Writing hundreds of years apart, Livy (59 B.C.E.–17 C.E.) and Jerome (c. 347–420 C.E.) provide these numbers from Rome’s censuses, which counted only adult male citizens (the men eligible for Rome’s regular army), conducted during and between the first two wars against Carthage. Since the census did not include the Italian allies fighting on Rome’s side, the census numbers understate the wars’ total casualties; scholars estimate that they took the lives of nearly a third of Italy’s adult male population, which would have meant perhaps a quarter of a million soldiers killed.

Question to Consider

What effects do you think the population changes shown in this graph might have had on Roman society?