demography in roman history - facts and impressions

8/13/2019 Demography in Roman History - Facts and Impressions

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Demography in Roman History: Facts and Impressions

Author(s): W. den BoerSource: Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, Vol. 26, Fasc. 1 (1973), pp. 29-46Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4430176.

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DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORY:FACTS AND IMPRESSIONS

BY

W. den BOERHistory is craving for definite results. At the end of the nine-

teenth century it was taught its lesson in a rude way. Historicalevidence appeared to be fundamentally different from the evidenceof the sciences. Dilthey and others vindicated its own position inthe scholarly disciplines and proved, irrefutably I think, how manydifferences there are between the results of an historical investigationand those of, say, mathematical research. Time and again, how-ever, new forms of positivism have come forward to declare proudlythat history is a science in the same sense as the natural sciences.Presently, quantification of historical data seems to return to thehistory of classical antiquity not only under the urge of neoposi-tivism, but also under the challenge of the impressive results whichdifferent methods of quantification attained for later periods ofhistory, especially in the field of demography. A warning by aneminent modern scholar is not out of place, however. A. Momiglianosketches the situation in recent research as follows: "The negativefact [is] that full-blooded social history is becoming more and moreintractable owing to its increasing refinements and complications.Anyone who follows with admiration the activities of the Sixi?meSection of the ?cole des Hautes ?tudes wonders whether such amicroscopic analysis of social developments can be pursued in-definitely" *). The learned and masterly book of Professor Brunton Italian manpower 2) is in accordance with this renewed quanti-fying tendency in historiography.

The results, however, prove that Dilthey was right. History, as a

?) The Development of Greek Biography (Cambridge, Mass. 1971), 6.2) P. A. Brunt, Italian Manpower 225 B.C.-14 A.D. Oxford UniversityPress, 1971. xxi, 750 p. Pr. ? 9.


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30 DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORYscholarly enterprise, does not get the clear results which are soeagerly sought. In many cases it is better to speak of impressionsand reflections than of facts. This explains the title of my smallcontribution to the discussion which will certainly be aroused bythis important book, a landmark in Roman scholarship.

B. clearly marks his position and its relation to modern researchin the following passage of his introduction (p. 4): "Demographicstudies have now become fashionable, and new techniques havebeen evolved to reconstruct population trends in medieval andearly modern history, and to supply the lack of explicit contempo-rary statistics". This is perfectly true, but the question is whetherthis statement holds for Ancient History as well. Brunt is fullyaware of this problem and he says: "Unfortunately, data of thekind now successfully exploited to ascertain the population andthe rate of births, marriages, and deaths in sixteenth centuryFrance or England are not available to the historian of Rome. Butother material does exist, in the census figures obtained by theRoman state and in evidence of the size of armies". This is also true.All depends, however, on the trustworthiness of the figures wefind in our sources. The evidence of the size of armies is problematicin this respect. It is problematic not only because of the tendencyof the ancient author who gives the figures to exaggerate or tominimize the number of the soldiers or the crews, but also becauseof the manuscript tradition which is not always unanimous. Veryoften the transmission of numbers has been tampered with. There-fore it is not astonishing that many modern scholars are inclinedto avoid demographic studies in Greek and Roman history. This ismostly not the consequence of disinterest but perhaps of lack ofcourage in the historian who must face such a hopeless task. It maybe he should be blamed for it; in any case he has to admire thecourage of fellow scholars who spend their time, energy and consider-able knowledge on demographic problems. One in this category isProfessor Brunt who deserves the admiration and thanks of all.

