore, more plausible to suppose that the tabulae censoriae to which Cicero refers were local tabulae compiled for the pan- Italian census of 86/85 bc.

151 Taylor (1960), 105–6, followed by Bispham (2007), 198,n.185. 152 Cic. Clu. 41, discussed in detail by Moreau (1994). 153 For the quattuorviri quinquennales of late-republican and early-imperial Italy and their censorial duties, see Bispham (2007), 337–79. There are no certain attestations before the 60s bc (ibid. 374). Note that Bispham, ibid., 200–1, dates Oppianicus’ quattuorvirate to 81 bc, the year after the Battle of the Colline Gate.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Some other pieces of evidence 117 If the system described by the Tabula Heracleensis was already in operation by this time, the results of any local census would have had to be sent to Rome, but the Tabula makes it clear that the information collected on the local tabulae censoriae was copied onto libri (presumably in the form of papyrus rolls) and that only these documents were transmitted.154 This implies that the municipal authorities of Larinum and indeed of every other town would have retained the original records for their own use (for instance, in regulating access to the local town council, or determining liability to conscription). Since Lo Cascio is thinking in terms of a fully centralized census procedure, he cannot date the tabulae censoriae of Larinum to 86 bc or 85 bc. He therefore has to assume that the local authorities of Larinum had no access to the results of the pan-Italian census of 86/85 bc, and that this made it necessary for them to organize a completely new census 3 or 4 years after the completion of the lustrum of 85 bc. There can be no doubt that this would have been an extremely impractical arrangement. Besides, as we have just seen, there is no evidence whatsoever that any local census took place in Larinum in 82 bc or 81 bc. At the very least, we must conclude that the evidence contained in the Pro Cluentio is fully compatible with the existence of a decentralized census procedure. Regarding the second pan-Italian census (that of 70/69 bc), the only clue of any importance is a famous passage from Cicero’s ﬁrst speech against Verres, from which it appears that a large crowd came to Rome in 70 bc ‘for the elections, for the games and for the census’ (comitiorum ludorum censendique causa).155 Commencing with Tenney Frank, many scholars have claimed this passage as proof that any Roman citizen who wanted to register himself had to travel to Rome.156 As Crawford and Nicolet pointed out some years ago, however, the crowd referred to by Cicero as having come for the census could well have consisted of representatives of the Italian municipia who had had to travel to Rome in order to present the results of their local censuses.157 It is true that these representatives alone are not likely to have formed a huge crowd.158 As Cicero explains, however, the visitors in question included a lot of people who had come to Rome for the games or for the elections. In other words, the only piece of evidence

154 Tab. Her. 148–50. 155 Cic. I Verr. 15.54. 156 Frank (1924), 334; Wiseman (1969), 68–9; Lo Cascio (2001b), 596–7; Kron (2005a), 452–3. 157 Crawford and Nicolet, in Crawford (1996), 389. Pace Bispham (2007), 360,n.141, Cicero neither says nor suggests that most or all of those who had travelled to Rome had done so in order to register themselves with the censors. 158 Thus, correctly, Kron (2005a), 453.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 118 Meaning of the census figures that has been claimed as incontrovertible proof of the existence of a fully centralized census procedure cannot bear the heavy burden placed upon it by the high counters. One indication suggests that the censors of 70/69 bc did in fact manage to register a very large proportion of the target population. This indication has to do with the demographic balance between citizens and allies before and after the Social War. If we are to believe Livy’s epitomator, roughly 395,000 adult male citizens were registered in 125/124 bc and in 115/114 bc.159 Under normal circumstances the corresponding ﬁgure for 70/69 bc would presumably have been considerably higher than this. It must, however, be remembered that between 110 bc and 80 bc some 85,000 men of citizen status had perished during the Cimbrian Wars, the Social War and the Civil War of the late 80s bc. It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that the descendants of those registered in 125/124 bc numbered approximately 400,000 in 70/69 bc.160 If we combine this estimate with the number of citizens registered at this time, it follows that there must have been at least 500,000 adult male citizens of formerly allied status, implying a ratio of 4:5 between old and new citizens. As we have already seen, the ratio between citizens and allies was approximately 4:6 on the eve of the Second Punic War, and it seems reasonable to suppose that the large-scale conﬁscations carried out after the Hannibalic War, along with the viritane assignations that took place during the early decades of the early second century bc, would have had the effect of increasing the relative share of the Roman citizens. It should be noted that this inference is in perfect harmony with the fact that the ratio between legionaries and allies appears to have been close to parity at the time of Polybius.161 Now, there is perhaps a theoretical possibility that the balance between legionaries and allies had absolutely nothing to do with underlying demographic realities.162 It might be conjectured that the long-term stability in the ratio between Romans and allies that can be observed between 225 bc and 69 bc is attributable to the fact that, by a remarkable coincidence, the proportions of old and new citizens captured by the census of 70/69 bc were almost identical.163 Yet the most natural interpretation is surely that

