The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History - Karatunov.net

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The Roman A rmy
pire was split into two halves at the beginning of the fifth century ad, the eastern
sector enjoying a long existence and surviving as the Byzantine Empire, but
the venerable city of Rome declined in importance, and the western Empire declined
with her.
Dem ogra phy
The demographic material from the Roman world has been studied by Parkin
(1992) and Scheidel (1996), but since complete population statistics for the Roman
Empire are nowhere fully attested, historians must rely on estimates. Alt
h o u gh bi rths had to be regi s tered in all provi n ces of the Roman Empire , t h e
records have not survived. Even though there is an impressive collection of data
from funerary inscriptions, the information is not necessarily useful for demographic
purposes. Ages at death are often included, but it is only rarely that the
cause of death is revealed in inscriptions, and since the Romans generally cremated
their dead, forensic evidence is unobtainable. Only in the Christian era
did people start to bury their relatives, giving archaeologists a chance to glean
evi den ce of a i l m en t s , l i fe spans, and po s s i ble causes of de a t h . This is why the
skeletons discovered at Pompeii, and more recently at Herculaneum, hold such
enduring interest for historians.
For population statistics generally, we are a little better served by census figures.
In ancient Rome responsibility for conducting the census was vested in the
kings, then the consuls, until in the middle of the fifth century bc two new officials
were cre a ted , a ppropri a tely call ed cen s ors . These men were usu a lly ex -
consuls and were elected every four years (later every five years) to take up office
for ei gh teen mon t h s . The data co ll ected inclu ded the full name of the pers on
concerned, the name of his father, the place where he normally resided, what he
did for a living, and how much property he owned. This information decided
the individual’s place in the Republican army.
As the Empire ex p a n ded , the Romans con du cted cen sus su rveys in the
provi n ce s , pri m a ri ly to record those people who were liable to pay taxe s . Despite
all this activity, the picture that emerges after 2,000 years is a little patchy.
Even if figures can be obtained for an individual city, or a province of the Roman
Empire, the basis on which the surveys were carried out is not known, and
therefore the use of such statistics without the attendant discussion can present
a distorted image. A documented rise in the Roman population could be attributed
to several different causes, e s pec i a lly as the inhabitants of s ome regi on s
could be granted Roman citizenship en bloc. Thus a vast increase was created
between one census and the next that was totally unrelated to the birth rate or
the avera ge life span. It is not known if or wh en wom en and ch i l d ren were
counted, and this is one of the factors that must be taken into account in ex-