As many others who dealt with so-called unpopular problemshe is inclined to look for supporters of his own enterprise, not onlyin modern times (Beloch, of course, being his main forerunner) butalso in antiquity. Accordingly he holds that "the Romans did not


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DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORY 3Ishare that [disreputable, in his eyes] disinterest in the size of theircitizen body which is evinced by many modern scholars" (4-5).And as proof of this attitude he quotes passages from Livy, Polybiusand the Younger Pliny. This evidence, however, hardly supportshis statement. That success in war depends on the abundance ofsoldiers, that the abundance of citizens provides towns withstrength, that the agrarian reform of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 B.C.was partly due to the fear that a decline had begun in the numberof Roman citizens, that Augustus' legislation was prompted bythe same anxieties as was the alimenta system of Nerva and Trajan?these and other facts of history do not prove what Brunt wouldhave us believe. They testify to a general awareness of the truismthat military power has to rely upon a great number of soldiers.That interest in the size of the citizen body is common to all militarypowers. Modern historians who do not stress this point are notdisinterested in the problems of manpower; most of them take thisinterest for granted.Brunt has, however, one more argument which seems to bedecisive. "Characteristically, the Roman consciousness that man-power was the strength of their state found expression in an in-stitution, the census, which from an early date was taken or sup-posed to be taken every five years". I do not know any sourcefrom antiquity which endorses this statement. Beloch had a differ-ent view. In the first chapter of his masterly book Die Bev?lkerungder griechisch-r?mischen Welt (1886), he says (p. 1) : "Bei den grossenPrivilegien, die ?berall der Besitz des B?rgerrechtes gew?hrte,musste sich zun?chst die Notwendigkeit geltend machen, denKreis der Berechtigten durch unzweifelhafte Urkunden festzu-stellen". According to Beloch the census was primarily connectedwith the rights and, above all, the obligations of citizenship. As faras I can see this political goal of the census was always paramount,not "a consciousness that manpower was the strength of theirstate". The tributum was one of the main motives, and the paterfamilias, quite often above the military age, was the legal owner ofthe taxable income. He was assessable and had to be registered,although he was too old for military service. The distribution inclasses according to wealth supports this view. It is in accordance


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32 DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORYwith all we know about the census that Beloch, speaking aboutVespasian's census, concludes (p. 30): "Das ist der letzte Census,der ?berhaupt gehalten worden ist. Seit Italien von directer Steuerund von der Conscription befreit war, hatte diese Aufnahme ihrepraktische Bedeutung verloren; die in den Provinzen ans?ssigenB?rger waren ohnehin dem Provinzialcensus unterworfen. F?rblosse statistische Zwecke aber der B?rgerschaft die mit dem Censusverbundenen Opfer an Zeit und Geld zuzumuthen, war auf dieDauer nicht durchf?hrbar".

Karl Julius Beloch was the great founder of hypercriticism to-wards the sources of history. With all due respect to his genius onehas to admit that sometimes his influence has been disastrous.I mention one example: The History of the Athenian Constitution byC. Hignett (1952). This book can only be recommended to scholarswho are interested in the history of hypercriticism, not for in-formation about the Athenian constitution. There is, however, anenormous difference in quality. Hignett is an ep?gonos with thepretension of a leader, Beloch is a real leader and his 'Greek History'is full of the most interesting and shrewd remarks on the sourceswhich he regarded, all of them, with doubt and suspicion. This washis consistent course of conduct in this stimulating masterpiece ofscholarship, and he worded his opinion as follows: "Der Historikerglaubt was in den Quellen steht nur, wenn bewiesen wird, dass esrichtig ist" l). This was the clear pronouncement of nineteenth-cen-tury positivism. We can only be thankful that Beloch did not adhereto this confession of faith. (For his words are nothing more thanthat; they have much to do with the 'higher things' his imitatorHignett despised so proudly without realizing that in every his-torical work of any importance the philosophical background ofhis author is revealed mercilessly.) We are fortunate to have themasterpieces of his youth in which he was more lenient to hissources. His Bev?lkerung would never have been written, if Belochhad waited till the moment that he could prove the census numbersgiven in the sources to be right. This moment never will come.

The discussion about the number of citizens is endless. Brunt's

?) ?. J. Beloch, Griechische Geschichte2, I, 2 (1916), 16.


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DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORY 33

opinion runs as follows: "To the extent that the figures (of thecensus) taken together over a period present a picture consistentwith itself and other evidence, they may be deemed to representroughly the numbers registered" (26). Whether the numbers re-gistered are effectively useful to estimate the whole population is asecond, hardly less important, point of controversy. I do not wishto go into these questions in a review of Brunt's book. The discus-sion is endless because it will never come to a result that satisfiesall parties. Chapter 5 is therefore the most important of the book.There the author gives the reasons why he accepts, in the main, thenumbers of the sources (as Beloch did before him). He is aware of theproblematic results of all his labour ; one can apply to this enormouswork the words which Brunt himself in his fair and disarming modestyapplies to part of it: "As usual we cannot hope for statistics norgo further than sharpening our impressions of what occurred" (294).