159 Per. Livy 59 and 60. 160 Cf. Chapter 4, at note 88. 161 Above, at note 67. 162 According to Velleius 2.15.2, the allies had to bear a disproportionate share of the military burden. This, if true, would strengthen my argument. We must, however, surely reckon with a fair amount of rhetorical exaggeration. 163 Since most of the old citizens lived closer to Rome than the former allies, one would expect the former to have been over-represented, if all adult male citizens sui iuris were required to travel to Rome.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 Some other pieces of evidence 119 the consistency with which these ratios appear in completely different contexts reflects a genuine demographic pattern. If we accept this conclusion, it becomes difficult to reject the census figures for the period 204 bc– 69 bc as completely unreliable. Apart from the census figures for 86/85 bc and 70/69 bc and a few references in the literary sources, our most important source of information about the history of the census during the first century bc is the Tabula Heracleensis. Some scholars argue that this text was inscribed some time before 62 bc, when Heraclea is first recorded as a municipium.164 In that case, it could belong to the period before the census of 70/69 bc or even to that before the census of 86/85 bc. It seems more likely, however, that the text was inscribed in 45 bc.165 The Tabula is the first document that unambiguously refers to a decentralized census procedure, and Lo Cascio and other scholars have claimed that this proves their theory that no such procedure existed before the mid-40s bc. An obvious weakness of this argument is that the text of the Tabula is characterized by a striking lack of unity. As Frederiksen observed many years ago, the most probable explanation for this seems to be that the text is a digest of material copied or adapted from a variety of earlier sources.166 Precisely for this reason, many scholars have identified the section concerning the census as belonging to an earlier period, with most of them prefer- ring a date between the conclusion of the Social War and the census of 70/69 bc. In my view, the mixed contents of the Tabula Heracleensis strongly suggest that the section on the census was indeed copied from an earlier document, meaning that the decentralized procedure it describes is unlikely to have been an innovation of the mid-40s bc.167 Admittedly, the provisions concerning the census contain no clues that unambiguously point to the 80sor70s bc, which makes it impossible to go beyond the conclusion that such a procedure was introduced some time before Caesar’s dictatorship.

164 Giovannini (2004), 203, and (2008), 47–8, suggests that the provisions concerning the census were copied from a lex Iulia municipalis of 90 bc. Cf. also Galsterer (2006), 300, who favours a date shortly after the end of the Social War. 165 Crawford and Nicolet, in Crawford (1996), 360–2. 166 Frederiksen (1965), followed by Crawford and Nicolet (1996), 358. 167 Unless, of course, this earlier document was a Caesarian lex Iulia municipalis of 45 bc. The majority view is, however, that Caesar never issued a matrix law regulating municipal government and administration. See e.g. Frederiksen (1965); Crawford and Nicolet, in Crawford (1996), 359.

3.6 republican census procedures: some provisional conclusions In view of the fragmentary nature of the surviving evidence, there is no room for any far-reaching conclusions. There are nonetheless at least some good reasons for arguing that from the early third century bc onwards it was normal for cives sine suffragio who lived in self-governing communities to be registered by local magistrates, following which the results of these local censuses were transmitted to Rome. I have also argued that the technical language used in Livy’s account of the levy of 169 bc indicates the existence of a partially decentralized census procedure for registering citizens living within the conﬁnes of the Ager Romanus during the second quarter of the second century bc. It seems a reasonable supposition that this decentralized system was developed and extended to Italy as a whole soon after the Social War, that is to say, either between 89 bc and 86 bc or between 85 bc and 70 bc. As we have just seen, all of our current evidence is compatible with this view. It must, however, be conceded that compatibility does not amount to proof, and that the evidence supplied by the Tabula Heracleensis does not allow us to trace the evolution of the census between 89 bc and 45 bc. The only real certainty is that there is no secure proof of the existence of a fully centralized census procedure at any time between the end of the Social War and Caesar’s dictatorship. Although this conclusion may seem minimal, it at least shows that the theory that the use of a fully centralized census procedure resulted in a very low rate of registration is built on very weak foundations.

3.7 a change in registration or reporting practices under augustus? In his Res Gestae, Augustus reports the results of three censuses carried out at his behest between 28 bc and ad 14.In28 bc 4,063,000 capita civium Romanorum were registered (censa). This figure had risen to 4,233,000 by 8 bc and to 4,937,000 by ad 14.168 In the Fasti Ostienses,wefind a lower figure for the census of ad 14. This figure has been read as 4,100,900.169 The numerical notae, however, appear at the right-hand edge of the inscription, and approximately eight characters have been lost at the beginning of the next line. It is therefore possible to restore [xxxvii] in the lacuna and to read 4,100,937 instead of 4,100,900.170

