Demography of the Roman Empire

The Roman Empire's population has been estimated at between 59 and 76 million in the 1st and 2nd centuries, ^[1] peaking probably just before the Antonine Plague. Historian Kyle Harper provides an estimate of a population of 75 million and an average population density of about 20 people per square kilometre at its peak, ^[2] with unusually high urbanization. During the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, the population of the city of Rome is conventionally estimated at one million inhabitants. Historian Ian Morris estimates that no other city in Western Eurasia would have as many again until the 19th century. ^[3]

Contents

• Background
• Mortality
• Fertility
• Migration
• Genetic studies
• Sepulchary inscriptions
• Contemporary accounts and attitude
• Italic emigration into provinces
• Population
• Earlier estimates
• Urbanization
• Earlier estimates 2
• See also
• Notes
• References
• Sources
• Ancient sources
• Modern sources
• Further reading

Papyrus evidence from Roman Egypt suggests like other more recent and thus better documented pre-modern societies, the Roman Empire experienced high infant mortality, a low marriage age, and high fertility within marriage. Perhaps half of the Roman subjects died by the age of 10. Of those still alive at age 10, half would die by the age of 50. ^[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. The resultant changes are reflected in the differences between Northern and Southern Italy to this day. ^[4] The genetic distance between Northern and Southern Italians, although large for a single European nationality, is similar to that between the Northern and the Southern Germans. ^[5]

Background

For the lands around the Mediterranean Sea and their hinterlands, the period from the second millennium BCE to the early first millennium CE was one of substantial population growth. What would become the territory of the Roman Empire saw an average annual population growth of about 0.1 percent from the 12th century BCE to the 3rd century CE, resulting in a quadrupling of the region's total population. Growth was slower around the eastern Mediterranean, which was already more developed at the beginning of the period, on the order of about 0.07 percent per year. ^[6] This was stronger growth than that seen in the succeeding period; from about 200 CE to 1800 CE, the European half of the empire only saw about 0.06 to 0.07 percent annual growth (Europe as a whole saw 0.1 percent annual growth rates), and the north African and west Asian parts of the empire saw almost no growth at all. ^[7]

By comparison, what is now the territory of China experienced 0.1 percent annual growth from 1 CE to 1800 CE. After a population decline following the disintegration of the western half of the Roman state in the 5th and 6th centuries, Europe probably re-attained Roman-era population totals in the 12th and 13th centuries. Following another decline associated with the Black Death, it consistently exceeded them after the mid-15th century. ^[7]

There are no reliable surviving records for the general demography of the Roman Empire. There are also no detailed local records, such as underlie the demographic study of early modern Europe. Large numbers of impressionistic, moralizing, and anecdotal observations on demography survive from literary sources; they are of little use in the study of Roman demography, which tends to rely instead on conjecture and comparison rather than records and observations. ^[8]

Mortality

Life expectancy at birth in the Roman Empire is estimated at about 22–33 years. ^{[9] [notes 1]} For the two-thirds to three-quarters of the population surviving the first year of life, ^[10] life expectancy at age 1 is estimated at around 34–41 remaining years (i.e. expected to live to age 35–42), while for the 55–65% surviving to age 5, life expectancy was around 40–45. ^[11] The ~50% that reached age 10 could expect to reach ~45–50, ^[10] and the 46–49% surviving to their mid-teens could on average expect to reach around 48–54, ^[11] although many lived much longer or shorter lives for varied reasons, including wars for males and childbirth for females. 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. ^[12]

About 300 census returns filed in Egypt in the first three centuries CE survive. The classical scholar R. S. Bagnall and the political scientist B. W. Frier used them to build female and male age distributions, which show life expectancies at birth of between 22 and 25 years, results broadly consistent with model life tables. ^[13] Other sources used for population reconstructions include cemetery skeletons, Roman tombstones in North Africa, and an annuities table known as "Ulpian's life table". The basis and interpretation of these sources is disputed: the skeletons cannot be firmly dated, the tombstones show non-representative sample populations, and the sources of "Ulpian's life table" are unknown. 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. ^[14]