It is about these impressions that there is something more to besaid. The historian of antiquity is now able to derive profit frommodern demographic research. In this respect Brunt's book marksprogress as compared with Beloch. I missed, however, some of thefor me more inspiring books which are not mentioned and perhapsnot known to the author (although he does not belong to the herdof mediocre scholars who try to enumerate all books they haveread). Impressions (as meant in the quotation given above) cameto me from two books. E. Naraghi, L'?tude des populations dans lespays ? statistique incomplete. Contribution m?thodologique (Parisi960), one of the remarkable fruits of the sixth section of the'?cole pratique des hautes ?tudes', to whom we owe so much fornew methods regarding demography and other population prob-lems. The second is J. T. Noonan, Contraception. A History of itsTreatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists l), especiallyPart One (50-450 A.D.) which is of the utmost importance forclassical scholars who deal with population problems. Moreover theparallels from medieval history are more illustrative than the modernparallels which lavishly occur in Brunt's book, and which some-times are relevant, sometimes not. Here also one cannot blame a

MnemosyneXXVI?) Repeatedly reprinted. I used the pocket book edition of Mentor-Omega Books (1967).


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34 DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORYmodern historian for taking advantage of his own reading, and forchoosing striking illustrations which clarify his own results in thisfield even from the last war and in different countries. I myself shallin this review follow the same method. But one has to confess inadvance that all these 'facts' from a different period and a differentsocial environment only help to strengthen our impression of howthings went in Roman Republican times, and do not give any proofat all. This has been realized by Brunt and M. K. Hopkins on whom herelies heavily in this part of his work (131 ff.), but I doubt whethertheir warnings are always taken seriously, even by themselves.

Let me start with two problems, raised by reading Naraghi'sbook. He says: "Generally, marriage in under-developed countries,especially for women, occurs at a very early age. In Moslem coun-tries, particularly, celibacy is virtually non-existent. Social andreligious customs forbid women to lead an isolated and independentlife. In Iran, at twenty, nearly 90% of the women (even more inrural areas) are married. Men marry a little later, but by the age offorty-five, only 5% are bachelors" (p. 91). I think nobody will denythat from a social and economic viewpoint ancient Italy can becompared with an under-developed country. (Let us not bring inpolygamy because of the Moslem examples in Naraghi's studies, andsay that it was responsible for an increase of the population. Thatthis was not the case has been explained and proved irrefutably inhis study.) All the speculations of Brunt about contraception andthe undeniable decrease of the population in the late Republic andthe early Empire have to do with this comparison. There is noreason at all to presume that a Roman woman married late. Letus, however, first follow the author and assume that many Romanspractised late marriages. Would the effect on fertility have beensignificant ? On first sight it seems to be very plausible. The birthrate depends, as Brunt rightly points out, primarily on the pro-portion of women who marry while reproductive, and to some ex-tent on the average age at which they marry. On the other hand,very early marriage of the female results in a higher death rate ofwomen dying in childbirth l).

i) As has been pointed out recently by U. M. Cowgill in the ScientificAmerican, Jan. 1970, 109-no; "The risks of infant and maternal mortality,


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DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORY 35It may well be asked whether the period of average reproductivity

was greater for women married at the minimum legal age of marriagethan for women who married ten years later. This question becomeseven more important for those cases in which the unions wereconsummated before menarche. As long as these questions havenot been answered I doubt whether one example from modernIreland about women who married at 20, 25 and 30 respectively,has conclusive force. However that may be, further studies, partic-ularly concerning the trends in human fertility are painfullywanting x).

