[Resource] Population figures for Imperator Rome's time and place

[mudcrabmerchant]

Scroll down if you just want the figures, read on if you want some background on them. Apologies for the formatting, I'll improve it later.

For those of us interested in mods aiming for historical accuracy, the historical population of territories is important. This post is intended to serve as a reference point for that information.

My current sole source is McEvedy and Jones' Atlas of World Population History (you can easily find a PDF online). It's dated and has its problems, but it's the best source I'm aware of. It gives estimates for regions based on late 20th century borders, even if the figures are for antiquity, so don't freak out when you see "France" and "Belgium" and "European USSR" . All figures are rough estimates. Some areas include territory outside of I:R's map, but with few exceptions these would have been sparsely populated and not contributed much to the total population. I'm happy to update/supplement these figures if someone can provide better sources. At a later date, I'd also like to incorporate estimates of the population of individual cities from antiquity.

Figures are included for population at the game's start date in approximately 300BC, and for the greatest population achieved before the game's end date in approximately 1BC (intended to give an idea of how much pops should realistically grow over the course of the game).

POPULATION FIGURES (in millions)
Total:
77.66 in 300BC, 96.77 max by 1BC

Europe:

Spoiler

England+Wales 0.3, 0.6
Scotland 0.1, 0.1
Ireland 0.15, 0.15
Norway 0.4, 0.5
Sweden 0.2, 0.2
Denmark 0.2, 0.2
Finland 0.1, 0.1
France 3.5, 5
Netherlands 0.2, 0.2
Belgium+Luxembourg 0.3, 0.3
Germany 1.5, 3
Poland 0.25, 0.5
European USSR 1.7, 2
Czechoslovakia 0.6, 1
Switzerland 0.3, 0.3
Austria 0.2, 0.5
Hungary 0.3, 0.3
Romania 0.55, 0.8
Spain 3.5, 4.5
Portugal 0.35, 0.5
Italy 4.5, 7
Yugoslavia 1.25, 1.5
Albania 0.2, 0.2
Greece* 2.75, 3
Bulgaria 0.2, 0.5
European Turkey 0.1, 0.1
Cyprus 0.1, 0.2
Malta 0.01, 0.02
Total 23.81, 33.27

*Greece's population peaked at 3 million in 400BC, and declined to 2 million by 1BC

Africa:

Spoiler

Libya 0.3, 0.4
Tunisia 0.4, 0.8
Algeria 1, 2
Morocco 0.75, 1
Egypt 3, 4
Sudan* 1.8, 2
Ethiopia+Eritrea* 0.35, 0.5
Somalia+Djibouti 0.2, 0.2
Total 7.8, 10.9

*Includes significant populated areas outside of I:R's map.

Asia (minus India):

Spoiler

Asian Turkey 4.5, 6
Iran 4, 4
Afghanistan 1.6, 2
Iraq* 1.15, 1.25
Gulf States 0.1, 0.1
Saudi Arabia 0.6, 1
Yemen 0.7, 1
Oman 0.1, 0.1
Palestine+Jordan 0.5, 0.8
Syria+Lebanon 1.75, 2.25
Caucasus** 0.3, 0.3
Turkestan 1, 1.5
Xinjiang+Tibet+Qinghai*** 0.75, 1
Total 17.05, 21.3

*Iraq's population peaked at 1.25 million in 200BC, before declining to 1 million by 1BC.
**Includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The northern Caucasus is also lumped in here despite technically being in Europe.
***Includes significant populated areas outside of I:R's map.

Indian subcontinent:

Spoiler

India/Pak/Bangl. 28, 30
Nepal 0.8, 1
Sri Lanka 0.2, 0.3
Total 29, 31.3

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

For reference to the current game, there are 44833 pops in the world in 450 AVC, and in Reman's world conquest campaign that ended 262 years later, there are 109456 pops in the single world-state. If we assume ~1000 actual people per pop, the numbers match up surprisingly well with reality, although there are too few pops to start out with, and they grow too much by the end of the game.

 

[EmperorTrump]

Thanks for this! I found that PDF and it is extremely helpful. Great post!

 

[Arthrodira]

I recommend you assume 6,000 people per pop, not 1,000. Since one pop turns into a 1k army when tribes migrate, we can assume that each pop represents 1000 men of fighting age and ability. Historians back-calculate populations from army sizes, with 1:6 being a popular metric.

 

[IlikeTrains]

I recommend you assume 6,000 people per pop, not 1,000. Since one pop turns into a 1k army when tribes migrate, we can assume that each pop represents 1000 men of fighting age and ability. Historians back-calculate populations from army sizes, with 1:6 being a popular metric.

So vanilla has too many pops? In a few posts above it is said that vanilla has 44833 pops.