As no population for which accurate observations survive has such a low life expectancy, model life tables must be used to understand this population's age demography. These models, based on historical data, describe typical populations at different levels of mortality. For his demographic synopsis of the Roman Empire, Frier used the Model West framework, which he sees as "the most generalized and widely applicable". ^[15] Because it is based on only one empirical input, the model life table can provide only a very approximate picture of Roman demography. On two important points, the table may seriously misrepresent the Roman situation: the structural relationship between juvenile and adult mortality, and the relative mortality rates across the sexes. ^[16] In any case, Roman mortality should be expected to have varied greatly across times, places, and perhaps classes. ^{[17] [notes 2]} A variation of ten years would not have been unusual. A life expectancy range of between 20 and 30 years is therefore plausible, ^[19] 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). ^[14]

The specifics of any ancient age distribution would have seen heavy variation under the impact of local conditions. ^[14] Moreover, the major cause of death in pre-modern societies was not the chronic, end-of-life conditions that characterize mortality in industrialized societies or primary malnutrition; instead, it was acute infectious disease, which has varied effects on age distributions in populations. 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. ^[20] Similarly, in pre-modern societies for which evidence is available, such as early modern England and early 18th-century China, infant mortality varies independently of adult mortality, to the extent that equal life expectancies at age twenty can be obtained in societies with infant mortality rates of 15% to 35% (life table models omit this; they depend on the assumption that age-specific mortality ratios co-vary in uniform, predictable ratios). ^[21] No ancient evidence can gauge this effect (the sources have a strong tendency to overlook infant death), and the model life tables might overstate it; comparative evidence suggests that it is very high, and that mortality was strongly concentrated in the first years of life. ^[22]

Mortality on this scale discourages investment in human capital, which hinders productivity growth (adolescent mortality rates in Rome were two-thirds higher than in early modern Britain), creates large numbers of dependent widows and orphans, and hinders long-term economic planning. With the prevalence of debilitating diseases, the number of effective working years was even worse: health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE), the number of years lived in good health, varies from life expectancy by no more than 8% in modern societies. In high-mortality societies, such as Rome, it could be as much as one-sixth (17%) beneath total life expectancy. A HALE of less than 20 years would have left the empire with very depressed levels of economic productivity. ^[23]

Fertility

To maintain replacement levels under such a mortality regime—much less to achieve sustained growth—fertility figures needed to be very high. With life expectancies of twenty to thirty, women would have to give birth to between 4.5 and 6.5 children to maintain replacement levels. Given elevated levels of divorce, widowhood, and sterility, the birth rate would have needed to be higher than that baseline, at around 6 to 9 children per woman. ^[24] Fertility could not long have either fallen below or outstripped replacement levels. A population which maintained an annual growth or decline of 0.7% would double or halve itself every century. 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. ^[25]

The surviving census returns from Roman Egypt show a population that had not yet undergone the fertility transition; artificial fertility controls like contraception and abortion were not widely used to alter natural fecundity in the Roman period. Only family limitation, in which couples ceased procreating after they had attained an acceptable level of children, could have been widespread. ^[26] There is no indication that even this limitation was widespread, and the recorded distribution shows no evidence of being governed by parity or maternal age. ^[27]

Imperial Rome largely conforms to what is known as the Mediterranean pattern of marital fertility: men married late and women married early. ^[29] The evidence on marriage age is fairly robust for Roman elites: men in the senatorial class were expected to marry in their early twenties, while women were expected to marry in their early teens. According to the most plausible interpretation of the evidence from funerary commemoration among the lower classes, women married in their late teens or early twenties, and men married in their late twenties or early thirties. ^[30]