Secondly, it is my impression, but no more, that in the societiesin which girls marry very young, the sexual taboos are enormouslyprohibitive to fertility. Not only polygamy was responsible forthese taboos. Naraghi supports this: "As for the practice of poly-gamy among the peoples of black Africa, it is subjected to a numberof sexual taboos which explains why their fertility is low and in-effective" (92). One must realize firstly that there exists a closeconnection between fertility rites concerning crops, domesticanimals, and the farmers themselves (people in a rural societymake no distinction between man and his properties : the ox andthe donkey, and the wife of the neighbour are closely connected inthe Ten Commandments and I feel sure that this is not exclusivelycharacteristic of Jewish law and communal life). Therefore I havemy greatest doubts about Brunt's conclusions concerning marriage,childbirth, infanticide and contraception which are, in my opinion,treated too much from the heights of modern and comfortablecelibacy 2). It is for this reason that I wholeheartedly disagree withhis chapters on population, especially on 'reproductivity in Italy'(chapter XI). His plea for a new, in any case unorthodox, view thatthe social habits of the wealthy?who according to all the evidence

prematurity and stillbirth are particularly high when the mother is veryyoung or in her forties".i) See also Cowgill, op. cit., 112.2) An important incidental fact is that we are not able to distinguish be-tween male and female sterility. For this and connected problems, see G.Hawthorn, The Sociology of Fertility (Londen 1970), especially the Appendixon 'Components of natural fertility' (120 ff.).


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36 DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORYwe have married astonishingly early (Brunt does not deny that)?and the social habits of the poor differed widely, is unwarranted.

Even less probable is the assumption that the founders of thealimentary foundations (who supported poor girls only until theywere 13 or 14, and boys until they were 18) did not know what theywere doing. Brunt says: "It seems then to have been expected thatthe girls would marry at 13 or 14 and that their upkeep would cease tobe a charge on the parents. But it may be that the expectation wasunrealistic, and based on the founders' presumption that the socialhabits of the poor corresponded to their own. In default of otherevidence we cannot prove that this was not the case, but we mayask whether it is probable" (137). This is hypercriticism if there wasever such a thing Brunt agrees that epigraphic evidence showsthat the largest number of first marriages was contracted by girlsbetween the ages of 12 and 15, and it is very hard to assume thatthis evidence is only restricted to the upper and middle social strata."The poor man needed a helpmate ... He should therefore havelooked for a fully grown, physically active woman, unlike thewealthy Roman who depended on slaves for labour" (138). Butwhat really took place is that the poor man lost his heart to the girlnext door, often had intercourse with her before marriage andpregnancy followed. The neighbourhood (I would conjecture) wasalert and the young man had to marry his teenage girl. There is alsoanother factor. The girl, still unmarried because of her youth, hadto marry early, because her parents or guardian would not be ableto have an extra consumer of food in the house, an adult whosecontribution to the household (for instance, helping her mother)was not in keeping with what she cost. There were sometimes toomany mouths to be filled.

One might also wonder whether infanticide was so frequentlypractised as Brunt would have us believe. We know from H. Bolke-stein's studies, in this respect followed by A. W. Gomme and G. vanN. Viljoen x), that the Greek situation was different from what had

?) H. Bolkestein, C. P. 17 (1922), 222-39; A. W. Gomme, The Populationof Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C. (1933); G. van N. Viljoen,Acta Class. 2 (1959), 58-69 (with extensive bibliography).Although these authors deal with the exposure of children, infanticide,


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DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORY 37been assumed before Bolkestein published his illuminating article.I have therefore my doubt whether the?not so many?sourcesspeaking about the Romans and infanticide bear witness to ageneral custom.

