Political conflict, demography and mode of production in Ancient Rome, II-I century B.C.

This paper intends to critically analyze some recent theories on the social consequences of the Second Punic War (218-201 BC) in ancient Roman society. While the classical interpretation had stressed the damaging effect that wars of expansion accounted for the Roman peasantry, new approaches in vogue are characterized by neglecting the contradictions of the historical process, adopting a Malthusian interpretation in which the population simply would have grown much more than the resources to sustain it. Whereas demographics is not an independent variable but is framed in a specific mode of production, it will address some limitations of such approaches and then address the problem from a perspective that emphasized the contradictory dynamics of Roman society.