Quote Originally Posted by Fragony View Post
Why are you so interestested in population growth it's what just happens when city's grow, it isn't so hard to figure out why it grew somewhere and declined somewhere else. If you can narrow down your question a bit
As a matter of fact it's very hard to figure out why and how much a city grew, if you don't have any quantitative sources. That's exactly our problem: there is no ancient source that tells us how many people lived in the city. The reason for a comparative study is this: if you can find a city with a comparable (supposed) number of inhabitants, in a comparable position in the world (i.e. capital of an empire), you might be able to base some conclusions on those facts.

For example, most people believe Rome had about 1 million inhabitants. My study so far shows that this is by no means certain and that it could easily have been half that number. A comparison might support either a higher or a lower number. No, it's not solid science, but it's the best we've got in terms of ancient demography.