168 RG 8.2–4. 169 E.g. Brunt (1971/1987), 113. 170 Seston (1954), followed by Nicolet (1991/2000), 191–2.

3.7.1 Interpreting the Augustan census figures: philological and technical arguments Since the low counters tend to regard the census figures for the period 234–69 bc as giving at least a rough idea of real demographic developments, they cannot accept the three figures reported in the Res Gestae as having exactly the same meaning as the republican figures. They therefore have to

171 Hier. Chron.p.163, Helm (1926). 172 Georgius Syncellus p. 378, Mosshammer; cf. Adler and Tuffin(2002), 452. 173 Hier. Chron.p.171,Helm(1926). For the Armenian version, see Helm (1926), 500.Cf.Seston(1954), 20. 174 Suidas, vol. I, p. 410, Adler (s.v. Augoustos Kaisar). 175 Georgius Syncellus, p. 386, Mosshammer; cf. Adler and Tuffin(2002), 459. Contrary to the claim of Seston (1954), 20, the text does not give the figure 131,017.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 122 Meaning of the census figures hypothesize that in the case of the Augustan figures the phrase civium capita refers to all people of citizen status, despite the fact that the same phrase refers exclusively to adult male citizens in the written sources relating to the Republic. Starting from the premise that the Augustan censuses were the first to take women and children into account,176 most low counters argue that the figures recorded during these censuses are likely to be at least as deficient as the republican ones. Operating with a hypothetical deficiency rate of 25 per cent, Brunt arrived at an estimate of c. 5 million people of citizen status in 28 bc. With an equally hypothetical slave population of c. 2 million and with c. 1 million citizens in the provinces, this would imply an Italian population of c. 6 million (excluding foreigners).177 Various explanations for a change in census practices under Augustus have been advanced. It has been suggested, for instance, that, having noticed that men, women and children were registered in Ptolemaic Egypt, Octavian decided that he too was going to register and report the total number of citizens instead of merely the number of adult males. In support of this argument, it has been pointed out that in republican times the term civis was already sometimes used to denote any person of citizen status, including women and children.178 The alleged break with the republican tradition has also been played down in other ways. Two examples are Brunt’s claim that the language of the Res Gestae is not technical and Scheidel’s recent suggestion that the three Augustan census figures might not have been published in the form in which they appear in this document.179 It has also been pointed out that it must have been relatively easy to justify the inclusion of women and children as perfectly traditional by retrojecting the Augustan census procedure into the distant past. In this context we may instance a strange story in Dionysius of Halicarnassus according to which King Servius Tullius instituted a system under which the number of men, women and children

176 Since Dionysius of Halicarnassus claims that women and children were registered in the censuses of the sixth and fifth centuries bc, this premise is open to challenge. Cf. De Ligt (2007c), 179, for the suggestion that we may be dealing with a change in reporting practices rather than with a new policy of general registration. We must also, however, reckon with the possibility that Dionysius was simply retrojecting the census practices of his own time (cf. below, note 182). 177 Cf. Chapter 1, at notes 23–4. Note that Brunt (1971/1987), 115–16, explains this high deficiency rate of 25 per cent as reflecting the unpopularity of the citizen census (especially among potential tax-payers) and a massive under-registration of women and children. The second of these suggestions is supported by the Egyptian evidence, which indicates heavy under-reporting of girls under the age of 15. See Scheidel (2001a), 149–50. 178 Brunt (1971/1987), 114. 179 Scheidel (2004), 5.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 A change in practices under Augustus? 123 could be established by means of coins contributed at the Paganalia.180 This system seems to foreshadow the census procedure allegedly introduced by Servius Tullius and maintained throughout the early decades of the Republic, since Dionysius repeatedly asserts that during this period all male citizens sui iuris were required to register not only themselves and their possessions, but also their women and children.181 These descriptions have been interpreted by Pieri as a retrojection of practices of the Augustan period.182 A closely related question concerns the motive or motives that might have prompted Octavian/Augustus to include women and children in the published census totals. As many low counters have pointed out, the Augustan marriage laws and Augustus’ decision to institute a system of birth registration for legitimate children point to a strong interest in demographic matters.183 More generally, the Augustan age seems to have been characterized by a vigorous policy of mapping countries, measuring land (especially in Italy) and counting people. The decision to register and report all men, women and children of citizen status might have been an offshoot of this general policy.184 Some other scholars have speculated that Octavian/Augustus had a strong interest in covering up the manpower losses of the recent civil wars, for which he was partly responsible. He may therefore have felt that inconvenient public attention to this matter could be avoided by adopting a broader deﬁnition of civium capita.185 Finally, we could consider the possibility that the liberal bestowal of citizenship upon large numbers of provincials during the last decades of the Republic had created unprecedented opportunities for non-citizens and for citizens who had married women of peregrine status to claim citizenship for themselves or their children. Only a complete registration of women and children of citizen status could solve this problem.186 Although none of these hypotheses is inherently implausible, the fact remains that there is not a single explicit reference to any change in census procedures or reporting practices under Augustus. To put it another way, a fundamental weakness of the low-count interpretation of the Augustan

