People, Land, and Politics: Demographic Developments and the Transformation of Roman Italy, 300 BC-AD 14 (History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity)

654 Pages·2008·1.4 MB·English

by  L. De Ligt

People, Land, and Politics
Mnemosyne
Supplements
History and Archaeology
of Classical Antiquity
Edited by
Susan E. Alcock, Brown University
Thomas Harrison, Liverpool
Willem M. Jongman, Groningen
H.S. Versnel, Leiden
VOLUME 303
People, Land, and Politics
Demographic Developments and the
Transformation of Roman Italy 300 BC–AD 14
Edited by
Luuk de Ligt and Simon Northwood
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2008
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
People, land and politics : demographic developments and the transformation of
Roman Italy 300 BC–AD 14 / edited by Luuk de Ligt and Simon Northwood.
p. cm. — (Mnemosyne, supplements, ISSN 0169-8958)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-17118-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Demography—Rome.
2. Rome—Population. 3. Rural population—Rome. 4. City dwellers—Rome.
5. Rome—History—Empire, 284–476. I. Ligt, L. de. II. Northwood, Simon.
III. Title. IV. Series.

HB853.R66P46 2008
304.60937’09014—dc22
2008033142
ISSN 0169-8958
ISBN 978 90 04 17118 3
Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,
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printed in the netherlands
CONTENTS
Introduction ................................................................................ 1
I
DEMOGRAPHY
Roman Population Size: The Logic of the Debate ................... 17
Walter Scheidel
The Much Maligned Peasant. Comparative Perspectives
on the Productivity of the Small Farmer in Classical
Antiquity ................................................................................. 71
J. Geoffrey Kron
Urbanisation and Development in Italy in the Late
Republic .................................................................................. 121
Neville Morley
The Population of Cisalpine Gaul in the Time of Augustus ... 139
Luuk de Ligt
II
CENSUS FIGURES AND POPULATION
Counting Romans ....................................................................... 187
Saskia Hin
Roman Census Figures in the Second Century BC and the
Property Qualifi cation of the Fifth Class .............................. 239
Elio Lo Cascio
Census and Tributum ................................................................. 257
Simon Northwood
vi contents
III
SURVEY ARCHAEOLOGY AND DEMOGRAPHY
Regional Field Survey and the Demography of Roman Italy ... 273
Robert Witcher
Poor Peasants and Silent Sherds ................................................ 305
Dominic Rathbone
Settlement Organization and Land Distribution in Latin
Colonies Before the Second Punic War ................................. 333
Jeremia Pelgrom
Polybius and the Field Survey Evidence from Apulia ............... 373
Douwe Yntema
Lucanian Landscapes in the Age of ‘Romanization’
(Third to First Centuries BC): Two Case Studies ................. 387
Maurizio Gualtieri
IV
ALLIED MANPOWER AND MIGRATION
Mobility and Migration in Italy in the Second Century BC .... 417
Paul Erdkamp
Migration and Hegemony: Fixity and Mobility in
Second-Century Italy .............................................................. 451
Will Broadhead
The Gracchi, the Latins, and the Italian Allies ......................... 471
Henrik Mouritsen
contents vii
V
AGER PUBLICUS
The Gracchan Reform and Appian’s Representation of an
Agrarian Crisis ........................................................................ 487
Daniel J. Gargola
Lex Licinia, Lex Sempronia: B.G. Niebuhr and the
Limitation of Landholding in the Roman Republic ............ 519
John Rich
Regional Variations in the Use of the Ager Publicus ................... 573
Saskia T. Roselaar
VI
DEMOGRAPHY AND THE END OF THE REPUBLIC
Revolution and Rebellion in the Later Second and Early
First Centuries BC: Jack Goldstone and the ‘Roman
Revolution’ .............................................................................. 605
Nathan Rosenstein
States Waiting in the Wings: Population Distribution and the
End of the Roman Republic .................................................. 631
Michael Crawford
Index ........................................................................................... 645

INTRODUCTION: NEW APPROACHES TO THE
DEMOGRAPHIC, AGRARIAN, AND POLITICAL
HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AND LATE REPUBLIC
Until recently most historians of Italy during the last two centuries BC
accepted a causal connection between imperial conquest, a vast enrich-
ment of the Roman elite, a rapid increase in the number of urban
and rural slaves, the gradual proletarianization of an ever-g rowing
proportion of the Italian peasantry, and the political destabilization
of the Republic after 133 BC. It was also thought that these develop-
ments were made possible or at least accelerated by the devastations
of the Hannibalic War, which allowed the Roman elite to set up large
slave-staffed estates on the vastly increased ager publicus of the post-
Hannibalic period. In all this the heavy recruitment required for the
wars in the East and in Spain was seen as a factor which contributed
to the immiseration of the country-dwelling population. The land
reforms initiated by Tiberius Gracchus were seen as a logical response
to these developments and, more specifi cally, as an attempt to stem the
numerical decline of the free peasantry from which the armies of the
Republic were traditionally recruited.1
In recent years the validity of many assumptions underlying this
reconstruction has been questioned. An important development which
stimulated ancient historians and archaeologists to rethink the history of
post-Hannibalic Italy was the emergence of survey archaeology. From
the early 1970s onwards it was claimed that the fi eldwalking campaigns
carried out in South Etruria had revealed the presence of numerous
farm sites of the second century BC, a fi nding which seemed to be at
odds with the traditional view that this period witnessed the uprooting
of the free peasantry and a decline of the free rural population.2
When fi eldwalking campaigns were carried out in other parts of
Italy, it also seemed to emerge that there were hardly any large-scale
villas for the production of wine and olive oil before the early decades
of the fi rst century BC. This has contributed to the recent emphasis
on good transportation locations as a vital prerequisite for intensive
1 E.g. Hopkins (1978); Cornell (1996).
2 Frederiksen (1970–1).