The Roman pattern thus stands in contrast to the Eastern (i.e. East Asian) pattern, in which both men and women married young. ^[29] China, the major example of the Eastern pattern, also had lower levels of fertility than Rome. This was apparently achieved by a combination of prolonged breastfeeding, selective female infanticide, and male celibacy, although the details are controversial. ^[31] Roman families share some features of the Eastern pattern. For example, Roman Egypt had a custom of extended breastfeeding, which may have lengthened birth spacing. Egyptian fertility levels are comparable to those recorded in the early modern Japanese village Nakahara, where about half the population practiced family limitation. On the historian Walter Scheidel's judgment, this speaks to the incidence of family limitation even in what are supposedly natural fertility regimes. ^[32]

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. These constraints were weak or absent in Greek and Roman society. ^[33]

Migration

Genetic studies

This section relies excessively on references to primary sources . Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please improve this section by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Find sources:  "Demography of the Roman Empire"  –  news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2024) ( Learn how and when to remove this message )

Genetic studies have indicated that the Iron Age population of Latium was a mixture of preceding Early European Farmers and Western Hunter-Gatherers, with about 30% Steppe ancestry largely coming from the Pontic–Caspian Steppe. However two out of six individuals from Latin burials from Latium vetus were found to be a mixture of local Iron Age ancestry and an ancient Near Eastern population (best approximated by Bronze Age Armenian or Iron Age Anatolian population). 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). ^{[34] [35]}

The results have indicated a substantial migration from the Eastern Mediterranean into the city of Rome and its vicinity in Central Italy during the Principate. Notably, only 2 out of 48 Imperial-era individuals fall in the Spanish-like cluster to which 8 out of 11 Iron Age individuals belong. ^[34] Instead, two-thirds of Imperial individuals (31 out of 48) overlap with central and eastern Mediterranean populations, such as those from southern and central Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta. 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. ^{[34] [35]}

One study indicates that during Late Antiquity this Eastern Mediterranean migration subsides and is replaced by the migration of northern barbarian European nations. Consequently, the ethnic composition begins to take an increasingly European character, a trend that intensifies during the Migration Period and continues even long after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, as the geopolitics of Italy tie it ever more with its northern neighbors, e.g. via the Holy Roman Empire. ^[34] These contrasting migratory waves may have contributed to the modern genetic differentiation along the length of the Italian peninsula, with the contrasting Spanish-like Northern Italy, and Greek-like Southern Italy. ^[35] The authors^{[ who? ]} suggest that this has also been contributed by Arab conquests, especially via the Emirate of Sicily, after Western Rome had already fallen. ^[36] This is unlikely^{[ citation needed ]}, considering that only 0.6% of modern Southern Italians have the typical Maghrebin core haplotype. Overall, the estimated Central Balkan and North Western European paternal contributions in South Italy and Sicily are about 63% and 26%, respectively. ^[37]

Population

Modern estimates of the population of the Roman Empire started with the fundamental work of 19th-century historian Karl Julius Beloch. ^[49] His estimates of the area of different components of the empire, based on planimetric estimates by contemporary military cartographers, have not been challenged by any more modern analyst. By providing a check to population densities, these area figures compel a baseline level of plausibility. ^[50] 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). Only his estimates for Anatolia and Greater Syria required extensive revision; Beloch's estimated population figure, 19 million, produced population densities not otherwise achieved in those areas until the 20th century. In a 2000 estimate of the population of the empire, Frier suggested a figure of 12 million as "considerably more plausible". ^[51] Beloch's figures for Spain and Africa have also been revised downwards. ^[51] In a 2017 publication, historian Kyle Harper suggests 75 million for the empire as a whole with 16 million for Anatolia and Greater Syria. ^[2] This estimate produces a population density of about 20 inhabitants per square kilometer, which is a low figure by modern standards (for example, among countries and dependencies by population density, the United Kingdom has a density of well over 200/km²). The population density in the Greek East was 24/km², denser than the Latin West at 17/km²; only the Western provinces of Italy and Sicily had a density higher than the average of the East. ^[2]

