1969/11/01 by T. P. Wiseman · 6 citations
Social Sciences · #Art #Census #Classical Antiquity Studies #Classics #Demography #Economic history #Genealogy #Geography #Historical and Literary Studies #History #Per capita #Period (music) #Philosophy #Population #Sociology #The Republic #Theology
paper · doi:10.2307/299848
openalex publication_date 1969/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
The aim of this article is to consider three questions which seem to me to be crucial to the understanding of the late-republican and Augustan censuses: ( a ) Why was only one lustrum —that of 69—performed between 86 and 28 B.C.? ( b ) Does this mean that there was only one census of the Roman people held in that period ? ( c ) Why was the figure of civium capita published in 28 B.C. (4,063,000) so much larger than that for 69 (900,000 or 910,000) ? The third question was re-opened recently when Professor Arnold Toynbee, in a long Annex on the republican census-figures in the first volume of Hannibal's Legacy , endorsed Beloch's view, which Tenney Frank had rejected, that Augustus used radically different criteria for his enumeration from those employed by the censors of the Republic. Moreover, P. A. Brunt has indicated his adherence to Beloch's view in several places, and defends it in detail in his forthcoming book on Italian manpower.