In Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Romans Empire he calculates the population of the Romans world at the time of Claudius to be 120 million people. How accurate is this estimate? | AskHistorians Archive Observer

In Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Romans Empire he calculates the population of the Romans world at the time of Claudius to be 120 million people. How accurate is this estimate?

by Jimpson

In chapter two, Gibbon mentions that Claudius exercised a census of Roman citizens and extrapolates from there.

whatchayasayin

I do not know if he is correct but we must remember that a census of Roman citizens would only include a fraction of the population since a large portion of population were not actually considered citizens.