Demography of the Roman Empire

Demographically, the Roman Empire was an ordinary premodern state. It had high infant mortality, a low marriage age, and high fertility within marriage. Perhaps half of Roman subjects died by the age of 5. Of those still alive at age 10, half would die by the age of 50. Roman women could expect to bear on average 6 to 9 children.

At its peak, after the Antonine Plague of the 160s CE, it had a population of about 60 million and a population density of about 16 persons per square kilometer. In contrast to the European societies of the classical and medieval periods, Rome had unusually high urbanization rates. During the 2nd century CE, the city of Rome had more than one million inhabitants. No Western city would have as many again until the 19th century.

Background

For the Mediterranean and its hinterlands, the period from the second millennium BCE to the early first millennium CE was one of substantial population growth. What would become the territory of the Roman Empire saw an average annual population growth of about 0.1 per cent from the 12th century BCE to the 3rd century CE, resulting in a quadrupling of the region's total population. Growth was slower in the eastern Mediterranean, which was already more developed at the beginning of the period, on the order of about 0.07 per cent per year. This was stronger growth than that seen in the succeeding period; from about 200 CE to 1800 CE, the European half of the empire only saw about 0.06 to 0.07 per cent annual growth (Europe as a whole saw 0.1 per cent annual growth rates), and the African and Asian parts of the empire saw almost no growth at all.

Wire

A wire is a single, usually cylindrical, flexible strand or rod of metal. Wires are used to bear mechanical loads or electricity and telecommunications signals. Wire is commonly formed by drawing the metal through a hole in a die or draw plate. Wire gauges come in various standard sizes, as expressed in terms of a gauge number. The term wire is also used more loosely to refer to a bundle of such strands, as in 'multistranded wire', which is more correctly termed a wire rope in mechanics, or a cable in electricity.

Wire comes in solid core, stranded, or braided forms. Although usually circular in cross-section, wire can be made in square, hexagonal, flattened rectangular, or other cross-sections, either for decorative purposes, or for technical purposes such as high-efficiency voice coils in loudspeakers. Edge-woundcoil springs, such as the Slinky toy, are made of special flattened wire.

History

In antiquity, jewelry often contains, in the form of chains and applied decoration, large amounts of wire that is accurately made and which must have been produced by some efficient, if not technically advanced, means. In some cases, strips cut from metal sheet were made into wire by pulling them through perforations in stone beads. This causes the strips to fold round on themselves to form thin tubes. This strip drawing technique was in use in Egypt by the 2nd Dynasty. From the middle of the 2nd millennium BC most of the gold wires in jewellery are characterised by seam lines that follow a spiral path along the wire. Such twisted strips can be converted into solid round wires by rolling them between flat surfaces or the strip wire drawing method. The strip twist wire manufacturing method was superseded by drawing in the ancient Old World sometime between about the 8th and 10th centuries AD. There is some evidence for the use of drawing further East prior to this period.

Lost

Lost may refer to:

Cinema and television

Literature

Music

Albums

Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned

Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned (originally known as Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned) is the first of two episodic expansion packs developed for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC versions of Grand Theft Auto IV, developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It was first released for the Xbox 360 on 17 February 2009 and on PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows on 13 April 2010. It is the third expansion pack game in the Grand Theft Auto series (the first since Grand Theft Auto: London, 1961, released in 1999), and the twelfth release overall.

The Lost and Damned features a new protagonist, Johnny Klebitz, who is Vice President of the Alderney chapter of one percenter motorcycle club The Lost MC, a club which is featured in missions throughout the course of Grand Theft Auto IV. Dan Houser, vice-president of creative development at Rockstar Games, claims the episode shows "a different side of Liberty City". Jeronimo Barrera, Vice-President of Product Development for Rockstar Games, has said that the episodes are experiments because they are not sure that there are enough users with access to online content on the Xbox 360. Take-Two Interactive's Chief Financial Officer, Lainie Goldstein revealed that Microsoft was paying a total of $50 million for the first two episodes.

List of Grand Theft Auto IV characters

A number of recurring characters appear in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV, set in 2008. The characters that appear in Grand Theft Auto IV are relatively diverse and relative to the respective boroughs of Liberty City they are based in, belonging to various gangs and ethnic groups. The player controls Niko Bellic, an immigrant from Eastern Europe. According to Dan Houser, "virtually none of the characters from the previous games returned, as the GTA IV era is set in a parallel universe compared to the GTA III era.

Unlike previous games in the series, the voice actors of Grand Theft Auto IV do not include notable and high-profile celebrities, instead opting for lesser known actors such as Michael Hollick, Jason Zumwalt, Tony Patellis, Moti Margolin, Ryan Johnston, Thomas Lyons, Frank Bonsangue, Timothy Adams and Coolie Ranx. However, several high-profile DJs host the various radio stations within the game such as Iggy Pop, Karl Lagerfeld, Juliette Lewis, Daddy Yankee, and real life DJs like DJ Premier, DJ Green Lantern, Lazlow, and real life comedians Katt Williams and Ricky Gervais can be seen at the Comedy Club and also be heard being interviewed on the in-game radio station WKTT.