Bret Devereaux

...assidui and proletarii, as well as the split between the equites cum equo publico vs. cum equo suo (Soldiers & Silver (2020)). For Roman demography nerds, this means I adopt a high version of the 'low count.' 13/23

For non-Roman citizens, things get dicey fast. Polybius gives us totals for the number of allies who serve as cavalry and the number that serve as infantry. I have assumed - and this is a HEROIC assumption - that the social class breakdown in the... 14/23

...various non-Roman Italian allies looks broadly like the Roman one. This informs the estimate for the propertyless poor (the equivalent of the Roman capite censi) in the rest of Italy. That is essentially a raw guess and could be substantially off. 15/23

For Enslaved Persons, I have accepted the guess made by P.A. Brunt, Italian Manpower: 225 BC - AD 14 (1971) of around half a million and split it evenly between Romans and Italians. That even split gives the Romans *somewhat* higher percentage of enslaved persons... 16/23

...but honestly the real ratio likely has far more (but by no means all) of the enslaved people held in Roman communities. The figure for the number of enslaved people at this point is, however, little more than a fairly blind guess. 17/23

That c. 500k figure also does not reflect, of course, the dramatic growth in the number of enslaved people in Roman Italy was a result of Rome's conquests in the 100s (which haven't happened yet). 18/23

Finally, a note on age and gender. I have assumed here very roughly that adult males (the thing our ancient sources measure) comprise about a third of total people, but the blocks represent adults and of course both men and women. 19/23

With two exceptions I have assumed rough gender parity. First, I think it is reasonable to suppose that the population of resident foreigners in Athens (the metics) might have been male-shifted, given who was likely to go to Athens. That is very speculative. 20/23

Second, there are no women or children in the Roman Senate. During the Republic, there was no 'ordo senatorius' or senatorial order, merely individuals who were senators (that is, no special *legal* status attached to the wife, son or daughter of a senator). 21/23

Consequently, the Senate is represented exactly as its c. 300 normal members; their families are grouped with the equites. Technically Roman women weren't in any of these census classes, but pretending that the family of a senator had the same status as the family of a... 22/23