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 1921 AND HIS SUCCESSORS 13 enrolled. But as the population of Veleia is not known, these figures do not help much towards a general conclusion. The whole question of the population of Italy in ancient times is discussed by Dr. Julius Beloch, 1 who reaches the conclusion that in the year a.d. 47 the number of male adult citizens in an average Italian municipality may be reckoned as somewhere about 3,000 ; another 3,000 would represent the women and another 3,000 the children. If for the moment we may adopt these figures as applying to Veleia, we find that only 10 per cent, of the children were assisted ; a much smaller proportion than the dignity of the magistrates in charge of the work would lead us to expect. It is tempting to use the alimentation figures in support of Dr. Beloch's argument that the population of Italy was over- estimated by earlier scholars ; but it is probably wiser to draw no conclusions, when the data are so uncertain. As to the sex of the children, it is clear from coins, inscriptions, and literary notices alike, that both girls and boys were included in the scheme. This was natural, if the primary aim of the institution was to check a decline in the population. In Rome itself the distributions of corn made to the adult population reached males only. It has, therefore, been suggested 2 that in Rome girls did not at first share in the alimentary allotment. According to this view, the endowment in memory of Faustina was designed to repair this omission. Whatever may have been the case in Rome, we know that outside the capital both sexes were assisted from the beginning. At Veleia, out of 300 children only 36 were girls ; this inequality in the number benefited is unexpected. Apparently in this case the commissioner in charge of the business had instructions that grants should be made more readily to boys than to girls. Whether this was in view of future military requirements we cannot say, but such considerations may well have influenced those responsible for the choice. There is also an inequality in the value of the allowances, since the boys received sixteen sesterces a month, and the girls only twelve. Thus a greater incentive was offered to parents for the rearing of boys than of girls. There may, indeed, have been more boys to enrol, owing to the more frequent exposure of female children. 3 Pliny tells us in his Panegyric that the children assisted by Trajan were ' free-born '. A similar limitation is mentioned in 1 Die Bevolkerung der Griechisch-Bomischen Welt, Leipzig, 1886. See also Eduard Meyer, Die Bevolkerung des Altertums in the Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, vol. ii, 2nd ed., pp. 674 f. 8 See Henzen in Annali delV Instit., 1844, p. 24. He is followed by Hirschfeld, Philologus, xxix. 10, and opposed by Sauppe, Philologus, xxx. 134, and Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung, ii. 139, n. 4. 8 See Merivale, The Bomans under the Empire, viii. 57.