Explanation: Emperor Augustus, in order to provide a more ‘robust’ growth rate of the citizen population, restricted single citizens, male and female, of marriageable age from receiving any inheritances which might otherwise be left to them. Much like modern pro-natalist policies, its effect was… limited, at best. It’s hard to force people who don’t want to have kids to have them.
But Augustus had come down quite firmly on the side of Italian nativism during his rise to power, up to and including casting out the Romanized Gauls Julius Caesar had put into the Senate, and couldn’t countenance broadening the citizen body to furriners - so yelling at young folk to have kids it was!
Explanation: Emperor Augustus, in order to provide a more ‘robust’ growth rate of the citizen population, restricted single citizens, male and female, of marriageable age from receiving any inheritances which might otherwise be left to them. Much like modern pro-natalist policies, its effect was… limited, at best. It’s hard to force people who don’t want to have kids to have them.
But Augustus had come down quite firmly on the side of Italian nativism during his rise to power, up to and including casting out the Romanized Gauls Julius Caesar had put into the Senate, and couldn’t countenance broadening the citizen body to furriners - so yelling at young folk to have kids it was!