For governments across the world today, ensuring population well-being is one of their core tasks. This project - a collaborative initiative between the universities of Ghent, Stellenbosch, and the Western Cape - wishes to add a historical dimension to this debate by studying population well-being under the later Roman Empire (3rd-5th c.). To do so, it zooms in on two key aspects of late Roman society, namely well-being as a social and political concern, and the mechanisms through which the state was informed about and responded to such issues.
Combining top-down and bottom-up approaches, it will address four main research objectives:
(1) identifying which aspects of population well-being received attention in the later Roman Empire;
(2) exploring to what extent government initiatives for population well-being were reactive or proactive;
(3) analysing which levels of government and which non-governemental actorswere involved in population well-being policies;
(4) examining ancient reflections on the role of the state in ensuring population well-being.
By addressing these questions, this project will provide the first comprehensive study of later Roman concerns for population well-being, and new light on the functioning of the later Roman Empire.