 

[Arthrodira]

From what I can tell the biggest problem is that they made the world too even. For example of the ~2m people that should be in Greece at game start, ~473,000 (1/4) should be in Athens alone. Alexandria should have ~300k at start. They opted to make provinces more balanced, but they shouldn’t have; the nice thing about the granularity of the map is that big cities can really stand out.

Anyway yeah, because the small provinces are systematically increased, I think the number of pops at start is too high. Unless they went with a 1:4 ratio instead of 1:6. But then major cities are WAY too small

 

[IlikeTrains]

From what I can tell the biggest problem is that they made the world too even. For example of the ~2m people that should be in Greece at game start, ~473,000 (1/4) should be in Athens alone. Alexandria should have ~300k at start. They opted to make provinces more balanced, but they shouldn’t have; the nice thing about the granularity of the map is that big cities can really stand out.

Anyway yeah, because the small provinces are systematically increased, I think the number of pops at start is too high. Unless they went with a 1:4 ratio instead of 1:6. But then major cities are WAY too small

Looks like something EHI could tweak

 

[Arthrodira]

Yeah. I’ve fixed Athens and Alexandria, but I haven’t dug into everything else yet. I’ll get to it eventually ...

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

I recommend you assume 6,000 people per pop, not 1,000. Since one pop turns into a 1k army when tribes migrate, we can assume that each pop represents 1000 men of fighting age and ability. Historians back-calculate populations from army sizes, with 1:6 being a popular metric.

I think it's safer to assume inconsistency on Paradox's side. I wouldn't want to base judgments of the entire pop system off of a mechanic affecting only a small minority of tags in relatively rare circumstances.

From what I can tell the biggest problem is that they made the world too even. For example of the ~2m people that should be in Greece at game start, ~473,000 (1/4) should be in Athens alone. Alexandria should have ~300k at start. They opted to make provinces more balanced, but they shouldn’t have; the nice thing about the granularity of the map is that big cities can really stand out.

Anyway yeah, because the small provinces are systematically increased, I think the number of pops at start is too high. Unless they went with a 1:4 ratio instead of 1:6. But then major cities are WAY too small

473k is WAY too big for Athens in 304BC. Probably too big even for Athens at its height, and certainly for a tiny subject of Phrygia. An urban population of 25% is huge for any pre-industrial society, and this is just a single city out of all Greece.
The utter lack of any kind of urbanization system is a glaring flaw in a game about building an empire around the Eternal City, but the balanced distribution of population is understandable in a game that isn't overly concerned with historical accuracy, and set in a period with virtually no sources on actual populations.

 

[Arthrodira]

I think it's safer to assume inconsistency on Paradox's side. I wouldn't want to base judgments of the entire pop system off of a mechanic affecting only a small minority of tags in relatively rare circumstances.


473k is WAY too big for Athens in 304BC. Probably too big even for Athens at its height, and certainly for a tiny subject of Phrygia. An urban population of 25% is huge for any pre-industrial society, and this is just a single city out of all Greece.
The utter lack of any kind of urbanization system is a glaring flaw in a game about building an empire around the Eternal City, but the balanced distribution of population is understandable in a game that isn't overly concerned with historical accuracy, and set in a period with virtually no sources on actual populations.

I mean I’m citing actual census records. So whether or not it seems big, that’s what the census from just after the game start reported. Look it up if you don’t believe me.

 

[Arthrodira]

Also, of course it’s inconsistent, that’s why populations are either too small or too large. But if you’re trying to apply a uniform standard, then you need to pick s ratio. 1:6 makes sense based on the only in game system that translates pops to actual population numbers

 

[Landil]

As a historian who more or less specializes in historical geography and specifically in demography, the population mechanics and numbers in Imperator intrigue and frustrate me. After stumbling on this thread and reading it, I have a few things to comment on:

- The Atlas of World Population History and Colin McEvedy's work in general can be considered (extremely) conservative in its estimates and in a sense are a direct response to the high estimate trend of the 20th century. The figures can be used as guidelines, but should be weighed against other estimates if you want a realistic outcome.

- As for the Athenian population, let me quote Athenaeus: "But Ctesicles, in the third book of his Chronicles, says that in the hundred and fifteenth Olympiad, there was an investigation at Athens conducted by Demetrius Phalereus into the number of the inhabitants of Attica, and the Athenians were found to amount, to twenty-one thousand, and the Metics to ten thousand, and the slaves to four hundred thousand."
The statistics then, would be 21.000 citizens, 10.000 metics, and 400.000 slaves in Attica (not the city of Athens, as is often wrongly purported). The problem with this source is that it is a third hand recording and in general Athenaeus mentions only high numbers of slaves that are most likely overestimates, whereas other sources and empirical evidence would suggest lower numbers.
It is very difficult to put an actual number to the population of Attica, given that we cannot with certainty claim if and by how much the number of slaves is overembellished (note: this is very similar to how many ancient 'historians' overestimated the size of armies), if the other figures are correct (they seem plausible given the other numbers we have for Athens' citizen population), and what ratios we should apply to women, children, and unreported foreigners (metics were patronized and had legal obligations, but it is not at all clear if all foreigners had this status). A very rough estimate of my own would put the population of Attica at about 200.000 in the late 3rd century BCE, with the city of Athens scoring perhaps 30-40.000 and the harbor of Piraeus about the same.

- In general, this is a topic that historians either heavily debate or avoid because it is so treacherous due to the ambiguity of the extant sources and the lack of sources in general. It is also so extensive that while I am capable of offering advice and debating things, it would take an incredible amount of time to do the research required to cover the entirety of the game's scope, something I don't necessarily have. Still, I can do my bit if people are interested.

 

[Arthrodira]

As a historian who more or less specializes in historical geography and specifically in demography, the population mechanics and numbers in Imperator intrigue and frustrate me. After stumbling on this thread and reading it, I have a few things to comment on:

- The Atlas of World Population History and Colin McEvedy's work in general can be considered (extremely) conservative in its estimates and in a sense are a direct response to the high estimate trend of the 20th century. The figures can be used as guidelines, but should be weighed against other estimates if you want a realistic outcome.

- As for the Athenian population, let me quote Athenaeus: "But Ctesicles, in the third book of his Chronicles, says that in the hundred and fifteenth Olympiad, there was an investigation at Athens conducted by Demetrius Phalereus into the number of the inhabitants of Attica, and the Athenians were found to amount, to twenty-one thousand, and the Metics to ten thousand, and the slaves to four hundred thousand."
The statistics then, would be 21.000 citizens, 10.000 metics, and 400.000 slaves in Attica (not the city of Athens, as is often wrongly purported). The problem with this source is that it is a third hand recording and in general Athenaeus mentions only high numbers of slaves that are most likely overestimates, whereas other sources and empirical evidence would suggest lower numbers.
It is very difficult to put an actual number to the population of Attica, given that we cannot with certainty claim if and by how much the number of slaves is overembellished (note: this is very similar to how many ancient 'historians' overestimated the size of armies), if the other figures are correct (they seem plausible given the other numbers we have for Athens' citizen population), and what ratios we should apply to women, children, and unreported foreigners (metics were patronized and had legal obligations, but it is not at all clear if all foreigners had this status). A very rough estimate of my own would put the population of Attica at about 200.000 in the late 3rd century BCE, with the city of Athens scoring perhaps 30-40.000 and the harbor of Piraeus about the same.

- In general, this topic that historians either debate or avoid because it is so treacherous due to the ambiguity of the extant sources and the lack of sources in general. It is also so extensive that while I am capable of offering advice and debating things, it would take an incredible amount of time to do the research required to cover the entirety of the game's scope, something I don't necessarily have. Still, I can do my bit if people are interested.

Thanks. That’s very useful. I’d love to chat more sometime.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

- The Atlas of World Population History and Colin McEvedy's work in general can be considered (extremely) conservative in its estimates and in a sense are a direct response to the high estimate trend of the 20th century. The figures can be used as guidelines, but should be weighed against other estimates if you want a realistic outcome.

I have thought that figures for some areas are suspiciously low, but lacking other sources I had to go off of McEvedy.

- In general, this topic that historians either debate or avoid because it is so treacherous due to the ambiguity of the extant sources and the lack of sources in general. It is also so extensive that while I am capable of offering advice and debating things, it would take an incredible amount of time to do the research required to cover the entirety of the game's scope, something I don't necessarily have. Still, I can do my bit if people are interested.

I'm definitely interested in any help you can give, even if its just recommending sources. I should soon have access to a huge university library system, so if a book or article exists, I should be able to get my hands on it. I'm interested in general population estimates, as well as the populations of specific cities.

Also, of course it’s inconsistent, that’s why populations are either too small or too large. But if you’re trying to apply a uniform standard, then you need to pick s ratio. 1:6 makes sense based on the only in game system that translates pops to actual population numbers

I could say more, but this is a discussion for a thread about making a mod, rather than talking about population data. Better to continue the conversation if/when someone makes a mod that uses this data.

 

[Arthrodira]

I am modding pop data for EHI

 

[IlikeTrains]

Is there an alternative for Atlas of World Population History? It's indeed very conservative about the numbers, e.g. for 500 and 600 AD it shows about 300k people for the entire modern European part of Turkey, while I have read Constantinople itself probably had 500k people in times of Justinian. At this point I don't know if it's worth to use the Atlas as a main source.