Harper estimates the population at the time of Augustus at 60 million, a ninth more than Beloch's 1886 estimate, and suggests a population growth rate of 0.1% per year, reaching 75 million after nearly two centuries of growth. ^[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. ^[53] Frier's estimate produces a population density of 13.6 inhabitants per square kilometer. The population density in the Greek East was 20.9/km², twice as dense as the Latin West at 10.6/km²; only the Western provinces of Italy and Sicily had a density comparable to the East. ^[54]

There are few recorded population numbers for the whole of antiquity, and those that exist are often rhetorical or symbolic. Unlike modern nations, Roman citizenship was not granted automatically to inhabitants of Roman territory outside of the city of Rome and its hinterlands. By the 1st century BCE, citizenship was extended to the whole of the Italian peninsula, a region that only constituted 5% of the territory of the Roman Empire. In addition, Roman censuses only measured their adult citizen population, and it is unclear if and when women were counted as citizens as well. Most surviving Roman census return figures date from the late period of the Roman Republic and the Early Empire. Serial statistics for Roman citizen numbers, taken from census returns, survive for the early Republic through the 1st century CE. ^[56] Only the figures for periods after the mid-3rd century BCE are reliable. Fourteen figures are available for the 2nd century BCE (from 258,318 to 394,736). Only four figures are available for the 1st century BCE, and exhibit a large break between 70/69 BCE (910,000) and 28 BCE (4,063,000). The interpretation of the later figures—the Augustan censuses of 28 BCE, 8 BCE, and 14 CE—is therefore controversial. ^[57] Alternate interpretations of the Augustan censuses, such as those of historian Elio Lo Cascio, ^[58] produce divergent population histories across the whole imperial period. ^[59]

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. ^[57] 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. The standard interpretation assumes that the census-takers included all citizens—men, women, and children—in the Augustan censuses; the revised interpretation assumes that the census-takers only counted adult men, as they had during the Republican period. While the standard interpretation is not supported by any evidence internal to the text, it reduces the implied population totals for Italy in 28 BCE from 10 million to a more plausible 4 million. ^[57] 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. ^[60]

Urbanization

By the standards of pre-modern economies, the Roman Empire was highly urbanized. As of 2016, 1,388 urban sites had been identified in the Roman world dating from the late Republican and early Imperial periods. ^[64] At its peak, the city of Rome is widely thought to have contained at least a million inhabitants, a total not equaled again in Europe until the 19th century. ^[65] As the imperial capital, Rome was sustained by transfers in kind from throughout the empire; no other city could be sustained at this level. The other major cities in the empire, such as Alexandria, Antioch, Carthage, Ephesus, and Salona, had populations of over a hundred thousand, with Alexandria having a population estimated at half a million. ^[65]

Most of these 1,388 cities were small, usually possessing around 5,000 inhabitants. Of the 885 cities whose built-up area has been estimated, 405 cities (slightly less than half) have an area that suggests a population larger than 5,000 and approximately 8% (69 out of 885) of the sites have an area suggesting a population larger than 30,000. Extrapolation from a sample of 52 excavated sites has suggested an imperial urban population of 14 million in around 600 cities with over 5,000 inhabitants, a quarter or a fifth of modern estimates of the Empire's total population, a higher proportion than in Europe at the turn of the 19th century. ^[65]

High mortality rates and pre-modern sanitary conditions made urban regions net population sinks, with more local deaths than births. They could only be sustained by constant immigration. ^[66] The large cities provided a major stimulus to demand, and not only for agricultural products but for manufactured goods and luxury items as well. ^[67]

See also

• Classical demography
• Demographic history

Notes

Related Research Articles

India is the most populous country in the world with one-sixth of the world's population. According to estimates from the United Nations (UN), India has overtaken China as the country with the largest population in the world, with a population of 1,425,775,850 at the end of April 2023.

