13. the Population of Roman Italy in Town and Country
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13. The Population of Roman Italy in Town and Country Elio Lo Cascio The aims of this paper are threefold: 1) to present briefly different regional patterns of population density, syn- the most significant and secure data on the size of the chronically and diachronically (a partial exception will be population of Roman Italy, that we can confidently draw illustrated below). Of course, the choice between con- from certain literary and epigraphic sources referring to flicting interpretations of the evidence on the size of the beginning of the Empire; 2) to give an evaluation of the population, turns out to be a choice between conflicting ratio between urban and rural population in the most reconstructions of the economic and social history of the urbanized area of the Roman Empire, at the height of its peninsula, as we will see. urbanization (see e.g. Bekker-Nielsen, 1989), that seems On the other hand, since the factors which can affect to be suggested by these data themselves, by a clever the density of settlements are many and sundry, and since exploitation of some epigraphic evidence (Duncan Jones, the size of population is j u s t one of them, the contribution 1974, 19822: ch. 6) and by the physical remains of some of the written sources is essential in confirming the towns; 3) to detect what the dynamics of the Italian absolute figures drawn from a survey. Of course, there is population in the last two centuries of the Republic could the risk of circular reasoning, if the interpretation of the have been, by looking at two important sets of n u m e r i c a l written sources is controversial. But this risk must be run. data that appear in our written sources. The fields covered will be therefore those singled out by K. Sbonias (this volume), as the ones in which regional surveys could THE POPULATION OF ITALY AT THE provide potentially valuable data in reconstructing past BEGINNING OF THE EMPIRE: population: data on the density of population, deduced THE AUGUSTAN CENSUS FIGURES from density and pattern of settlement, which are thought to allow even an estimate of an absolute figure of population I will start from the estimate of the population of Italy at for a specific area (and not only a calculation of its carrying the beginning of the empire. It is well known that the Res capacity); data on the rural-urban split of the population; gestae of Augustus have transmitted the results of the and data which can allow the detection of demographic censuses of the citizen body (most of whom were located trends and the explanation of population change. In this in Italy), held in 28 and 8 BC, and in AD 14: the figures for last field it is true that only survey evidence can offer the civium capita which were counted are respectively information to supplement and to test the data that it is 4,063,000,4,233,000 and 4,937,000 (a different figure for possible to draw from the literary sources: even if funerary this last census was transmitted by the Fasti Ostienses', the inscriptions, Egyptian census records and skeletal evidence reasons for preferring the figure of the Res gestae do not can be thought to provide information on age and sex need to detain us here: see Nicolet, 1991). Furthermore distribution of a population, therefore on its structure, they Tacitus in his Annales gives the result of the census held can hardly be of any use in trying to assess its dynamics. by the Emperor Claudius in AD 47, as 5,984,072 civium It seems to me that the major contribution offered by capita (again, different figures are given by Eusebius and surveys in reconstructing the population of Roman Italy, is Jerome, but the tradition of Tacitus is more convincing). the possibility they give not only to test the plausibility of Now, the problem which these numerical data present is the literary and epigraphic evidence on the census figures well known: does the expression of civium capita refer to and in general on the figures for population t h a t we find in the whole citizen population or j u s t to a part of it, the adult our sources, but also to choose among conflicting inter- males? The expression of civium capita does not appear pretations of this unique evidence. Moreover they seem to for the first time in the Augustan age. We possess, in fact, represent the only device we have in trying to discover the mostly in Livy and the annalistic tradition and in the 162 Elio Lo Cascio Chronographie tradition, a whole set of figures indicating a new decentralised procedure, involving the towns' the results of the republican censuses, and these also are governments (as evidenced by the Tabula Heracleensis, referred to by what looks like an official formula: 'censa FIRA I2. 13,11. 142 ff., on which see Lo Cascio, 1990: 308 sunt civium capita tot' (for a complete list of the figures ff.). Beyond the increase in the number of registered people, and an almost complete list of the sources for them see e.g., Frank considered also an actual increase of the citizen Toynbee, 1965,1: 438 ff.). Nobody has doubted that these population to be plausible, notwithstanding the heavy toll figures, on the whole, are reliable and significant (or at taken on the population of the Italian peninsula by the civil least the figures referring to the censuses from the late wars; this increase would have been the result of a high rate third century onwards), whatever confidence one can have of manumissions, of the enfranchisement of a thickly in some of the individual figures as such. It is also plainly populated area, like Transpadana, and of massive veteran attested that these figures refer to the adult males (or even settlements in the provinces. If the four million civium to some specific categories of adult m a l e s ) . But the problem capita were just the adult males, the whole free population is that even the figure referring to 70/69 BC, that is, the one of Italy in 28 BC could not have been less than, say, ten- of the last Republican census, when the whole of the twelve million. population of the Italian peninsula (with the exclusion of Frank's and Jones' solution seems to be much better Northern Italy) was made of Roman citizens, is of adifferent founded (Lo Cascio, 1994, a and b). It must be stressed order of magnitude, in comparison with the figures of the that there is not a shred of evidence in favour of the idea three Augustan censuses: it is less than 1/4 of the figure for that women and children could be counted in the census, 28 (910,000, according to Phlegon, FGrHist 257, fr. 12, 6; and the idea itself is absolutely implausible: the preservation 900,000, according to Livy's Per. XCVIII). of the traditional character of the census in the Augustan How the leap between the figure for 70/69 and the period seems to be confirmed by the continued association, figure for 28 must be interpreted has always been a which is actually stressed in the account of the Res gestae, problem. Beloch thought it impossible to account for the of census with the lustrum, the ceremony of purification of enormous increase in the number of civium capita, unless the whole citizen body constituted as an army, which used one made the assumption that the criteria and the aims of to close the operation of numbering the citizens; and this counting the civium capita, and consequently the notion association would be meaningless, if women and children itself of civium capita, had been changed. He was con- had been included in the total of civium capita. Moreover, vinced that it was impossible to explain the leap as no one can invoke positive evidence for the identification of more than a consequence of the extension of the citizenship civium capita as adult males in the Greek version of to Transpadana, of colonization and of a natural increase Eusebius' Chronicon preserved in Georgius Syncellus, of population; in the troubled last decades of the Republic which expressly refers the figure of AD 14 to the andres; such an increase must be considered extremely unlikely. the word andres is used also by the Suda, with reference He therefore put forward the hypothesis that, whereas the to the same census. Republican figures refer to adult males, the Augustan ones But there is more. Beloch thought it necessary to suppose refer to the whole citizen population, including women that the Augustan census figures referred to the whole and children. According to Beloch, the citizen p o p u l a t i o n citizen population, because otherwise, according to him, it of Italy, in 28 BC, could not have been, therefore, more would have been impossible to explain the leap between than 3,250,000 (Beloch, 1886: ch. VIII). the figure for 70/69 BC and the figure for 28 BC: in other Beloch's solution has been endorsed by most subsequent terms the basis of his far-reaching hypothesis was a simple scholars, notably by Peter Brunt in his Italian Manpower argument from likelihood. In fact, it is possible to show (Brunt, 1971, 19872: ch. IX). However, other historians that Beloch's solution, far from being the only plausible like Tenney Frank and Hugo Jones (in his Inaugural solution, is not at all plausible.