180 DH 4.15.4. 181 DH 4.15.6. Cf. Northwood (2008), 258. 182 Pieri (1968), 15. 183 Brunt (1971/1987), 114. As he notes, both the lex Aelia Sentia of ad 4 and the lex Papia Poppaea of ad 9 required registration of children. These laws did not only relate to the wealthier classes. 184 Nicolet (1988). 185 Schulz (1937), 183–5. 186 Under the Republic only adult male citizens, widows and orphans seem to have been registered (Northwood 2008, 258,n.5, contra Mommsen 1887, ii, 362). For Dionysius’ statement that King Servius Tullius counted men, women and children, cf. above, at notes 180–2.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 124 Meaning of the census figures census figures has always been that it requires us to assume that in his Res Gestae Augustus was using the phrase civium capita in a sense without parallel in the sources for the Republic. Although the low counters are correct that the term civis could be used of women and children, this does not alter the basic fact that there is nothing to indicate that this less specific usage affected the meaning of the traditional expression civium capita. Arguing against the theories of Beloch and Brunt, the high counters have pointed out that there is no reason to think that the three figures given in the Res Gestae should be interpreted differently from the republican census figures. As they point out, Augustus went out of his way to emphasize continuity with the institutions of the Republic, which suggests that the phrase civium capita probably retained its traditional republican meaning.187 In various publications, Lo Cascio has claimed that this interpretation is supported by the evidence contained in the Suda and in the Chronicle of George Syncellus. As we have seen, both of these sources specify that the census figure for ad 14 referred to the number of men (andres) registered by Augustus and Tiberius.188 The quantitative implications of this reading of the Augustan census figures are enormous. In a recent article, Lo Cascio claims that the census figure for 28 bc points to a total citizen population of between 12.7 and 13.5 million. Of these, he assigns c. 1.25 million to the provinces, leaving between 11.5 and 12.25 million people of citizen status for mainland Italy. If the number of urban and rural slaves stood somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 million, this theory leaves us with an Italian population of between 13 million and 14.75 million (excluding foreigners).189 Of course, this reading of the evidence raises the question of why the census figure for 28 bc is more than ten times higher than that for 125/124 bc and about 4.5 times higher than that for 70/69 bc. It is generally agreed that this enormous gap cannot be closed by adding the newly enfranchised population of Transpadana. Scholars such as Frank, Wiseman and Lo Cascio have therefore developed the theory that the censuses of the period 234–69 bc must have missed at least half of the target population. In their view, it was only after the institution of a decentralized census procedure in about 45 bc that accurate registration of the adult male citizen population could be achieved. In other words, unlike the censuses of the preceding two

187 Frank (1924), 338; Wiseman (1969); Lo Cascio (1994), 31,n.52; Kron (2005a), 454–7. 188 Lo Cascio (1994), 32;(1999a), 162. 189 Lo Cascio, Malanima (2005), 203. For the number of slaves, cf. Chapter 1, at notes 32–3.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 A change in practices under Augustus? 125 centuries, those carried out in 28 bc, 8 bc and ad 14 must have resulted in near-complete registration of the adult male citizen population. Not all of the philological arguments developed by the high counters are equally cogent. In particular, no independent value can be attached to the fact that George Syncellus and the Suda identify the target population of the census of ad 14 as men (andres). A glance at these late sources and at the corresponding passage in Jerome leaves us in no doubt that all of the writers active after ad 350 derived their information about the census of ad 14 either directly from Eusebius’ Chronica or from other writers who had used Eusebius and, as Seston has demonstrated, Eusebius himself must have drawn on a historiographical tradition that passed on the figure contained in the Res Gestae, or a distorted version of that figure.190 In view of these historiographical connections, we must surely conclude that neither Eusebius nor any of his successors had access to any information not contained in the Res Gestae. For this reason, their testimony cannot be used to shed light on the meaning of the phrase civium capita. Another weak spot in the high-count theory is that its estimates for the Augustan period are based on the assumption that the local magistrates and officials responsible for the task of registering the adult male citizen population in 28 bc, 8 bc and ad 14 managed to register all, or nearly all, men of citizen status. Since no census carried out in the pre-modern world is known to have captured more than 90 per cent of its target population, this assumption is clearly unrealistic. If we apply this adjustment without changing any of the other figures, Lo Cascio’s estimate of the size of the free Italian population in 28 bc rises to about 13.5 million and the figure for ad 14 to about 16 million. With between 1.5 and 3.5 million slaves, the corresponding figures for the entire free and non-free Italian population range from 15 million to 19.5 million. The minimum figure for ad 14 is 17.5 million.191 On the other hand, these critical observations do not change the fundamental fact that from a purely philological point of view the high-count reading of the Augustan census figures is clearly superior to the interpretation of the low counters, since they can only point to the dubious evidence supplied by Dionysius, who may or may not have projected a new policy of including women and children back into the distant pre-republican past.192 It follows from this that if we confine ourselves to the information supplied by the ancient sources the only serious defect in the high-count theory appears to be that it stands or falls by the assumption that no

