Carnuntum Was Not the 4th Largest City in the Roman Empire
In my elementary Latin class at Vassar I have the students bring in “popular press” pieces on Latin and ancient Rome and present them to the class. These pieces can be any recent article available on the internet that deals in some way with the subject of the class.
Yesterday, one of my students brought in this article from last month on the newly discovered “entertainment district” near the amphitheater outside of the ancient Roman city of Carnuntum. Carnuntum was a significant city in the Roman Empire that was home to a gladiator school and an amphitheater that could hold about 15,000 people.
As we were reading about the new archaeological findings at the site, one of my students pointed out a suspicious claim made in the article. In describing Carnuntum, the author writes,
“Today, Carnuntum is a sleepy town on the southern bank of the Danube, outside Vienna. But in its heyday, it was the fourth-largest city in the Roman Empire, and it was home to as many as 50,000 people, including, for a few years in the second century A.D., the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius.”
The fourth largest city in the Roman Empire?! Let’s think about this for a second. That would put it in the company of Carthage, Alexandria, Pergamum, Antioch, Ephesus, Constantinople, and Smyrna — all huge Roman citites with hundreds of thousands of people. There is no way that Carnuntum, at population 50,ooo, was the 4th largest city in the Roman Empire.
Indeed, there was clearly some confusion. Carnuntum is said to have had the 4th largest amphitheater in the Roman World, not to be the 4th largest city. This claim makes more sense. For comparison, the Colosseum at Rome could hold about 50,000 people, while the famous theater at Ephesus could hold about 25,o00 people.
This is a very little mistake in the grand scheme of things, but the erroneous article has managed to travel around the internet a little bit. Originally published a month ago on Live Science, it then got picked up by some site called Real Clear Science (which is kind of hilarious), and also by CBS, where my student found it.
Which is all to say that it continues to be important for Classicists, Ancient Historians, and Archaeologists to write for and engage with the public. People have great interest in these sorts of small news pieces on the ancient world and we should be helping to keep the record if not straight then at least not nonsensical.
Tara Mulder cannot get her Latin students to watch the Handmaid’s Tale even though she keeps telling them that it’s going to be on the final.
