05-18-2011, 11:01 PM
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
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
Flandria me genuit, tenet nunc Roma
