Posted: September 14, 1999 at 08:56:41: by Martin Read
A book called Byzantium and its Army by W. Treadgold gives a method for roughly estimating the population of Gondor.
Byzantium and Gondor have a number of parallels: pre-industrial economies, similar geographic position (as far as we can tell), a high culture somewhat diminished from former times, a centralised state with some localised aristocracies, and most importantly a standing army plus semi-professional troops.Treadgold has worked out that the total number of troops in the Byzantine state varied between 1.2 to 2.4% of the total population in the period from 284 to 1081 AD. At around 850 AD the state had about 170,000 troops and a population a little in excess of 12 million. Estimation of the size of Gondorian armed forces is difficult but I would imagine it was between 40,000 and 50,000. If the parallel holds then this would suggest, for a conservative percentage of 1.5% in the armed forces, a figure of around 3.5 million inhabitants for Gondor, and for Minas Tirith (compared to 250,000 people for Constantinople) a population of 73,500. Personally I would go for a lesser figure as I do not think all the Gondorian troops were of the same level of professionalism as the Byzantine forces. If half the provincial troops of Gondor were essentially amateur then the proprtion would fall. I would be more comfortable with an overall population of around 2.2 million and Minas Tirith at 45,000 souls.
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