ABSTRACT

House size is often used as a tool to calculate wealth in ancient societies, and thus it is also a potential source for the study of inequality. The site of Pompeii, on the Bay of Naples in southern Italy, was first inhabited about 800 years before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried it 79 CE. The city provides one of the largest data sets of private architecture in the Roman world, and it has been utilized to calculate the level of inequality in a Roman urban setting. Nonetheless, to understand the inequality of the entire society of the city, these calculations need to be developed. This article uses quantitative and statistical methods, such as Gini coefficients, Lorenz Curves, and also simpler graphs and their interpretation to advance establish methods for exploring inequality through house and building size. A method is proposed for identifying the top economic elite in this urban setting, and the article develops the calculation of inequality further, to encompass even individuals who did not own buildings. As a result, excavated Pompeii’s top economic elite is estimated to have comprised 50 to 100 households, with a high level of inequality evident in this ancient city during its final phase, the year 79 CE.

摘要

在古代社会，房屋面积经常被用作计算财富的工具，因此它也是研究不平等的潜在来源。庞贝古城位于意大利南部那不勒斯湾，大约 800 年前就有人居住，公元 79 年维苏威火山喷发将其掩埋。该城市提供了罗马世界最大的私人建筑数据集之一，它已被用来计算罗马城市环境中的不平等程度。尽管如此，为了了解城市整个社会的不平等，需要进行这些计算。本文使用定量和统计方法，例如基尼系数、洛伦兹曲线以及更简单的图表及其解释，以推进建立通过房屋和建筑尺寸探索不平等的方法。提出了一种识别城市环境中顶级经济精英的方法，并且本文进一步发展了不平等的计算，甚至包括那些不拥有建筑物的个人。因此，据估计，出土的庞贝古城的顶级经济精英有 50 至 100 个家庭，在这座古城的最后阶段，即公元 79 年，不平等程度很高。