Population Well-being in Late Antiquity

This project—a collaborative initiative between the universities of Ghent, Stellenbosch, and the Western Cape—combines two key aspects of the late Roman society (3rd-6th c. AD), namely well-being as a social and political concern, and the mechanisms through which the state was informed about and responded to such issues.

In response to Fergus Millar's model that the Roman government mainly governed through petition and response, scholars have more recently pointed out ways in which the Roman government in Late Antiquity acted not only reactively, but also proactively.

This project will test Millar's model by focusing on an understudied area, namely the government's involvement (or lack thereof) in areas of population well-being. Combining top-down and bottom-up approaches, it will address four main research objectives:

• (1) Identifying which aspects of population well-being were problematised in the Later Roman Empire.
• (2) Exploring whether the late antique state responded to these concerns passively or actively.
• (3) Determining which levels of government were involved in population well-being policies.
• (4) Examining ancient reflections on the role of the state in providing population well-being.

By addressing these questions, this project will provide the first comprehensive study of later Roman concerns for population well-being, as well as shedding new light on the functioning of the later Roman Empire.