190 Seston (1954). 191 Chapter 1, at note 34. 192 Above, at note 182.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 126 Meaning of the census figures decentralized census procedure existed before 45 bc. As we have seen, this crucial premise is not supported by the surviving evidence. In the final analysis, then, the low and high counts turn out to suffer from exactly the same methodological weakness. Those favouring the low count must assume a change in registration or reporting practices for which there is no evidence in order to explain the enormous jump in the census figures after 70/69 bc. High counters must make a number of unproven assumptions about the aims and methods of the republican censors in order to explain away the inconveniently low census figures for the last two centuries of the Republic. Viewed in this light, the arguments used by both sides can be seen to be evenly balanced. This, of course, is the main reason why this debate has been going on for more than a century. To conclude this brief discussion of the philological and technical problems raised by the Augustan census figures, a few words must be said about a new interpretation developed by the Dutch ancient historian Hin.193 The starting point of her theory is the observation that two of the republican census figures are accompanied by phrases from which it appears that orphans and widows were not covered by the figures relating to the capita civium censa. In the first of these cases, we read that orbi and orbae (orphans and widows) were not covered by the census figure for 465 bc. In the second, it appears that the census figure for 131/130 bc did not include pupillae and viduae.194 Partly on the basis of these indications, Hin argues that under the Republic the term censi must have referred exclusively to citizens sui iuris. In her view this interpretation is supported by Livy’s description of the levy of 169 bc, in which the term censi clearly denotes independent adults capable of declaring themselves, their children and their property before the censors.195 Starting from this premise, Hin goes on to argue that the high census figure for 28 bc can be explained by assuming that Octavian decided to include widows and orphans in the published census totals, presumably because he wanted to impose an inheritance tax comparable to the later vicesima hereditatium on all property-owning citizens. Since c. 40 per cent of the Roman citizen population can be shown to have consisted of men and

193 Hin (2008), 218–33 and (2009), 183–95. 194 Livy 3.3.9 and Per. Livy 59. As pointed out above (note 27), the fact that Livy indicates that he took his information about the census of 465 bc from an earlier source makes it difﬁcult to maintain that he added the phrase about the exclusion of orphans and widows in order to alert his readers to a recent change in census procedures. 195 Hin (2008), 202,(2009), 173.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 A change in practices under Augustus? 127 women sui iuris (if it is assumed that all married women were in potestate and all widows sui iuris), the census figure for 28 bc would then imply a citizen population of at most c. 10 million. In reality large numbers of married women were sui iuris. As Hin realizes, however, her theory logically implies that these women were included in the Augustan census figures, for the obvious reason that they too were property-owners. With this modifi- cation, the number of citizens of both sexes and of all ages drops to 7.0 million, and the Italian population (including slaves and foreigners) to about 7.5 million.196 Needless to say, the main interest of this imaginative reconstruction lies in the fact that it sidesteps the old dichotomy between low counters and high counters by presenting us with an intermediate scenario in which the population of Italy is roughly 50 per cent lower than the level envisaged by the high count, but also 20 per cent higher than the most recent estimates of the low counters. The ingenuity with which this intermediate position has been con- structed should not, however, blind us to the weakness of some of its underlying arguments. One of these weaknesses has to do with the workings of the republican census procedure. While it is generally accepted that heads of households were expected to declare not only themselves but also their adult sons in potestate, it does not follow that only the declarants themselves were regarded as censi.197 For the reasons set out earlier in this chapter, there can be no doubt that the census figures for the middle and late Republic are to be interpreted as referring to the total number of adult male citizens.198 This makes it impossible to posit a basic continuity between a period in which all men sui iuris were enumerated and a period in which the census figures began to include all men, women and children sui iuris. A closely related problem is that it is not immediately apparent how women of citizen status fit into Hin’s interpretation of the Augustan figures. Here one difficulty is that married women sui iuris, one of the groups supposedly covered by the Augustan figures, were evidently neither pupillae nor orbae. In other words, the two phrases that are the starting point of Hin’s analysis do not actually support her re-interpretation of the Augustan census figures. Thirdly, and finally, Hin’s emphasis on the fiscal aspects of the census leads her to suggest that Octavian’s decision to include women and children

196 Hin assigns 1 million citizens to the provinces and 1.5 million slaves and foreigners to mainland Italy. 197 Above, at note 29. 198 Above, section 3.2.1.

