Posted: February 25, 2000 at 04:43:32: by Martin Read
: Ok, just another thought ( and I'm not in bed this time... )
: does anyone have any ideas as to the size and extent of the gondorian population? I know there are areas such as Pinneth Galen ( Correct? I'm writing from memory) but we never know there populations or amount of towns or cities there. It is said that most of the population lived in Minas Tirith or nearby in Lebennin ( again not sure: Getting old, memory goes..) but this cxan't have numbered more than 100,000? If so, then not very large pop. for the area...By a rather arcane method (involving the ratio of numbers of soldiers to total population levels using the Late Roman and Byzantine Empires as models), I came up with figures of between 2.5 and 4 millions for the population of Gondor at the time of the War of the Ring. This was based on an estimate of between 10,000 to 15,000 for Gondor's full-time army and about 40,000 for semi-professional feudal/militia types - there are some clues to these numbers embedded in the text of LOTR. It's all in the archives somewhere.
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