394 Squatriti
By the late 500s most other Italian cities had also shrunk and were inhab-
ited by many fewer people than earlier. Yet the situation of Rome was unique
and must not colour interpretations of what transpired elsewhere in the pen-
insula (or Roman Empire). Rome’s size during the empire was ecologically
unsustainable—dependent on ramified and delicate systems of long-distance
conveyances of biomass that the city’s immediate hinterland could not pro-
duce in the amounts required to support a million mouths.11 For some cen-
turies the ideological value of keeping Rome huge justified the emperors’
appropriation of resources in the provinces and their transfer to the city on
the Tiber. But in Late Antiquity, when new Romes arose and few emperors
spent much time in the old one, the ideological benefit of Rome’s gigantism
was no longer apparent. Theoderic seems to have been the last ruler willing
to organize the biomass transfers the annona required, and the last ruler who
thought like an emperor about Rome and its ecological situation.12 Without
the commitment of the state to its unnatural size, Rome returned rapidly to its
commensurate dimension: 40,000 is about the right size for the agro Romano
to sustain in pre-industrial production and transportation conditions.13 Hence
Rome’s population parabola, often turned into a parable of post-classical civili-
zation, is not indicative of fluctuations in peninsular population at all. Instead
it tells us about post-Constantinian politics and how the 5th-century city failed
to generate the ideological returns that made emperors’ investments in accu-
mulation and logistics worthwhile.
The singularity of Rome, and the more moderate reductions archaeologists
trace in other Italian cities (and the contrary trends in places like Venice or
Naples, both with signs of 5th- and 6th-century economic vitality, hence likely
of population stability), reminds us that the demography of Italy’s cityscape
varied vastly during the Ostrogoths’ ascendancy.14 It is possible that towns
11 For stimulating discussion see Van Dam, Rome, pp. 2–10, 43–9. For a different perspec-
tive: LoCascio/Malanima, “Cycles and Stability”, pp. 214, 223. On the annona see Jaidi,
“L’annone”, pp. 83–102. A fine study of how the late antique annona affected a minor prov-
ince like Calabria is Noyé, “Economia e società”, pp. 579–84, with corrections in “Le città
calabresi”, pp. 477–517.
12 Brown, Through the Eye, pp. 459–63, argues that from the 6th-century papal charitable
distributions perpetuated earlier emoluments.
13 Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 424, connects decline in Etrurian settlement
to Rome’s reduced demand for produce: the city’s size shaped Italian, not just provin-
cial, demography. Hemphill, “Deforestation”, pp. 156–7, depicted fluctuations in forest at
Civitella Cesi as the result of Rome’s demand for agricultural surplus. Thus both see cities
as far more environmentally significant than Horden/Purcell, Corrupting Sea, pp. 89–122.
14 Gelichi et al., “Isole fortunate?”, pp. 47–50; Arthur, Naples; Savino, Campania tardoantica.