Mortality in Roman Mainz

[Jona Lendering]

If you visit a museum with Roman inscriptions and read the tombstones, you will notice that old people invariably died at 60, 70, or 80. The ancients didn’t know exactly how old they were. I checked it for Roman Mainz. Results here. I think that the Roman legions did not record how old soldiers were.

[Martin Moser]

Vey interesting report, thanks Jona!

[popularis]

It's a fun topic, isn't it?

For those interested in the phenomenon, have a search for 'age-rounding'. I think the starting point is Duncan-Jones, R.P. (1977), Age-rounding, illiteracy and social differentiation in the Roman Empire, Chiron 7 (1977) 333-353. If you have JSTOR access, consider also Curchin on age-rounding in Spain:Curchin article on JSTOR

blue skies

Tom

[M. Demetrius]

Or...maybe they were just more organized in those days, and died just before the census was taken, to save bookkeeping entries?

[john roberts]

Some people kept track of their exact age. During the Republic the laws were very specific about the age one could hold a particular office, inherit property, etc. It may be that only the upper classes bothered with this. Otherwise, I suppose a death age of LX should be read as "died in his sixties."

[Jona Lendering]

Some people kept track of their exact age. During the Republic the laws were very specific about the age one could hold a particular office, inherit property, etc. It may be that only the upper classes bothered with this.

Astrology may be an explanation too.

[Epictetus]

This is very fascinating. I wonder if the confusion about age rests not with the person in question but the person doing the recording. I mean, if someone dies they have to ask a family member or a colleague their age. If someone asks you how old a coworker is, would you know the exact age or just give a round figure? I can envisage scenarios where the person providing the information would not be intimately connected with the deceased person's background.

[popularis]

@Epictetus: that's a very good point! The people writing the inscription were not necessarily the deceased (although some people did dictate their own funerary inscriptions). One of my favorite epigraphic formulae is "uixit annis plus minus ...", which I like to translate as 'lived for X years, give or take' (search for 'plus' and 'minus' on Clauss/Slaby). You can almost imagine the heirs sitting around scratching their heads before taking a guess!

@John, @Jona: Does anyone have any stats as to whether or not military inscriptions where the person died in service are more accurate? After all, recruits were generally quite young, and so would have still been at an age where they could keep count (I used to know how old I was, now I just remember when I was born and do the maths - a difficult option if years are named rather than numbered!). If the age was entered at enlistment, then the age at death would be easily calculated. As it is, I suspect that long-retired troops would remember exactly how long they served for, but not necessarily how long ago they left the army

blue skies

[john roberts]

It would probably also help if you were born in a year when a famous event happened: "I was born the year we fought Hannibal at Cannae," "I was born the year Caesar was assassinated," and so forth.

[hansvl]

There is an article by Valerie M. Hope on habits of indicating age in the Roman army:

V.M. Hope, Age and the Roman army: the evidence of tombstones
in: Mary Harlow and Ray Laurence, Age and Ageing in the Roman Empire, Portsmouth, 2007, pp. 111-129.

She examines and compares the tombstones of MAINZ (right on topic 8) , Carnuntum and Britain.
An interesting statement from her conclusion: "The military tombstones give conflicting perspectives on age; on the one hand, it was an essential attribute that needed to be known and recorded; on the other, ages were clearly not known, and what was recorded often reflected educated guess work. Yet to the commemorators there may have been no conflict: an age needed to be supplied, and supplied it was."

Other interesting articles and works on this topic:

Manfred Clauss: Probleme der Lebensalterstatistiken aufgrund römischer Grabinschriften, Chiron 3, 1973, 395-417

W. Scheidel: lnschriftenstatistik und die Frage des Rekrutierungsalters romischer Soldaten, Chiron 22, 1992, 281-297.

W. Scheidel: Measuring sex, age and death in the Roman Empire: explorations in ancient demography, Ann Arbor, 1996.

Cheers,

Hans

[Jona Lendering]

Thanks Hans!!

[hansvl]

I think that the Roman legions did not record how old soldiers were.

I believe they did on enrollment but had to rely on the information given by the recruit who possibly had to guess sometimes. More important for the army was the date of enrollment (so as to be able to calculate the years of service and the date of release as a veteran).

That is why calculating the recruitment age (the age at enrollment) by deducting the years of service from the age indicated on the tombstones is a very tricky business.

Hans

[dark41]

And here I thought that only Greeks were bad with numbers!

[Gaius Decius Aquilius]

I do not base this on any formal stats, but in some medical reports, and as a cop (who is present at any unattended death) I saw somewhat the same trend. Males in the late teens and eary 20s died almost always from violent causes, and there is a peak around age 20 of of people who die from criminal involvment. (I exclude warfare, which has a seperate trend and is specific to certain age cohorts.) Criminals usually kill other criminals. If you live to your mid-fifties you will probably live to your 70s or more. Deaths in the 30s and 40s are mostly from accidents and pre-disposed medical conditions. Romans had no deaths from drunk driving.There is a slight rise in deaths in the late 40s and early 50s in habitual criminals usually related to drugs (usually heroin) and alcohol use, with a recent spate of drug related murders. I think this group follows a specific age cohort. I think it is a concomitant of the sudden rise in AIDS and dirty needles.

I did not see the peak, or read any reference to anything to account for the peak at the age30ish which I would ask why? I know of nothing in the modern world to account for that, nor did I see it when I did Puebleo archaeology. I am curious as if this somthing spcific to Roman culture, or a localized phenomina. The mid 20s to the mid 30s seems to be the most stable of the modern population.

Ralph

[Epictetus]

Aren't bell curves normal in such mortality samples? In this paper it shows the bell curve in the Netherlands at three different dates: 1900, 1950 and 2000. One can see it shifting to the right as medicine and health care improves. Perhaps in pre-industrial society the curve would peak very early - at age 30 or 35.

http://paa2006.princeton.edu/download.as...onId=60457 (See page 23.)

When I get a chance I'll take a look at Brunt's Italian Manpower and see if he says anything about this.