Human life expectancy is a statistical measure of the estimate of the average remaining years of life at a given age. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth. This can be defined in two ways. Cohort LEB is the mean length of life of a birth cohort and can be computed only for cohorts born so long ago that all their members have died. Period LEB is the mean length of life of a hypothetical cohort assumed to be exposed, from birth through death, to the mortality rates observed at a given year. National LEB figures reported by national agencies and international organizations for human populations are estimates of period LEB.

The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Romans conquered most of this during the Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of effective sole rule in 27 BC. The western empire collapsed in 476 AD, but the eastern empire lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

The population of the United Kingdom was estimated at 67,596,281 in 2022. It is the 21st most populated country in the world and has a population density of 279 people per square kilometre, with England having significantly greater density than Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Almost a third of the population lives in south east England, which is predominantly urban and suburban, with 8,866,180 people in the capital city, London, whose population density was 5,640 inhabitants per square kilometre (14,600/sq mi) in 2022.

Freeborn women in ancient Rome were citizens (cives), but could not vote or hold political office. Because of their limited public role, women are named less frequently than men by Roman historians. But while Roman women held no direct political power, those from wealthy or powerful families could and did exert influence through private negotiations. Exceptional women who left an undeniable mark on history include Lucretia and Claudia Quinta, whose stories took on mythic significance; fierce Republican-era women such as Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, and Fulvia, who commanded an army and issued coins bearing her image; women of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, most prominently Livia and Agrippina the Younger, who contributed to the formation of Imperial mores; and the empress Helena, a driving force in promoting Christianity.

Sub-replacement fertility is a total fertility rate (TFR) that leads to each new generation being less populous than the older, previous one in a given area. The United Nations Population Division defines sub-replacement fertility as any rate below approximately 2.1 children born per woman of childbearing age, but the threshold can be as high as 3.4 in some developing countries because of higher mortality rates. Taken globally, the total fertility rate at replacement was 2.33 children per woman in 2003. This can be "translated" as 2 children per woman to replace the parents, plus a "third of a child" to make up for the higher probability of males born and mortality prior to the end of a person's fertile life. In 2020, the global average fertility rate was around 2.4 children born per woman.

Medieval demography is the study of human demography in Europe and the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages. It estimates and seeks to explain the number of people who were alive during the Medieval period, population trends, life expectancy, family structure, and related issues. Demography is considered a crucial element of historical change throughout the Middle Ages.

The study of the economies of the ancient city-state of Rome and its empire during the Republican and Imperial periods remains highly speculative. There are no surviving records of business and government accounts, such as detailed reports of tax revenues, and few literary sources regarding economic activity. Instead, the study of this ancient economy is today mainly based on the surviving archeological and literary evidence that allow researchers to form conjectures based on comparisons with other more recent pre-industrial economies.

Marriage in ancient Rome was a fundamental institution of society and was used by Romans primarily as a tool for interfamilial alliances. The institution of Roman marriage was a practice of marital monogamy: Roman citizens could have only one spouse at a time in marriage but were allowed to divorce and remarry. This form of prescriptively monogamous marriage that co-existed with male resource polygyny in Greco-Roman civilization may have arisen from the relative egalitarianism of democratic and republican city-states. Early Christianity embraced this ideal of monogamous marriage by adding its own teaching of sexual monogamy, and perpetrated it worldwide and became as an essential element in many later Western cultures.

Romanization or Latinization, in the historical and cultural meanings of both terms, indicate different historical processes, such as acculturation, integration and assimilation of newly incorporated and peripheral populations by the Roman Republic and the later Roman Empire. The terms were used in ancient Roman historiography and traditional Italian historiography until the Fascist period, when the various processes were called the "civilizing of barbarians".

