Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/JRS, IP address: 128.114.34.22 on 03 Apr 2015 i objectiveAs Roman economic historians have moved beyond concepts such as formalism and substan tivism that exercised previous generations of scholars, questions of economic growth and performance have increasingly come to the fore. 1 Consideration of these issues requires a basic understanding of the probable size of the Roman economy and the distribu tion of income across its population. This perspective not only encourages us to ask how different segments of the economy -such as the share of output captured by the state or the relative weight of élite wealth -were interrelated and to ponder the overall degree and struc ture of inequality, but also invites and facilitates comparison with other pre-modern economies. Engagement with such macro-level questions has a short academic pedigree in our field. With the notable exception of the historian-sociologist Keith Hopkins, Roman histo rians have shied away from addressing the problem of the size of the economy of the Empire and effectively ceded this important area of inquiry to a handful of enterprising econo mists who were not afraid to venture into unfamiliar territory. 2 While scholarly JRS 99 (2009), pp. 61-91.

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.

Abstract. The Romans were perhaps the most impressive exponents of water resource management in preindustrial times with irrigation and virtual water trade facilitating unprecedented urbanization and socioeconomic stability for hundreds of years in a region of highly variable climate. To understand Roman water resource management in response to urbanization and climate variability, a Virtual Water Network of the Roman World was developed. Using this network we find that irrigation and virtual water trade increased Roman resilience to interannual climate variability. However, urbanization arising from virtual water trade likely pushed the Empire closer to the boundary of its water resources, led to an increase in import costs, and eroded its resilience to climate variability in the long term. In addition to improving our understanding of Roman water resource management, our cost-distance-based analysis illuminates how increases in import costs arising from climatic and population pressures are likely to be distributed in the future global virtual water network.

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.