3.7.2 Comparative perspectives on the Augustan census figures Although the text-based arguments of previous scholarship should not be set aside as uninteresting or useless, the fact that the low and high counts have been on the table for more than a century suggests that this debate cannot be settled by means of philological and technical argument alone. For this reason, we must try to place the low-count and high-count interpretations of the Augustan census figures (or, to be more precise, the general demographic trajectories implied by these interpretations) within a wider context. One step in this direction was taken in Chapter 1, in which Lo Cascio’s estimate that the population of mainland Italy was between 15 and 16 million at the time of Augustus was compared with recent estimates for the late- medieval and early-modern periods. One of the conclusions that emerged from this comparison was that, even if we take into account grain imports from the provinces, it remains very difficult to explain how the 15 or 16 million Italians of the high-count theory could have been fed in the absence of the new crops (especially maize) that helped to sustain the significantly smaller Italian population of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.201

199 Hin (2008), 232–3;(2009), 194–5. 200 I hasten to add that Hin’s chapter on the Augustan census ﬁgures is the only weak part of an otherwise excellent book that offers a large number of valuable new insights into Roman demographic history. 201 Chapter 1, at notes 91–2.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 A change in practices under Augustus? 129 Conversely, the low-count reading of the Augustan census figures would seem to make Roman Italy rather under-populated by late-medieval and early-modern standards. This problem can, however, be solved by assuming that certain parts of Augustan Italy were in the middle of a process of economic development and demographic growth that may have continued until the early decades of the second century ad. In other words, the wide gap between early-imperial and late-medieval Italy could well have dimin- ished considerably after 28 bc.202 Another way of assessing the general plausibility of the low and high counts is to look at the widely diverging rates of population growth during the period between the outbreak of the Second Punic War and the beginning of the Principate that they imply. Any attempt to calculate the average rates of natural demographic growth required by the high and low counts is, of course, complicated by the fact that the citizen population of Augustan times consisted not only of the descendants of the free Italian population of 225 bc, but also of the offspring of manumitted slaves and a significant number of provincials enfranchised by Sertorius, Pompey, Caesar and the triumvirs. Since female slaves tended to be manumitted in their thirties, their contribution to the long-term expansion of the free population was probably limited.203 The number of newly enfranchised provincials in 28 bc cannot be determined. If we take on board Brunt’s suggestion that some 110,000 adult males were enfranchised in provincial colonies and municipia before 28 bc, the total number of enfranchised provincials (including women and children) would have been approximately 330,000.204 Whilesomescholarsthinkthisfigure far too high, others have argued that the real number of enfranchised provincials was several times higher.205 The only acceptable conclusion is that no certainty is possible. In an earlier chapter, we saw that the Polybian manpower figures indicate a free Italian population of approximately 3.9 million in 225 bc.Ifwe combine this estimate with the c. 5 million citizens implied by the low- count interpretation of the census figure for 28 bc, we end up with an average annual growth rate of about 0.1 per cent. Of course, this rate drops significantly if we take non-natural growth into account. For instance, if we assume (arbitrarily) that the number of Roman citizens would have stood at 4.5 million if no slaves had been manumitted and no provincials enfranchised, we will end up with an average annual growth rate of only 0.07 per cent. This rate is very low compared with the rates calculated for various

202 Cf. Chapter 6. 203 E.g. Brunt (1971/1987), 143–5, followed by Scheidel (1997), 160–2. 204 Brunt (1971/1987), 262–3. 205 Cf. Chapter 1, note 35.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 130 Meaning of the census figures parts of early-modern Europe (cf. below). A higher growth rate can, of course, be obtained by lowering the assumed starting population of 3.9 million. In this context, it must be remembered that we have no reliable evidence regarding the size of the indigenous population of pre-Roman Cisalpina.206 Even if we adopt the very low estimate of 750,000 for this population, we still arrive at an average growth rate of no more than 0.17 per cent per annum, including all forms of non-natural growth. How can so low a rate be accounted for? In my view, the only possible answer to this question is that the demographic gains achieved by the expansion of some subsections of the free Italian population had been annulled by a decline in other groups.207 As we shall see in the next chapter, there is good reason to believe that the Roman citizen body recovered quickly from the setbacks suffered during the Second Punic War and continued to grow throughout the second century bc. If the low count is correct, the census figures for the mid- and late second century bc should give us some idea of the average annual rate at which the Roman citizen body was expanding.208 For instance, if we take the census figures for 163 bc and 124 bc as our starting points, we arrive at an average annual growth rate of about 0.3 per cent.209 This relatively slow expansion would have included all accretions resulting from the manumission of slaves and from the legal or illegal acquisition of Roman citizenship by Latins and other non-Romans. It must also be remembered that this was a time at which the foundation of Latin colonies had come to a halt. In periods during which more Latin colonies were founded, the expansion of the citizen body is likely to have proceeded at a significantly slower pace. Up to a point, the expansion of the citizen body can be seen as mirroring the growth of the Ager Romanus. In this context, the extensive confiscations that took place after the Hannibalic War and the colonial foundations and viritane assignations of 201 bc–173 bc spring to mind. It seems likely that these gains were large enough to offset any loss of land resulting from the spread of slave-staffed estates in central-western Italy.210

206 Chapter 2. 207 In order to avoid overly complicated formulations, I have used the term ‘free Italian population’ to denote all free persons of Italian descent, including those living in the provinces. 208 For reasons that will be explained in the next chapter, the ﬁgures for the early second century bc cannot be used for this purpose. 209 Of course, this type of calculation is possible only if we assume that the registration rates achieved in these censuses were roughly equal (De Ligt 2004, 741,n.34). If we repeat this exercise for the period 225 bc–124 bc, assuming that there were 340,000 adult male citizens in 225 bc and that the census ﬁgure for 124 bc was 10 per cent defective, the long-term growth rate drops to 0.2 per cent. 210 For further discussion, see Chapter 4.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 A change in practices under Augustus? 131 Another demographic sub-group that is likely to have expanded between 225 bc and the Social War is the Latins. Between 201 and 177 bc five new Latin colonies211 were founded, and the Latins also benefited from at least one viritane distribution in Cisalpine Gaul.212 There is, moreover, an impressive amount of archaeological evidence to suggest that many Latin towns and their territories continued to flourish during the first century BC.213 By contrast, many other sub-groups of the free Italian population had lost extensive tracts of territory. In Aemilia the Boii had been deprived of half their territory and almost certainly of a higher proportion of their arable lands.214 According to some sources, many of those who survived left Italy and settled in Bohemia.215 The void thus created was, of course, partly filled by immigrants of Roman, Latin and allied status. Nonetheless, it remains likely that it took some time for the demographic losses resulting from warfare and deportation to be made good. In the long term, the net result must have been an expansion of the Romans and Latins at the expense of the pre-Roman population. Other areas in which large-scale confiscations were carried out between 201 bc and 170 bc included Apulia, Bruttium, Lucania and Liguria. Some of the Samnite tribes (in particular the Hirpini) were deprived of a large part of their territories. Like the former territories of the Boii, many of these areas were designated for settlers of Roman or Latin status at various points during the second century bc, and the towns of western Samnium experi- enced a further round of confiscations and assignations to Roman veterans at the time of Sulla.216 In assessing the general plausibility of a model of slow growth in the free Italian population, we must also take into account the probable effects of the Hannibalic War, the Social War and the civil wars of the first century bc. Drawing on Nefedov’s recent research into the relationships between political instability, internal warfare and demographic development in pre- modern China, Turchin has recently argued that instability in pre-modern empires has generally been associated with demographic stagnation or decline, and that republican Italy is unlikely to have been an exception to

211 Copia, Vibo Valentia, Bononia, Aquileia and perhaps Luca (cf. Salmon 1933;Toynbee1965,II,538). 212 Livy 36.39.3. 213 Pelgrom (in press). 214 Livy 37.2.5 shows that the Boii were forced to leave the conﬁscated parts of their territory. 215 Strabo 5.1.6 and 5.1.10. Williams (2001) is optimistic about the fate of the surviving Boii, whom he sees as having quickly adopted Roman/Latin habits, but since the Celtic-speaking population of Aemilia is archaeologically invisible after 190 bc, the number of survivors cannot be determined. 216 Santangelo (2007a), 148–54.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 132 Meaning of the census figures this rule.217 Needless to say, it is always possible to play down the amount of disruption actually caused by the Second Punic War or by the various conflicts fought out between Italian armies between 91 bc and 31 bc.218 Even if we take a very optimistic view of the Italian potential for recovery, however, it remains true that the highly unstable conditions that existed in Italy throughout several decades of the period between 225 bc and 28 bc were hardly conducive to fast population growth. Although the quantitative effects of these complicated and mutually interdependent developments cannot be gauged, it seems reasonable to conclude that the net outcome might have been a slow increase in the number of free people of Italian descent. The high-count theory faces us with the task of modelling an increase from c. 6 million to c. 14.75 million free people between 225 bc and 28 bc.219 The average annual growth rate required to produce this increase would have been about 0.45 per cent. Since the early-imperial citizen population included manumitted slaves and their descendants, along with a significant number of enfranchised provincials, the underlying rate of natural growth would have been significantly lower than this. Despite this caveat, there can be no doubt that the high-count theory requires an average annual growth rate far in excess of 0.3 per cent per annum (often given as the highest rate that the populations of pre-modern Europe were able to sustain for any longer than 150–200 years in the absence of non-natural increases resulting from immigration).220 In a recent article, Morley has called attention to a handful of late- medieval and early-modern examples that seem to depart from the normal European pattern.221 He points out, for instance, that the population of Holland increased at a rate of 0.8 per cent per annum between 1514 and