Classical demography refers to the study of human demography in the Classical period. It often focuses on the absolute number of people who were alive in civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea between the Bronze Age and the fall of the Western Roman Empire, but in recent decades historians have been more interested in trying to analyse demographic processes such as the birth and death rates or the sex ratio of ancient populations. The period was characterized by an explosion in population with the rise of the Greek and Roman civilizations followed by a steep decline caused by economic and social disruption, migrations, and a return to primarily subsistence agriculture. Demographic questions play an important role in determining the size and structure of the economy of Ancient Greece and the Roman economy.

Slavery in ancient Rome played an important role in society and the economy. Unskilled or low-skill slaves labored in the fields, mines, and mills with few opportunities for advancement and little chance of freedom. Skilled and educated slaves—including artisans, chefs, domestic staff and personal attendants, entertainers, business managers, accountants and bankers, educators at all levels, secretaries and librarians, civil servants, and physicians—occupied a more privileged tier of servitude and could hope to obtain freedom through one of several well-defined paths with protections under the law. The possibility of manumission and subsequent citizenship was a distinguishing feature of Rome's system of slavery, resulting in a significant and influential number of freedpersons in Roman society.

Demographic history is the reconstructed record of human population in the past. Given the lack of population records prior to the 1950s, there are many gaps in our record of demographic history. Historical demographers must make do with estimates, models and extrapolations. For the demographic methodology, see historical demography.

The ageing of Europe, also known as the greying of Europe, is a demographic phenomenon in Europe characterised by a decrease in fertility, a decrease in mortality rate, and a higher life expectancy among European populations. Low birth rates and higher life expectancy contribute to the transformation of Europe's population pyramid shape. The most significant change is the transition towards a much older population structure, resulting in a decrease in the proportion of the working age while the number of the retired population increases. The total number of the older population is projected to increase greatly within the coming decades, with rising proportions of the post-war baby-boom generations reaching retirement. This will cause a high burden on the working age population as they provide for the increasing number of the older population.

Ulpian's life table is an ancient Roman annuities table. It is known through a passage, originating from the jurist Aemilius Macer, preserved in edited form in Justinian's Digest. The table appears to provide a rough outline of ancient Roman life expectancy. Although it is not clear what population the table refers to, or how its data was gathered, Richard Duncan-Jones has suggested that it refers to slaves and ex-slaves, who were often the object of testamentary maintenance grants.

Poverty in ancient Rome is challenging to define as much of the Roman population lived in conditions resembling modern poverty. Roman society was largely agrarian and afflictions such as low literacy rates, high infant mortality, and poor diets were widespread throughout the populace. Poverty can be defined through landlessness; the majority of land in ancient Rome was concentrated in the hands of a small class of wealthy people, leaving the rest of the population with little land. However, people in urban settings likely could have lived well without owning land. Ancient Roman poverty can also be viewed through the lens of political disenfranchisement; the poor were less able to access political offices, had increased difficulty casting ballots, had votes of lesser significance, and had higher tax rates. The Codex Theodosianus, a late Roman legal document, describes various laws in which the poor were to be punished differently from the rich. Estimates of the GDP per capita in ancient Rome suggest that the majority of the population was living at subsistence levels, with enough money to live securely but not comfortably.

Swaddled babyvotives are figures of babies offered as an entreaty to a god or goddess, for healthy pregnancy and childbirth. They have been recovered from ancient Italian Roman temple sanctuary sites.

References

Sources

Further reading

• Bondioli, Luca; Garnsey, Peter; Knyf, Martin; MacChiarelli, Roberto; Prowse, Tracy L.; Schwarcz, Henry P. (2007). "Isotopic Evidence for Age-Related Immigration to Imperial Rome". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 132 (4): 510–519. doi:10.1002/ajpa.20541. PMID   17205550.
• Killgrove, Kristina; Montgomery, Janet (2016). "All Roads Lead to Rome: Exploring Human Migration to the Eternal City through Biochemistry of Skeletons from Two Imperial-Era Cemeteries (1st–3rd c AD)". PLOS ONE. 11 (2): e0147585. Bibcode:2016PLoSO..1147585K. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0147585 . PMC   4749291 . PMID   26863610.