He may have included non-citizen freemen, freedmen and slaves as well, but this we can never be certain of.Ī Claudian census in 47 AD places citizen population at just under 7 million people. The large discrepancy would seem to account for the fact that Augustus probably counted more than even citizen men and related family members (including women). The census of 70 BC showed 910,000 men held citizenship, which is far short of the Augustan citizen numbers (roughly 4 million), but more than the overall numbers (roughly 45 million) just a century later. This falls more in line with estimates at the height of imperial power in the mid 2nd century AD, and might be inflated considering the lack of the previously mentioned expansion. In 28 BC the citizen population was 4,063,000 (including both men and women)īy contrast, in the census of 70 BC, prior to the major civil wars of the late Republic (and considerably more conquests in Gaul and the East), some have estimated the population of the 'Empire' at a more considerable 55 to 60 million people.Of this 45 million people, Augustus declared within his own census information that: Using 300 million as the world benchmark, the population of the Empire under Augustus would've made up about 15% of the world's population. In that same period, the population of the early empire under Augustus has been placed at about 45 million. The population of the world circa AD 1 has been considered to be between 200 and 300 million people. Understanding these difficulties, there is little choice but to determine the population of the Roman Empire using various consensus estimates. Also clouding the science of the census is whether or not the count in various years was limited to male citizens, citizens and their families, women, freedmen, slaves and/or everybody else in between. However, it is still difficult to determine, especially as the Roman Republic expanded to include various provinces, whether population figures include these areas, or just the city of Rome itself. Prior to the mid 4th century BC, all surviving figures are generally disregarded as completely fictitious, but after that, a pattern of reasonable population figures begins to emerge. provincial citizens for tax purposes etc). Thanks to the concept of the Roman Census, there are some figures specifically related to the Roman Empire, but these are often deemed unreliable as the people who were included in each periodic census could change (i.e. The census figures for the ancient world are estimates at best.

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