Demography of the Roman Empire
[1] Due to migration, the ethnic composition of the city of Rome, its vicinity, and Italy as a whole went through substantial change during the early and later stages of the empire, with the migration divisible mainly in two separate periods: first during the Principate from Eastern Mediterranean areas, and later beginning from the Dominate by Northern and Western European peoples, continuing throughout the medieval ages and the early modern period.
Even if these figures rely more on conjecture than ancient evidence, which is sparse and of dubious quality, the known social and economic conditions of the Roman Empire indicate life expectancy toward the usual lower bound of pre-modern populations.
Roman demography bears comparison to available data for India and rural China in the early 20th century, where life expectancies at birth were also in the 20s.
Nonetheless, because they converge with low Roman elite survival rates shown in the literary sources, and because their evidence is consistent with data from populations with comparably high mortality rates, such as in 18th-century France, and early 20th-century China, India, and Egypt, they reinforce the basic assumption of Roman demography: that life expectancies at birth were in the low 20s.
A life expectancy range of between 20 and 30 years is therefore plausible,[18] although it may have been exceeded in either direction in marginal regions (e.g. malarious urban districts on one end and high-altitude, low-density settlements on the other).
For example, pulmonary tuberculosis characterized much of the Roman region in antiquity; its deaths tend to be concentrated in the early twenties, where model life tables show a mortality trough.
Such rates are feasible locally or over a short period of time, and deaths could consistently outstrip births during epidemics; in the long term, convergence to maintenance levels was the rule.
Egyptian fertility levels are comparable to those recorded in the early modern Japanese village Nakahara, where about half the population practiced family limitation.
[31] Roman and Greek literary and legal tradition makes frequent reference to the Eastern demographic features of infanticide and child exposure.
Although the extent of these practices is unlikely to have been small, it is nonetheless impossible to quantify, and reported gender ratios do not permit judgment on the prevalence of femicide.
These Eastern features did not prevail in medieval or modern Europe, where there were cultural and structural factors directly discouraging them or diminishing their effects on childhood mortality; these included among others religious doctrine, legal enforcement, institutions of foundling care, child labor, and wet-nursing.
In addition, one out of four individuals from Etruscan civilization burials from Veio and Civitavecchia, a female, was found to be a mixture of local Iron Age ancestry and a North African population (best approximated by Late Neolithic Moroccan).
An additional quarter (13 out of 48) of the sampled Imperial Romans overlap with Levantine and Near Eastern populations, projecting close to four contemporaneous individuals from Lebanon.
For example, the historian Suetonius records two notable cases where policies had been undertaken to assuage the tensions arising out of the mass importation of slaves.
[38][notes 5] This tension between the native population and a foreign inflow during the empire is also reflected in a private letter from Seneca the Younger to his mother.
[38][notes 6] In the social commentary of the satirist and poet Juvenal, he laments repeatedly in Satires of the inflow of foreign Greeks into Rome, and of the encroachment of their traditions.
[41] While most of these statements are cautious or negative towards foreigners, a speech by the emperor Claudius, called the Lyon speech (after the location where the tablet originated), offers a more positive attitude towards provincials foreign to Italy; he successfully urges senators to accept rich Gauls from Lugdunum into the Roman Senate, by praising their loyalty and devotion to Rome.
[46] Historian Theodore Mommsen estimated that under Hadrian nearly one third of the eastern Numidia population (roughly modern Tunisia) was descended from Roman veterans.
[47] Modern estimates of the population of the Roman Empire started with the fundamental work of 19th-century historian Karl Julius Beloch.
[49] Beloch's 1886 estimate of the population of the empire in 14 CE has withstood contemporary and 21st-century criticism, and underlies modern analysis (his 1899 revision of those figures is less esteemed).
[2] Early 21st-century estimates suggest that slaves constituted about 15 percent of the Empire's total population; the proportionate figure would be much higher in Italy and much lower in Africa and Egypt.
Serial statistics for Roman citizen numbers, taken from census returns, survive for the early Republic through the 1st century CE.
[56] Alternate interpretations of the Augustan censuses, such as those of historian Elio Lo Cascio,[57] produce divergent population histories across the whole imperial period.
[58] The enfranchisement of the Cisalpine provinces and the Italian Allies after the Social War would account for some of the population growth of the 1st century BCE.
[56] Alternate readings of the Augustan census both accept the basic accuracy of the figures; they assume different methods on the part of the census-takers.
[56] The high total earns support from recorded conflict over land in the late Republic and other indications of population pressure; at the same time, it does not accord well with comparative evidence from other periods and other parts of the empire.
[64] High mortality rates and pre-modern sanitary conditions made urban regions net population sinks, with more local deaths than births.
Some are brought by ambition, some by the call of public duty, or by reason of some mission, others by luxury which seeks a harbor rich and commodious for vices, others by the eager pursuit of liberal studies, others by shows, etc.[38]...
while every land, Sicyon, and Amydos, and Alaband, Tralles, and Samos, and a thousand more, Thrive on his indolence, and daily pour Their starving myriads forth: hither they come, And batten on the genial soil of Rome.
For the Syrian Orontes has long since polluted the Tiber, Bringing its language and customs, pipes and harp-strings, And even their native timbrels are dragged along too, And the girls forced to offer themselves in the Circus.
