"We have a single papyrus record of 122 individuals listed in a register of taxes. Of these 122, 85 have ages extant. ... only 8 are over the age of 49 years, and only 2 of those are over 54"
"average life expectance at age 15 range from 8.3 to 15.4 years."
Etc. There's a broad set of estimates, but the estimate of 50 years is simply not plausible, unless you're talking about the wealthy elite. Being poor in Rome sucked.
And with Rome, I guess that's usually the case.
I'll mention: For all the talk of infant mortality, most infant deaths in history weren't recorded. The figure everyone tosses around -- 28 years -- sort of already takes that into account.
I've given up on editing bad Wikipedia pages a long time ago.
This article is a summary of one random historian, Frier.
Probably better summary of evidence:
https://archive.org/details/demographyromans0000park/page/20...
"We have a single papyrus record of 122 individuals listed in a register of taxes. Of these 122, 85 have ages extant. ... only 8 are over the age of 49 years, and only 2 of those are over 54"
"average life expectance at age 15 range from 8.3 to 15.4 years."
Etc. There's a broad set of estimates, but the estimate of 50 years is simply not plausible, unless you're talking about the wealthy elite. Being poor in Rome sucked.
And with Rome, I guess that's usually the case.
I'll mention: For all the talk of infant mortality, most infant deaths in history weren't recorded. The figure everyone tosses around -- 28 years -- sort of already takes that into account.
I've given up on editing bad Wikipedia pages a long time ago.