Roman Census Statistics from 225 to 28 B. C.

It has been customary for historians to accept, though with a parenthetical warning, Beloch's interpretation' of the Roman census statistics. While we must continue to consider his work fundamental wherever he succeeded in explaining the basic sources, it is my belief that he frequently abandoned those sources without trying to comprehend them. I wish here to point out briefly that historians are not justified in altering the figures given by Livy for 209 and 194 B.C., in rejecting the authoritative statistics of the Sullan period, and in interpreting the figures of the Augustan census on a different system of reckoning from that applied to the republican census. It will be remembered that the Roman authors constantly gave the numbers of civium capita. While this term has been variously explained, Beloch2 seems to be correct when he concludes, from a comparison of the census of 234 B.C. and the army list of 225, that in the republic the census accounted for all male citizens over seventeen, including proletariat and freedmen, and also the male civis sine suffragio of the same age. Now Livy gives the following statistics of civium capita for the half-century that covers the Second Punic War: