|state treasury (year 61)|||18|
|---|---|---|---|
|Nero’s subsidy to soldiers after they|2,000|5.2|Book XV, Chapter|
|crushed Piso’s conspiracy (year 65)|||72|
|Nero’s gift to Lyon (Lugdunum)|4 million|~0.02% of GDP|Book XVI,|
|after a bigfire(year 65)|||Chapter 13|

Note: Augustus’s donatives refer to the amounts given out at his death.

Inflation rate was estimated by Temin (2003, p. 149) to have been less than 1 percent p.a,, up to the end of the Julio-Claudian era in 69. Thus, later (post-Augustan) incomes ought to be deflated accordingly.

**Population and area** . Population is taken from Goldsmith (1984: p. 263).  Goldsmith also gives the area as 3.3 million km<sup>2</sup> , while Taagepera (1979: Table 2, p. 125) gives 3.4 million km<sup>2</sup> (for year 1, wrongly labeled as year 0).

**Urbanization rate.** Goldsmith’s (1984: pp. 272-3) range is 9 to 13 percent with the former number “nearer the lower boundary at the beginning of the principate.” (The urbanization rate seems to be calculated based on the cut-off point of 2-3,000 people).  In addition to Rome, the population of which is conventionally estimated at 1 million (Bairoch 1985: p. 115), there were six cities (Carthage, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Pergamum and Apamea) with populations in excess of 100,000 (Schiavone 2000: p. 61). Taking their average size to be 150,000, it follows that about 2 million (or almost 4 percent of the population) lived in the cities that were larger than 100,000.  For the urbanization rate, we use a median estimate of 10 percent.

**Mean income in $PPP** . Obtained by expressing mean income from Goldsmith (HS 380) in terms of the subsistence minimum (estimated at HS 180), and then pricing the latter at $PPP 400. This yields mean income of $PPP 844 in 1990 prices. In his most recent (2007) update (available at <u>http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/) Maddison gives Italian National</u> Disposable Income in year 14 as $PPP 806.

# _Discussion._

Temin (2003) argues that Goldsmith’s calculation of the mean Roman income is too high. However, there are at least three counterarguments to Temin: (1) his critique of Goldsmith’s calculations is not based on Goldsmith’s methodology (which Temin praises) but on Goldsmith’s apparent use of Rome-based wage rates for the rest of the Empire including Egypt where both wheat prices and wages were much lower in nominal terms. Temin then uses an average of the two nominal wage-rates, and obtains a significantly lower overall Imperial mean income. But that issue can be sidestepped by arguing that the Imperial numbers are expressed in Rome-city prices. This is acceptable since Temin (2003, p. 19) himself believes that _real_ (wheat) wages in Egypt and Romecity were about the same. Thus, Temin’s metrhodology of averaging two nominal wagerates seems faulty. (2) The level of infrastructural development, urbanization, size of a large standing army (almost 1⁄2 of a percent of total population), and the point made by Schiavone (2000) that regional differences in mean incomes might have been as high as 5 or even 6 to 1,<sup>33</sup> imply that an overall Imperial mean income was unlikely to have been

> 33 If there are large inter-regional differences, and even the poorest region is at the subsistence, then the overall Imperial mean must be relatively high.  Large regional differences are mentioned by Goldsmith too (1984: p. 265).

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