Walter Scheidel

The Cambridge economic history of the Greco-Roman world

In this, the first comprehensive one-volume survey of the economies of classical antiquity, twenty-eight chapters summarise the current state of scholarship in their specialised fields and sketch new directions for research. The approach taken is both thematic, with chapters on the underlying determinants of economic performance, and chronological, with coverage of the whole of the Greek and Roman worlds extending from the Aegean Bronze Age to Late Antiquity. The contributors move beyond the substantivist-formalist debates that dominated twentieth-century scholarship and display a new interest in economic growth in antiquity. New methods for measuring economic development are explored, often combining textual and archaeological data that have previously been treated separately. Fully accessible to non-specialist, the volume represents a major advance in our understanding of the economic expansion that made the civilisation of the classical Mediterranean world possible.

The Size of the Economy and the Distribution of Income in the Roman Empire

Different ways of estimating the Gross Domestic Product of the Roman Empire in the second century CE produce convergent results that point to total output and consumption equivalent to 50 million tons of wheat or close to 20 billion sesterces per year. It is estimated that elites (around 1.5 per cent of the imperial population) controlled approximately one-fifth of total income while middling households (perhaps 10 percent of the population) consumed another fifth. These findings shed new light on the scale of economic inequality and the distribution of demand in the Roman world.

The coming of the Greeks to Provence and Corsica: Y-chromosome models of archaic Greek colonization of the western Mediterranean

BackgroundThe process of Greek colonization of the central and western Mediterranean during the Archaic and Classical Eras has been understudied from the perspective of population genetics. To investigate the Y chromosomal demography of Greek colonization in the western Mediterranean, Y-chromosome data consisting of 29 YSNPs and 37 YSTRs were compared from 51 subjects from Provence, 58 subjects from Smyrna and 31 subjects whose paternal ancestry derives from Asia Minor Phokaia, the ancestral embarkation port to the 6th century BCE Greek colonies of Massalia (Marseilles) and Alalie (Aleria, Corsica).Results19% of the Phokaian and 12% of the Smyrnian representatives were derived for haplogroup E-V13, characteristic of the Greek and Balkan mainland, while 4% of the Provencal, 4.6% of East Corsican and 1.6% of West Corsican samples were derived for E-V13. An admixture analysis estimated that 17% of the Y-chromosomes of Provence may be attributed to Greek colonization. Using the following putative Neolithic Anatolian lineages: J2a-DYS445 = 6, G2a-M406 and J2a1b1-M92, the data predict a 0% Neolithic contribution to Provence from Anatolia. Estimates of colonial Greek vs. indigenous Celto-Ligurian demography predict a maximum of a 10% Greek contribution, suggesting a Greek male elite-dominant input into the Iron Age Provence population.ConclusionsGiven the origin of viniculture in Provence is ascribed to Massalia, these results suggest that E-V13 may trace the demographic and socio-cultural impact of Greek colonization in Mediterranean Europe, a contribution that appears to be considerably larger than that of a Neolithic pioneer colonization.

Debating Roman demography

In conjection with an extensive critical survey of recent advances and controversies in Roman demography, the four case-studies in this volume illustrate a variety of different approaches to the study of ancient population history. The contributions address a number of crucial issues in Roman demography from the evolution of the academic field to seasonal patterns of fertility, the number of Roman citizens, population pressure in the early Roman empire, and the end of classical urbanism in late antiquity. This is the first collaborative volume of its kind. It is designed to introduce ancient historians and classicists to demographic, comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives, and to situate and contextualize Roman population studies in the wider ambit of historical demography.

A model of demographic and economic change in Roman Egypt after the Antonine plague

Demography has long been an essential ingredient of economic history. Students of the “ancient economy”, by contrast, have been late to give demography its due weight, and attempts to illustrate the potential relevance of population issues have been rare.1 This case-study of Roman Egypt aims to interpret empirical evidence of economic change with reference to demographic factors. I will argue that in the late 2nd c. A.D. a severe mortality crisis triggered price and wage shocks, and that during the following century the resultant population loss contributed to a decrease in the return on land and to a rise in the real wages of workers. I must stress at the outset that my model is deductive in so far as it predicts specific developments based on the internal logic of economic and demographic relationships as illustrated or corroborated by comparative evidence from other periods, and also in that it seeks to situate and explain disparate samples of empirical data within a preconceived unifying interpretative framework. In this it is my goal to provide the most economical and internally consistent explanation for the largest possible amount of the available data. No explanatory model can ever be “complete” or even “correct” to the extent that it would accommodate every single artifact of historical information, eliminate the need for complementary explanations, or fully disentangle the complexity of historical events; rather, it needs to be judged in terms of whether it exceeds (actual or potential) comparably comprehensive alternative models in its capacity to interpret and explain the evidence in a logically coherent and historically plausible fashion.

