The opening pages of the annals of the Roman monarchy tell of long-lived rulers and thriving families. Augustus lived to the ripe age of seventy-six, survived by his wife of fifty-one years, Livia, who died at eighty-six, while her son Tiberius bettered his predecessor's record by two more years. Augustus’ sister Octavia gave birth to five children, all of whom lived long enough to get married; Agrippa left at least half a dozen children, and perhaps more; Germanicus, despite his tender (...) age at death, was survived by no fewer than three sons and three daughters. At the same time, longevity and abundant offspring went hand in hand with early death and misery. More than a few luminaries of Augustus’ court were less fortunate than their elders: Marcellus died at twenty-three, the elder Drusus at twenty-nine, Augustus’ heirs Gaius and Lucius Caesar at twenty-three and eighteen. Drusus had lost a number of children save three that survived; Germanicus buried three of his six sons as infants. (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that in the eighth century B.c. there was a ‘population explosion’ in Greece which moved the Greeks to send out colonies. A. J. Graham in the Cambridge Ancient History iii, 3 is typical: ‘The basic active cause of the colonizing movement was overpopulation’; ‘at the very time when the Archaic colonising movement began, in the second half of the eighth century, there was a marked increase in population in Greece’ . The presumed connection between overpopulation and (...) colonisation is not immediately obvious. The evidence for the population explosion is found in the increased number of burials in Attica and the Argolid, but Athens sent out no colony before the very end of the seventh century and Argos probably none at all, certainly none in this period. So special explanations have to be formulated for Athens' and Argos' lack of colonies while their postulated ‘population explosion’ is presumed for Greece as a whole and called in to explain the burst of colonising in the eighth century. The hypothesis is not used for seventh-century colonisation when the number of burials declines. (shrink)