The conjecture that women (in the upper class) were married soyoung, because, with the prevalence of female infanticide, they werein short supply (138), is also unacceptable to me. The basis is apassage in Cassius Dio (LIV 16, 2) that there were fewer femalesthan males among the free-born population in 18 B.C. *). The factthat this is mentioned might be the consequence of the rarity ofthe phenomenon. From what follows it will appear that I do notendorse this view. However that may be, what Dio says has to beexplained. In this respect modern statistics give us a very goodguidance, based on experiences in many countries. If the so-called'natural law' does not manifest itself from the population census,modern anthropologists have their doubts whether the whole pro-cedure can be trusted. What is this natural law? Here one canso closely connected with exposure, gets considerable attention too. Thatfor Roman society the situation was totally different from that in the Greekcity-states, is doubtful. Miss Treggiari is right in expressing her differentview in Roman Freedmen during the Late Republic (Oxford 1969), 214: "I amnot convinced that the treatment of a pair of alleged bastards in the imperialhouse justifies Hopkins in thinking exposure was common, and the pre-valence of abortion may be similarly disputed". W. L. Langer, Checks onPopulation Growth: 1750-1850, Scientific American, February 1972, gives,however, much evidence that the checks were, during these years, the wide-spread practice of celibacy and infanticide. Whether this can be applied topagan antiquity on the basis of the well-known passages from Plato andAristotle (see the exemplary treatment by A. W. Gomme) is highly question-able. Also the terminology which speaks of "population growth in pre-contraceptive times" is dangerous. It is based on a superficial belief in pro-gress from a precontraceptive to a contraceptive period in the history ofmankind. Noonan rightly drew attention to the apparently frequent use ofcontraceptives in Greek and Roman antiquity. In many cases the idea of'progress' will have to exclude the ancient Greeks and Romans in this respect.1) I am only referring to the words epe?d? te p??? p?e??? t? ???e? t?????e?? t?? e??e???? ??. That Dio was wrong in other statements?in the samepassage?has been pointed out very clearly by A. Watson, The Law of Personsin the Later Roman Republic (Oxford 1967), 33 ff. (I owe this reference to J. A.Crook). These errors, however, are not my concern at the moment. Like inthe question of the census numbers (Ch. V), I follow here also Brunt's inter-pretation of the Greek words quoted: "According to Dio there were fewerfemales than males among the free-born population in 18 B.C." (151).


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38 DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORYrefer to the words of Naraghi: "Demography teaches us that inany people male dominance, measured in terms of the ratio of mento women of the same age, varies, beginning with the end of thefirst year until an age (generally middle age) when a balance isattained. The process of variation in the ratio between the sexesis a natural law whose mechanism cannot be altered by the upheavalscaused by war and migration. That is why this law enables us todetect the imperfections and errors occurring in the censuses"(p. 108) x). It is true that more boys are born than girls, but it isnot true that "more girls normally survived infancy than boys"(Brunt, 151). The first statement is confirmed by Naraghi: "Demo-graphic statistics... agree in affirming that the number of malebirths per 100 female births is generally over 100, but does notexceed this figure very much: 101 to 107. This fact applies to thestill-born as well as to live births, on all latitudes, as soon as reliablestatistics are available. Thus a certain number of demographershave developed a method of controlling the result of a census (Mo-ares, Joaqu?n Jos? Pasos, Notes sur la masculinit? de naissance,Communication au Congr?s Mondial de la Population, Rome,Sept. 1954). We have no reason to believe a priori that in countrieswhere civil government does not furnish sufficient statistics, theratio of male births is any different from that of countries wherecivil government has been functioning for a long time. The fewreliable statistics issued by African and Asiatic countries prove thatthis numerical superiority of the male sex at birth is constant assoon as a sufficiently large sample is available to avoid accidentalfluctuations. Thus male dominance at birth becomes an indicationof the validity of government statistics or censuses. We can questionthe accuracy of the figures as soon as the percentage of male birthis not close to 105" (p. 109).

The second statement of Brunt is, however, more important:"more girls normally survived infancy than boys". Naraghi doesnot confirm that. The effect of the higher male mortality rate doesnot manifest itself so quickly in human life. Roughly speaking,Naraghi sees as a general 'law' that in normal circumstances the

?) Cf. ?. Landry, Treatise on Demography (Paris 1949).


