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Recent years have witnessed an intense debate concerning the size of the population of Roman Italy. This book argues that the combined literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence supports the theory that early-imperial Italy had about six million inhabitants. At the same time the traditional view that the last century of the Republic witnessed a decline in the free Italian population is shown to be untenable. The main foci of its six chapters are: military participation rates; demographic recovery after the Second Punic War; the spread of slavery and the background to the Gracchan land reforms; the fast expansion of Italian towns after the Social War; emigration from Italy; and the fate of the Italian population during the first 150 years of the Principate.
This volume presents the proceedings of the seventh workshop of the international thematic network Impact of Empire, which concentrates on the history of the Roman Empire. It focuses on the impact that crises had on the development and functioning of the Roman Empire from the Republic to Late Imperial times.
This Companion provides an authoritative and up-to-date overview of Roman Republican history as it is currently practiced. Highlights recent developments, including archaeological discoveries, fresh approaches to textual sources, and the opening up of new areas of historical study Retains the drama of the Republic’s rise and fall Emphasizes not just the evidence of texts and physical remains, but also the models and assumptions that scholars bring to these artefacts Looks at the role played by the physical geography and environment of Italy Offers a compact but detailed narrative of military and political developments from the birth of the Roman Republic through to the death of Julius Caesar Discusses current controversies in the field
Until recently migration did not occupy a prominent place on the agenda of students of Roman history. Various types of movement in the Roman world were studied, but not under the heading of migration and mobility. Migration and Mobility in the Early Roman Empire starts from the assumption that state-organised, forced and voluntary mobility and migration were intertwined and should be studied together. The papers assembled in the book tap into the remarkably large reservoir of archaeological and textual sources concerning various types of movement during the Roman Principate. The most important themes covered are rural-urban migration, labour mobility, relationships between forced and voluntary mobility, state-organised movements of military units, and familial and female mobility. Contributors are: Colin Adams, Seth G. Bernard, Christer Bruun, Paul Erdkamp, Lien Foubert, Peter Garnsey, Saskia Hin, Claire Holleran, Tatiana Ivleva, Luuk de Ligt, Elio Lo Cascio, Tracy L. Prowse, Saskia T. Roselaar, Laurens E. Tacoma, Rolf A. Tybout, Greg Woolf, and Andrea Zerbini.
Periodic markets are institutions of crucial importance in all pre-industrial economies. Yet the subject has been given little atten-tion by Roman historians. The aim of this book is to remedy this state of affairs through an empire-wide study of annual, bi-annual, monthly and 'weekly' markets. The method used involves the interpretation of the ancient evidence in terms of economic and anthropo-logical theory and against the background of comparative data. Dr de Ligt starts by demonstrat-ing the continued importance of local and regional fairs throughout the im-perial period. Special attention is devoted to the role of both annual fairs and high-frequency periodic markets in the rural economy. In the second half of the book the scope of the discussion is extended to social and political aspects. Finally, the book addresses such topics as urban resistance towards neighbouring rural markets and the widespread practice of waiving customs duties for the duration of largescale religious festivals.
A radical interdisciplinary reappraisal of the agrarian background to the political events which shaped the destiny of Rome (from Republic to Empire). The book actively builds upon the textual and archaeological evidence to trace the fate of the Italian rural free population during a crucial period of its history.
The focus of Regional Urban Systems in the Roman World is on urban hierarchies and interactions in large geographical areas rather than on individual cities. Based on a painstaking examination of archaeological and epigraphic evidence relating to more than 1,000 cities, the volume offers comprehensive reconstructions of the urban systems of Roman Gaul, North Africa, Sicily, Greece and Asia Minor. In addition it examines the transformation of the settlement systems of the Iberian Peninsula and the central and northern Balkan following the imposition of Roman rule. Throughout the volume regional urban configurations are examined from a rich variety of perspectives, ranging from climate and landscape, administration and politics, economic interactions and social relationships all the way to region-specific ways of shaping the townscapes of individual cities.
Recent research has called into question the orthodox view that the last two centuries of the Roman Republic witnessed a decline of the free rural population. Yet the implications of the alternative reconstructions of Italy's demographic history that have been proposed have never been explored systematically. This volume offers a series of in-depth discussions not only of the republican manpower and census figures but also of the abundant archaeological data. It also explores the growth of cities, especially Rome, and the changing distribution of the population over the Italian landscape. On the rural side it addresses the interplay between demographic, economic, and legal developments and the background to the Gracchan land reforms. Finally it examines the political implications of demographic growth and large-scale migration to the provinces. The volume as a whole demonstrates that demography is the key to many aspects of Italy's economic, social, military, and political history.
The Romans who established their rule on three continents and the Europeans who first established new homes in North America interacted with communities of Indigenous peoples with their own histories and cultures. Sweeping in its scope and rigorous in its scholarship, Empires and Indigenous Peoples expands our understanding of their historical parallels and raises general questions about the nature of the various imperial encounters. In this book, leading scholars of ancient Roman and early anglophone North America examine the mutual perceptions of the Indigenous and the imperial actors. They investigate the rhetoric of civilization and barbarism and its expression in military policies. Indi...
This book draws together a wide range of evidence across disciplines to show how the ordinary people of Roman Egypt experienced and enacted change.