Note 50 — Chapter I · ROME UNDER THE KINGS.
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The different censuses of the people furnished by the ancient historians have been explained in different manners. Did the numbers given designate all the citizens, or only the heads of families, or those who had attained the age of puberty? In my opinion, these numbers in Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Plutarch, applied to all the men in a condition to carry arms, that is, according to the organisation of Servius Tullius, to those from seventeen to sixty years old. This category formed, in fact, the true Roman citizens. Under seventeen, they were too young to count in the State; above sixty, they were too old.
We know that the aged sexagenarians were called depontani, because they were forbidden the bridges over which they must go to the place of voting. (Festus, under the word sexagenarius, p. 834.—Cicero, Pro S. Roscio Amerino, 35.)
80,000 men in condition to carry arms represent, according to the statistics of the present time, fifty-five hundredths of the male part of the population, say 145,000 men, and for the two sexes, supposing them equal in number, 290,000 souls. In fact, in France, in a hundred inhabitants, there are 35 who have not passed the age of seventeen, 55 aged from seventeen to sixty years, and 10 of more than sixty.
In support of the above calculation, Dionysius of Halicarnassus relates that in the year 247 of Rome a subscription was made in honour of Horatius Cocles: 300,000 persons, men and women, gave the value of what each might expend in one day for his food. (V. 25.)
As to the number of slaves, we find in another passage of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (IX. 25) that the women, children, slaves, merchants, and artisans amounted to a number triple of that of the citizens.
If, then, the number of citizens in condition to carry arms was 80,000, and the rest of the population equalled three times that number, we should have for the total 4 x 80,000 = 320,000 souls. And, subtracting from this number the 290,000 obtained above, there would remain 30,000 for the slaves and artisans.
Whatever proportion we admit between these two last classes, the result will be that the slaves were at that period not numerous.