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DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORY 39males are numerically predominant till the age of forty: "Up toage 40, there is a numerical superiority of the male sex ; from thenon the female sex prevails and the gap widens rapidly; among oldpeople over 90 one counts five women for every two men" (p. 109).He gives as an illustration a list of mortality in France 1928-1933 :

Number of Women per 1,000 Meno- 9 yrs. 980 50-59 yrs. 1,086

10-19 yrs- 980 60-69 yrs. 1,18720-29 yTS- 9^2 7?-79 yrs? I>39330-39 yrs? 992 80-89 y^? t>8io40-49 yrs. 1,021 90 yrs. and over 2,506

Miss Cowgill (art. cit., 106) does not confirm Brunt's conclusioneither. According to her investigations in York the survival ratewas higher for males than for females. "Evidently the people ofYork in those times (1538-1812) took better care of their boys thanof their girls". This seems to be still true today in certain non-industrial nations. Some scholars (among them the author of thearticle just quoted) found that life is generally more precarious forgirls than for boys, according to the written sources from Yorkparticularly between the age of three and four.

If these results from modern research are relevant to Romansociety as well?and I think they are?what Dio stated was notabnormal at all. What made, however, the situation different in18 B.C. from that in other periods was that, apparently at thisvery moment, the females of the free-born population had sufferedso much from childbirth and from the consequences of the civil warswhich must have been terrible for the Roman countryside, that thedisproportion between male and female was more conspicuous thanwas the case normally. Perhaps we pay too much respect to Dio'sstatement which stands alone. If it is historically true it bearstestimony to the fact that 'total war' was not a modern invention.Antiquity suffered from it also. Italy especially suffered from thewars so badly that the absence of upward of 100,000 Italian malesin the army (probably unmarried for the most part) should nothave compensated for the shortage of women, which, if Naraghi is


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DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORY 43verse to fertility. Here also an illustration from the former DutchIndies is relevant. When Southeast Asia had been liberated from theJapanese, all sorts of goods were sent by plane, first of all to thewomen's camps, where women and small children had sufferedmuch. One of the first commodities, dropped in great quantities,were hygienic towels for the women. They did not need them, how-ever. In the period of detention the normal menstruation hadgradually disappeared for most of the women. After having hadproper food for a while the normal cycle gradually returned. Ofcourse, this is not to suggest that only women who get the propernourishment are fertile. There are women, for generations acquaintedto hunger, whose fertility has not been affected by the general andmiserable food conditions. But that is not my point. In the Indianconcentration camps none of these western women of the colonialupper- and middle class had ever known hunger and poverty.Under these circumstances, the influence of a totally different wayof Ufe is immense. I also conjecture that in the very fertile plainsof Italy sudden calamities of continuous rain, storms, drought andconsequently bad harvest, and epidemic disease among the cattle,caused starvation which many times could not be remedied properly.It is a truism to say that ancient society, which hardly knew suchthings as proper planning and reservation, was very weak in itseconomic basis. I suggest that the average peasant woman, afterperiods of plenty of food, in which her children were conceived, hadto live through other periods of extreme hardship during whichNature compensated the lack of food in a special way as she didlater to her sisters in the concentration camps and in countriesstarved by occupying forces. I think that my analogy is more con-vincing than Beloch's from France and from modern Italy aboutthe death rate of the male. I do not look upon these conjectures asworthless, but I think that among the conditions averse to fertilitythis modern experience has something to say for ancient societyalso.

Not only the master of a slave would not be so happy withchildren from them but, as Noonan puts it: "It seems reasonable toconclude that to want a large number of children in a slave existencewould at least be an unlikely desire, and that slaves would often


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44 DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORYhave had motives for practicing contraception". We have beentold repeatedly, and also by Brunt: "There is no testimony to theadoption of coitus interruptus in pagan Italy, and comparative evi-dence shows that this fairly effective method of contraception,though well known to some barbarous peoples, is not to be regardedas so natural and obvious that its prevalence can be simply assumed".Brunt is very cautious however and he rightly adds to the formerstatement: "equally, if men abstained from talking of such things,we cannot be certain that the silence of all our sources is con-clusive" *). Noonan, who also mentions this most striking omissionin the scientific works of the Greco-Roman authors, puts the follow-ing question : Was this method too evident to need description ortoo unacceptable to be recommended? He gives two alternatives.Its absence does emphasize that the main effort was to controlfertility through the women. Failure to describe it may, arguably,also reflect confidence in the techniques given as adequate 2). Thelast of the two suggestions seems only relevant when one conjecturesthat contraceptive information (which came down to us mainlyfrom medical literature) was available for many persons. And this isnot so strange, as "the methods of the prostitutes must have beenwidely known, and concubinage with slaves must have both promotedthe use of contraception and spread the knowledge of contra-ceptive techniques" (Noonan, 35-36).

