population of the roman empire at its peak
60–70 million
title: Roman Empire text: of 5 million square kilometres. The traditional population estimate of inhabitants accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total population and made it the largest population of any unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century. Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak ranging from to more than . Each of the three largest cities in the Empire—Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch—was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century. As the historian Christopher Kelly has described it: Trajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than title: Demography of the Roman Empire text: in the Imperial period. At its peak, the city of Rome had at least one million inhabitants, a total not equalled again until the 19th century. As the imperial capital, Rome was sustained by transfers in kind from throughout the empire; no other city could be sustained at this level. Other major cities in the empire (Alexandria, Antioch, Carthage, Ephesus, etc.) had populations of about a few hundred thousand. Of the remaining cities, most were quite small, usually possessing only 10–15,000 inhabitants. The cumulative urban population of the empire is estimated at around 14 million (using a population threshold of title: History of Rome text: place in the sea. Octavian was victorious, and became the sole ruler of Rome (and its empire). That date marks the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Principate. By the end of the Republic, the city of Rome had achieved a grandeur befitting the capital of an empire dominating the whole of the Mediterranean. It was, at the time, the largest city in the world. Estimates of its peak population range from 450,000 to over 3.5 million people with estimates of 1 to 2 million being most popular with historians. This grandeur increased under Augustus, who completed title: Demography of the Roman Empire text: Demography of the Roman Empire Demographically, the Roman Empire was an ordinary premodern state. It had high infant mortality, a low marriage age, and high fertility within marriage. Perhaps half of Roman subjects died by the age of 5. Of those still alive at age 10, half would die by the age of 50. At its peak, after the Antonine Plague of the 160s CE, it had a population of about 60–70 million and a population density of about 16 persons per square kilometer. In contrast to the European societies of the classical and medieval periods, Rome had unusually high title: History of the Roman Empire text: History of the Roman Empire The history of the Roman Empire covers the history of ancient Rome from the fall of the Roman Republic in 27 BC until the abdication of the last Western emperor in 476 AD. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Republic in the 6th century BC, though it did not expand outside of the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd century BC. Civil war engulfed the Roman state in the mid 1st century BC, first between Julius Caesar and Pompey, and finally between Octavian and Mark Antony. Antony was defeated at the Battle