From the early debates between David Hume and Robert Wallace, efforts at macro-scale reconstruction of the Roman population have been marked by the wildest divergences. Fundamental disagreements still abide between ‘high-counters’ and ‘low-counters’, who offer not just different interpretations of Republican and Augustan census figures but entirely irreconcilable visions of the trajectory, scale and nature of Roman development. Saskia Hin's Demography of Roman Italy is a remarkable contribution in many ways, but above all in that it is the only compelling attempt, in over two centuries of research, to offer a comprehensive middle way. Indeed, she provides the reader with a memorable handle for her reconstruction: the middle count.

Although her interpretation of the census figures is likely to generate the most controversy and discussion, the value of this book goes well beyond its case for a middle count. The structure of the book is revealingly divided into three parts. A first section surveys the economic and environmental context of the ancient population. A second analyses in turn mortality, fertility and migration. Only in the third section does H. approach the problem of total population size. The reader will note a contrast in emphasis between H.'s methods and other recent contributions to which this volume is inevitably to be compared, such as L. de Ligt, Peasants, Citizens, and Soldiers (2012) and A. Launaro, Peasants and Slaves (2011). While H.'s book is acutely sensitive to the technical details of the ancient written and archaeological sources, her interpretation foregrounds interdisciplinary and comparative demographic theory. Especially in the second section, she makes sophisticated use of the literature to expose the sometimes flimsy assumptions that have lurked in the study of ancient populations.

Part I includes a lengthy chapter on the economic context of the late Republican population. Discussions of population size and trajectory are intricately implicated in broader debates about Roman economic (and indeed political) development. H. offers a lucid synthesis of the issues. If nothing here is strikingly original, she presents a compelling case against the idea that the Italian population in the late Republic was bumping against the carrying capacity of the land. This chapter is followed by one treating the question of the Roman climate. With due respect for the complexities, H. makes a convincing case that the Roman ‘Climate Optimum’ could have facilitated population growth in the late Republic and early Empire. Indeed, this case could be stated even more strongly and with more comparative data, but it is encouraging to see environmental history so strongly integrated into economic and demographic history.

Chs 4, 5 and 6, on mortality, fertility and migration, are in every way the centrepiece of the book. Short summary cannot do justice to the importance of this contribution, which advances our understanding on a number of fronts. The chapter on mortality makes a subtle but cautious case for low life expectancy. Throughout, H. argues for inter-regional variation. She argues that we have much to learn from thinking about the causes of mortality and that the Roman population was resilient, capable of relatively quick recovery from short-term shocks. Her chapter on fertility makes a number of significant interventions, the most important of which is to counter the view (strongly put by Brunt) that fertility was low in the late Republic. The pessimistic view of Roman fertility overvalues the family planning strategies of a tiny élite. Likewise H. makes a convincing case that nuclear and neo-local households may have been more typical of the town than the countryside. The chapter on migration makes exciting use of the bioarchaeological data. H. outlines the complex issues at work in the study of migration patterns, though most conclusions here remain tentative.

In the final section, H. takes the insights earned in the previous chapters to reconsider the problem of total population size. She offers a novel solution to the classic problem of the relationship between the census figures reported by Livy for the late Republic and the Augustan figures. To oversimplify the issue, low counters argue that the earlier figures included all adult male citizens and the Augustan figures included all citizens, for a total population under Augustus of around four million. High counters argue that the Augustan figures included only adult male citizens, so that the total population was maybe three times larger, or twelve million. H.'s ingenious argument is that the early figures report sui iuris adult male citizens, while the Augustan figures included all citizens, including women and children, sui iuris. Her principal evidentiary support for this view (though she marshals a range of circumstantial evidence) is Livy's remark that the earlier census did not include widows and orphans; this statement, she argues, suggests a change in which subsequently widows and orphans sui iuris were counted. A weakness of this argument, already pointed out by de Ligt, ‘is that married women sui iuris, one of the groups supposedly covered by the Augustan figures, were evidently neither pupillae nor orbae’ (Peasants, Citizens, and Soldiers, 127). Thus, though H.'s reconstruction is satisfyingly harmonious with a model of moderate long-range population growth in the late Republic, it will not be the last word. Her final chapter, engaging with Launaro's reconstruction from survey archaeology, convincingly makes a case for more limited growth between the late Republic and early Empire. Ultimately, the overall shape of the middle count model, with moderate population expansion in Italy continuing into the first century c.e., is in broad terms attractive, though the details of the census figures remain stubbornly confounding.

The Demography of Roman Italy is a major contribution, as impressive in its handling of the ancient sources as of the tools of historical demography. Its achievement lies in its sophisticated and cautious approach to both the dynamics of the Roman population and the large-scale trajectory of Roman development.