The Growth of the Metropolis

By any standards Rome of the late Republic was an extremely populous city. At the time of Augustus, it is estimated that it had a population of nearly a million people (see also Chapter 14). The starting point for reconstructing the city’s population are the figures, preserved in the literary and epigraphic record, for those receiving state grain (and other related benefits) at Rome in the late first century. Suetonius tells us that 320,000 people were drawing the grain dole by the time of Caesar, who then reduced the number by more than half to 150,000 {lul. 41.3); between 200,000 and 320,000 received cash handouts or grain on various occasions during Augustus’ principate (RG 15). These numbers represented a privileged category of male citizens within the urban population: when account is taken of free women and children and in addition ex-slaves of both sexes, foreigners, soldiers, and slaves, the total adds up to 800,000-1,000,000.2 What is harder to determine is the process by which this population grew. As Scheidel observes: ‘‘we can only guess at the growth rates of the republican city of Rome.’’27 Attempts to calculate the trajectory of the population of Rome on the basis of the provision of water supply and the building of new aqueducts are not entirely convincing, as these may primarily reflect the influx of wealth into the city from overseas conquest, and only indirectly give an indication of the urban population.28

One feature of the demography of ancient Rome that has emerged with particular clarity from recent work is the exceptionally high level of mortality that characterized the city. Study of Christian tomb-inscriptions from the catacombs {which record precisely the deceased’s date of death) has demonstrated a strikingly diverse pattern in the distribution of deaths across the seasons at Rome: the peak of mortality was in the late summer. Such a peak would indicate high mortality in the society in general and is consonant with a predominance of deaths caused by pulmonary disease {including tuberculosis) and gastrointestinal problems, but it also suggests that these conditions may have been aggravated by endemic malaria.29 That malaria was a serious problem at Rome in later periods is clear: the low-lying and marshy regions of the city, frequently affected by the flooding of the Tiber, provided many opportunities for the breeding of the anopheles mosquito, which spreads the disease, while the healthy characteristics of the city’s hills were well known {Cic. Rep. 2.11; Livy 5.54.4). Rich as well as poor were affected: the impluvia characteristic of the atrium houses favored by the aristocracy provided an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes.31

The prevalence of these illnesses, aggravated by the cramped and unsanitary conditions in which Rome’s inhabitants lived {see below), may have resulted in an average life expectancy at birth of less than 20 years, with serious implications for the demography of the city as a whole.32 Without continuous migration to Rome, the city’s population would have dwindled as a result of the disparity in numbers of births and deaths. Given that between the beginning of the second century and the end of the first, the population of Rome apparently increased {very roughly) from some 200,000 to a million, the extent of migration to the city must have been on a massive scale, since it allowed the population not just to remain steady but to increase dramatically; though views differ on where the migrants came from and what the effects on the population of Italy {and the Empire beyond) would have been.33 Many of these ‘‘migrants’’ were slaves, brought to Rome in the aftermath of Roman victories; others came {more or less) of their own volition, drawn by the attractions of the capital and/or problematic circumstances at home.34 There are some reasons to think that both ‘‘push’’ and ‘‘pull’’ factors - in particular, rural upheavals during and in the aftermath of the Social War and the provision of free grain in the city - were particularly felt in the first century {see also Chapter 28), in which case the extent of migration in that period must have been on a staggering scale.35 Appian saw the grain dole as a factor attracting ‘‘the idle, the impoverished and the reckless of all Italy’’ to the city (App. B Civ. 2.120), reflecting Sallust’s similar view that ‘‘the young men who had endured their poverty by working in the fields were attracted by private and public distributions and came to prefer a life of leisure in the city to their thankless labour’’ (Sall. Cat. 37.7). Dionysius alleges that slaves were freed in order that they might receive the dole (rather than their masters having to support them: Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.24.5). Much of this may be conventional anti-migrant rhetoric, but the expulsion of foreigners attested in 65 (Dio Cass. 37.9.5) and the efforts by Caesar to resettle city dwellers in colonies overseas (80,000 of them, according to Suetonius) together suggest that there was indeed a substantial influx of people in this period.36 In any case, the migrants would have been among those most liable to infection with the range of life-threatening diseases to which they were exposed: especially if they came from districts where malaria was not prevalent and so had not acquired immunity to it.37