217 Turchin (2005). Cf. also Turchin and Scheidel (2009). 218 See Brunt (1971/1987), 269–77, for an attempt to minimize the long-term impact of the devastation wrought by Hannibal and the Romans during the Second Punic War. For a much bleaker view of the impact of the Hannibalic War, see e.g. Cornell (1996a). 219 4.063.000 x 3.3 x 1.1 = 14,748,690. Again, citizens living in the provinces are included. For 225 bc,Lo Cascio and Malanima (2005), 201–2, assume a starting population of between 6 and 8 million. These figures are, however, derived from an erroneous interpretation of the Polybian manpower figures. See Chapter 2. 220 According to Livi-Bacci (2000), 89, the average annual rate of population growth in Europe as a whole was somewhat lower than 0.3 per cent in the period 1550–1800. During this period, the population of England expanded at an average annual rate of 0.4 per cent (ibid. 9). Much higher growth rates can be calculated for the frontier regions of the United States and Canada, but these reflect an exceptionally favourable balance between people and territory. See e.g. Easterlin (1971), 399; Sallares (1991), 75, 86; Livi-Bacci (2001), 48–52. Cf. also Hin (2009), 159, for the observation that even a long-term annual growth rate of 0.2 per cent is quite high for a pre-industrial population. 221 Morley (2001), 53.

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Teachers College Library - Columbia University, on 05 Apr 2018 at 08:36:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139003834.004 A change in practices under Augustus? 133 1622. Similarly, the populations of France and Sicily are thought to have expanded at an average annual rate of 0.7 and 0.8 per cent respectively between 1450 and 1560.222 In the case of Holland, it is generally agreed that the growth rate of 0.8 per cent was sustained only because of large-scale immigration.223 The same explanation seems to hold for Sicily, where a substantial proportion of the population gains of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries can be attributed to immigration from the southern mainland, from northern Italy and from Albania.224 The high growth rate that Morley calculates for France is of doubtful value. Recent literature concerning French demographic history abounds in warnings that all estimates relating to the size of the French population before 1600 are highly unreliable. The standard view is that the population of France (within its present borders) stood at approximately 20 million immediately before the Black Death, fell to about 12 million between 1350 and 1450 and climbed back to 20 million between 1450 and 1560.225 During the recovery period, the average annual growth rate implied by these figures is 0.45 per cent rather than 0.7 per cent. Of course, even this lower rate is still impressive. It must, however, be emphasized that the French recovery occurred over a far shorter period than the 197 years between 225 bc and 28 bc and that it took place at a time during which France underwent no large-scale devastation resulting from internal or external warfare. It seems significant that French population growth slowed down to approximately zero during the second half of the sixteenth century, when large parts of the country were affected by the Wars of Religion.226 Against this general background, it is difficult to see how an annual growth rate any higher than 0.3 per cent could have been maintained in Italy during a period that witnessed extensive destruction in southern Italy during the Hannibalic War, in Cisalpine Gaul during the Roman conquests of the early second century bc and throughout Italy during the Social War and the civil wars of the first century bc. Although perhaps this counter-argument

222 For rapid population growth in late-medieval Sicily, see also S. R. Epstein (1992), 72–3, and L. Epstein (1991), 17 (with excessive reliance on the estimates of Russell 1972). 223 E.g. Van Zanden (1993), 26. 224 Epstein (1992), 73. 225 Dupaquier (1988), vols. i and ii. 226 According to Livi-Bacci (2000), 8, the French population only grew from 19.5 million to 19.6 million between 1550 and 1600. If France did indeed have 12 million inhabitants in 1450 and 20.3 million in 1650 (Livi-Bacci, ibid.), its population must have grown at an average rate of 0.27 per cent per annum over a period of 200 years. If the ﬁgures given by Del Panta et al.(1996), 277, are reliable, the joint population of Sicily and Sardinia expanded at an average annual rate of 0.45 per cent during the same period. As we have seen, however, the rate of natural increase was in this case signiﬁcantly lower. For both islands this was a period of peace.

3.6 conclusions As we saw during our discussion of the Augustan census figures, the high- count reading of the figure for 28 bc can be supported with excellent philological arguments. Nonetheless, it seems fair to conclude that major difficulties appear once the demographic implications of this seemingly attractive reading are examined in the light of comparative data relating to Italian population levels reached before the arrival of maize, and to plausible rates of population growth during periods including several decades of severe military and economic disruption. In the next three chapters I shall argue that further weaknesses in Lo Cascio’s attempt to revive Frank’s interpretation come to light if we examine the capacity of the high-count theory to make sense of various other categories of evidence. These categories include the literary tradition concerning the demographic background to the Gracchan land reforms, the abundant archaeological data relating to the development of Italy’s urban network and a fast-growing body of rural survey data. If the arguments to be developed in these later chapters are broadly valid, the conclusion that Octavian/Augustus did indeed decide to register and report the existence of every man, woman and child of citizen status cannot be avoided. Even if we accept that the low count performs a better job in accommodating large amounts of literary and archaeological material and that this feature of the low count allows us to cut the Gordian knot presented by the early-imperial census figures, we can only speculate as to the reason or reasons that may have prompted the first emperor thus to expand the target population of his census.