Quantifying the Sources of Slaves in the Early Roman Empire

The relative importance of different sources of slaves in the Roman Empire during the Principate cannot be gauged from ancient texts. However, simple demographic models show that, for purely statistical reasons, natural reproduction made a greater contribution to the Roman slave supply than child exposure, warfare, and the slave trade taken together and was in all probability several times as important as any other single source. The most plausible projections also suggest that on average the incidence of manumission was rather low. By implication, overall fertility of ex-slaves in general and of freedwomen in particular would be low as well, which must have reduced their chances of acquiring legal privileges that accrued from sexual reproduction.

Roman Age Structure: Evidence and Models *

For many Romans, life was short. In consequence, the young greatly outnumbered the elderly. Historians have long accepted these basic truths, even if they are only beginning to come to terms with the social implications of an alien demographic regime. But how short is ‘short’, and how many Romans were children, how many adults? Does it matter, and can we know? The importance of demographic structure is not in doubt. High mortality causes scarce energy resources to be wasted in pregnancies and nursing, and poses a disincentive to investment in education. It destabilizes families and households, exposes orphans and widows to risk and potential hardship, and shortens the time-horizons of economic activity. In the long term, average life expectancy is the principal determinant of fertility. Poor chances of survival trigger high birth rates to ensure genetic survival. High fertility, in turn, is negatively correlated with the status and well-being of women, and constrains female participation in economic and public affairs. Overall age structure, in conjunction with cultural practices from marriage to child care, determines the prevalence of orphans and widows, and affects the age-specific distribution of fertility. In sum, age structure is instrumental in framing and shaping expectations and experiences. For this reason alone, our understanding of life in the Roman world is critically dependent on our knowledge of demographic conditions.

Brother-Sister and Parent-Child Marriage Outside Royal Families in Ancient Egypt and Iran: A Challenge to the Sociobiological View of Incest Avoidance?

Abstract Copious and unequivocal evidence of legally condoned and socially favored brother-sister and parent-child marriage among common people from Roman Egypt (first to third centuries, A.D.) and Zoroastrian Iran (fifth century, B.C. to 11th century, A.D.) can be taken to pose a challenge to the sociobiological case for universal evolved incest avoidance within the nuclear family, triggered by early childhood proximity (the Westermarck effect). Official census documents from Roman Egypt show a high incidence of full sibling unions with relatively small age gaps between the spouses and no indication of reduced marital fertility, sexual aversion, or increased infant and child mortality. Zoroastrian religious tracts actively encourage nuclear family incest and extol its meritorious nature and supernatural benefits. A schematic assessment of the likely extent of inbreeding depression in such families under conditions of very high mortality through other causes makes reproduction at replacement level seem difficult to accomplish. But given the lack of information on the frequency of deleterious recessive genes in these populations, this reconstruction is fraught with uncertainty; pertinent ancient evidence is suggestive of some incidence of inbreeding depression but remains inconclusive. Aversion and revulsion between incestuous spouses proves a similarly elusive issue. Although these cases from antiquity do not clearly contradict the view of incest avoidance as an evolved mechanism that engenders sexual indifference and normally translates into corresponding cultural norms, they demonstrate the need for a more comprehensive consideration of the available historical record in the testing of evolutionary rules.

A peculiar institution? Greco–Roman monogamy in global context

In what sense were the ancient Greeks and Romans monogamous, and why does it matter? This paper addresses this question from a transdisciplinary and global cross-cultural perspective. It considers the physical and anthropological record of polygyny, delineates the historical expansion of formal monogamy, and critiques complementary social science models of mate choice. This approach allows us to situate Greco–Roman practice on a spectrum from traditional polygamy to more recent forms of normative monogyny. Whilst Greco–Roman legal and social norms stressed the nexus between monogamous unions and legitimate reproduction, they accommodated a variety of mens polygynous relationships outside the nuclear family. Greco–Roman monogamys historically most significant consequence was its role in shaping Christian and later ‘Western’ marital norms that eventually gained global influence.

The Greek demographic expansion: models and comparisons

For much of the first millennium BC, the number of Greeks increased considerably, both in the Aegean core and in the expanding periphery the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. This paper is the first attempt to establish a coherent quantitative framework for the study of this process. In the first section, I argue that despite the lack of statistical data, it is possible to identify a plausible range of estimates of average long-term demographic growth rates in mainland Greece from the Early Iron Age to the Classical period. Elaborating on this finding, the second section offers a comprehensive rebuttal of the notion of explosive population growth in parts of the eighth and seventh centuries BC. In the third section, I seek to determine the probable scale and demographic consequences of Greek settlement overseas. A brief preliminary look at the relationship between population growth and the quality of life concludes my survey. The resultant series of interlocking parametric models is meant to contextualize the demographic development of ancient Greece within the wider ambit of pre-modem demography, and to provide a conceptual template for future research in this area