Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: November (2005)
Abstract
This paper seeks to provide a basic demographic framework for the study of integrative processes in Italy during the Republican period. Following a brief summary of the state of the debate about population size, the paper focuses on distributional issues such as military and political participation rates and geographical mobility, and concludes with a simple model of the dynamics of Italian integration.
Between the 390s and the 260s BCE, the Roman state grew from a city-state into a complex, multi-layered system of domination that claimed either direct control or indirect hegemony over the entire Italian peninsula. This complexity persisted until the mass enfranchisements of the 80s BCE. From the 260s BCE onwards, this region became the core of a tributary empire with a penumbra of client states that gradually extended across the Mediterranean basin. This expansion precipitated massive social and economic change in that core, including the centripetal accumulation and concentration of capital stocks, accelerating urbanization and mass migration, and the creation of a slave economy. At the same time, the main political institutions of the original city-state that had already been in place by the early fourth century BCE remained essentially unchanged.
Walter Scheidel (University of Stanford)
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics: November (2005)
Abstract
This paper seeks to provide a basic demographic framework for the study of integrative processes in Italy during the Republican period. Following a brief summary of the state of the debate about population size, the paper focuses on distributional issues such as military and political participation rates and geographical mobility, and concludes with a simple model of the dynamics of Italian integration.
Between the 390s and the 260s BCE, the Roman state grew from a city-state into a complex, multi-layered system of domination that claimed either direct control or indirect hegemony over the entire Italian peninsula. This complexity persisted until the mass enfranchisements of the 80s BCE. From the 260s BCE onwards, this region became the core of a tributary empire with a penumbra of client states that gradually extended across the Mediterranean basin. This expansion precipitated massive social and economic change in that core, including the centripetal accumulation and concentration of capital stocks, accelerating urbanization and mass migration, and the creation of a slave economy. At the same time, the main political institutions of the original city-state that had already been in place by the early fourth century BCE remained essentially unchanged.
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