The poor farmer knew the risk of childbearing by what he hadseen around him, in his family, and from his neighbours. Sexualcontrol was absolutely necessary and in part justified as a protectionof life. Sexual promiscuity was never popular among a rural popu-lation, more interested as it was in securing life. Sometimes it wasbetter to secure life by infanticide or abortion. But that was onlyso when contraception as such had failed. The danger for theirwives, mostly their helpmates, will have made small landownersvery careful. This has to be stressed, in my opinion, against Noonan'silluminating book which generalizes too much, basing itself on few

?) Brunt, 146-7; cf. M. K. Hopkins, Comparative Studies in Society andHist. 8, 1965. Modem parallels (seventeenth century) of the same silenceare given by P. Laslett, The world we have lost. 2nd ed. London 1971, 106-107.2) Noonan, op. cit., 32.


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DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORY 45examples from Latin literature, illustrating situations either in theupper social classes or notorious exceptions. According to him 1) "theconventional Roman attitude on fetal and infant life was strikinglycallous. Seneca refers to the drowning of abnormal or weakly childrenas a commonplace Roman phenomenon and as a reasonableaction". This certainly would have been true. From Greek civilizationthe same conclusion can be drawn 2). And it is also true that theexposure of children entirely depended on the will of the parents.But these facts are not enough to conclude that the drowning ofnormal children was a commonplace, nor that parents happilydecided to expose their newborn child. I would presume that theytried to avoid being confronted with the situation, and that, intheir precarious economic circumstances, they would have tried toprevent pregnancy; and also that many ways stood open for themand that the techniques, as said already, were well known. Commonbelief would sometimes have helped to prevent pregnancy, e.g. thebelief that children conceived in menstruation were born sickly,serupurulent or dead (Pliny ? H VII 15, 67). The last instance isgiven by Noonan himself; so he presents all the evidence, but sharesin this respect the prejudices of the theologians and canonists whoseposition he describes so admirably. In Roman society cruelty hadits roots in precarious economic circumstances. As soon as thepoor seemed to be protected, they multiplied. As soon as theirprosperity was more stable, they tried to avoid big families. Thatis the main impression from literature and epigraphy. That is ageneral attitude of 'the family of man'. I do not think that a his-torian can say more about it. The poor and the rural populationwere hardly affected by Augustus' legislation. The governmentalinterest in population seemed confined to encouraging reproductionof the upper classes and indifference to what a parent did with hisoffspring was general (cf. Noonan, 112).

In the foregoing remarks I have restricted myself to a verysmall part of Brunt's fascinating and learned work. It was only my

i) Op. Cit., 112.2) See my article Greeks and the Greeks, in Intern. Rev. of Social History 4(1959), 91-110.


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46 DEMOGRAPHY IN ROMAN HISTORYintention to argue with the author on points which are?withcommon agreement?uncertain, and therefore of essential in-fluence for an evaluation of his work. There are many other pointsin which he is more certain of his results. I agree with many ofthem, mostly collected in the superb appendices (pp. 515-699).Outstanding contributions are, in my opinion, 5 Enfranchisementin Early Roman and Later Colonies, 8 Violence in the ItalianCountryside, 18 Malaria in Ancient Italy, and the technical articles(19-29) about 'How the Roman Levy was Conducted' (and thenext appendices, closely connected with the census as such). Herewe have his main contributions which constitute real progressover Beloch's masterly work. Brunt is more flexible in his argu-mentation, he does not sear his opponent in the notorious style ofBeloch?which is also an asset, in a time in which politeness amongscholars is no longer self-evident*).

Leiden, De Laat de Kanterstraat 15 b? ) It is pleasant duty to thank Chester G. Starr, John W. Eadie and Clay-ton Li bolt for reading, and correcting the style of, this article. This is notthe only nor the most important help they offered me during a happy yearof fruitful cooperation (1971-1972) in the University of Michigan at AnnArbor.

demography in roman history - facts and impressions

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