THE DEMOGRAPHY OF THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD

Walter Scheidel

(under contract with Cambridge University Press)

Purpose and structure

Demography is essential for our understanding of ancient societies: patterns of mortality, the social organization of reproduction, household formation and population density are among the crucial factors governing life in every society, including ancient Greece and Rome. Following a long period of neglect, scholarly interest in ancient population history has grown quite considerably over the past forty years. Even so, no comprehensive introductory survey of this subject currently exists. The overall structure of this book is shaped by the central concerns of the historical demography of the more recent past. It seeks to acquaint classicists with the perspectives of professional demography and to be readily accessible and relevant to historical demographers and social historians of other periods. The core of the book consists of a discussion of the three determinants of population structure, namely mortality, fertility, and migration, complemented by a separate chapter on population size and distribution. A concluding epilogue focuses on the contribution of demography to our understanding of the ancient world in general.

Contents

The introduction describes the scope and approach of the book, which addresses multiple audiences, such as ancient and pre-modern historians and historical demographers. It briefly surveys the development of scholarship in the field and explains the relevance of demography for our understanding of the ancient world, and the contribution of ancient history to historical population studies more generally.

Chapter 1, on mortality and the causes of death, discusses the problems of deriving mortality rates from age distributions attested in samples of ancient evidence; their relationship to modern model life tables and comparative evidence; their implications for life expectancy and fertility; documented patterns of seasonal mortality and the light they shed on causes of death; the ancient disease environment; and the nature and impact of mortality crises.

Chapter 2, on reproduction, family and household structure, discusses the concept of natural fertility; examines the principal determinants of fertility, such as age of marriage, incidence of marriage and re-marriage, birth spacing, stopping strategies; explores practices of contraception, abortion, and child exposure/infanticide; and considers the effects of fertility control on sex ratios. It also deals with quantifiable evidence of the composition of families and households, especially from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt; the information furnished by Roman epitaphs; and literary and legal records.

Chapter 3, on the size and distribution of ancient populations, addresses problems of determining population size; its change over time, with particular reference to classical Athens, the city of Rome, and Roman Italy; and the scale of urbanization.

Chapter 4, on mobility, discusses the principal mechanisms of migration and reviews novel insights derived from bioarchaeological evidence.

An epilogue illustrates how demographic information affects our understanding of ancient history more broadly by exploring the relationship between demographic conditions and economic development as well as human capital formation, the demographic dimension of republican governance, the demography of religious change, and other salient topics.