Do you have some data on how widespread and effective it was? Perhaps this also contributed to Rome's population problems - it needed to rely on the provinces t

Do you have some data on how widespread and effective it was? Perhaps this also contributed to Rome's population problems - it needed to rely on the provinces to supply labor and manpower for a substantial portion of the Empire, and eventually the capital was moved away from Rome entirely. Constantinople was also basically empty by the time it was conquered, having a population of only 50,000 people when the Turks arrived, from a high of one million. But I think in such ancient societies, the struggle is a little different. E.g. when you are being ravaged by wars and plagues, you need more than replacement level fertility. You need huge fertility that can recover massive population loss in a short period of time. After Hannibal decimated the population of Italy, Rome recovered remarkably quickly. They just made more Romans. Later on, that stopped working and they needed manpower from the provinces. In modern societies, we've licked most of the other stuff and so can keep going much longer as fertility declines, to the point where we start noticing only when rates hit below replacement. Traditional societies would see population loss long before fertility rates fell below replacement.