Séminaire AUSONIUS du 4 avril 2018 : the army as a mechanism of enfranchisement in the Roman empire
le mercredi 04 avril 2018 de 18h à 20h
Par Myles Lavan, Senior Lecturer in Ancient History - School of Classics - University of St Andrews
Salle Pierre Paris (ACH037)
Maison de l'archéologie - Université Bordeaux Montaigne
The army as a mechanism of enfranchisement in the Roman empire
It is widely assumed the army was the most important mechanism driving the growth of the citizen population in the imperial period. This paper suggests that the army's contribution to the growth of the citizen body has been exaggerated. Whereas scholars have focussed on the new citizens created through the enfranchisement of non-citizen soldiers (and their children), they have neglected the countervailing effect of reduced family formation among citizen soldiers (whose 'missing' citizen children offset the new citizens created through enfranchisement). The paper uses new quantitative methods to estimate the scale of the two effects.
Ce séminaire sera présenté en anglais