Ancient Roman Life Expectancy Was Just 25 Years

How long did ancient Romans live? With no modern medicine, disease was rife, war was common and people regularly died of starvation. Global life expectancy today is about 71 years, which is considerably higher than in ancient Rome. These modern statistics are fairly accurate, because modern countries keep intricate birth and death statistics. We don't have such records from ancient Rome, so anyone telling you they know how long ancient Romans lived That being said, if I had to give an average life expectancy for people in ancient Rome, it would be 25. Yes, 25 was the average age at which people died in ancient Rome. This video will explain the basis for that incredibly low number and will look at the archaeological and historical evidence for life expectancy in ancient Rome. Every 5 years, Roman men and their families were recalled to their place of birth to be counted. This was called the census, which literally means the count or the estimate. The most famous was the census of Quirinius in AD 6. This was the count that forced Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem after Rome had annexed the province of Judea. If historians had access to these censuses, then estimating Roman life expectancy would be very easy. Unfortunately for them, no census survives complete. We only know what was recorded in certain censuses because ancient writers and historians occasionally wrote about them. And even then, they don't appear to be overly reliable. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote about elderly people in the empire. In the 8th region of Italy, there appeared by the census to be 54 persons of 100 years of age. 14 of 110, 2 of 125, 4 of 130, the same number of 135 to 137, and 3 of 140. So, if we're to believe Pliny the Elder, it wasn't unusual to see people living beyond 100, and that 140 year olds were not a one-off. Now, I'm not calling Pliny the Elder a liar, but the oldest person to have ever been verified in modern era was Jean Calment who lived to 122 years old. Not only do we not have most census data, but the data we do have aren't that useful to determine Roman life expectancy. Can we use tombstone inscriptions to calculate average life expectancy in ancient Rome? Remarkably, over 100,000 Roman epitaphs have been found commemorating the dead. That's over These inscriptions were vitally important because the bridge between the living and the dead was crossed with the spoken word. The tombstone memorialised the dead Roman, and the inscription allowed the living to connect with the dead. Epitaphs often include the precise length of a person's life, sometimes down to the minute, rather than their birth or death years. This precision was important for astrological calculations, as the exact age at death helped determine which deity would protect them in the afterlife. However, the average Roman would have no way of recording time this precisely, so it's more likely that the precise time of life reflected the immense sorrow that the mourners felt, as they remembered the moments that had been. Military epitaphs, on the other hand, were probably quite reliable, given the meticulous record-keeping of the Roman army. Many soldiers failed to make it to retirement just 25 years after when they signed up. With 100,000 Roman epitaphs, we still cannot construct an accurate life expectancy of ancient Romans. Most Romans were too poor to be able to afford a tombstone, let alone a fancy inscription that told of how long they lived down to the minute. Most people were cremated and scattered to the wind, forgotten soon after their deaths. People who did buy a tombstone inscription were well off, and cared a lot about what other people thought of them. A lot of freed slaves bought such epitaphs, because they wanted people to know that they died free men and women, and that their ancestors shouldn't be treated as slaves. Take the African provinces, where 18,056 epitaphs have been found, with 10,410 male and 7,646 female inscriptions. Ignoring the male-female imbalance for now, the most common age on these epitaphs was between 40 and 60, and many children are barely represented at all, even though we know that child mortality was brutally high in the Roman Empire. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius had 13 children with his wife Faustina. Only five outlived him, and only one son. No wonder why he made Commodus his heir, despite the fact that he clearly wasn't ready to wear the purple. This was not unusual. This is a touching epitaph of Vitoria, paid for by her loving husband Fortunatus. Here do I lie at rest, a married woman, Vitoria by name and descent, the wife of Fortunatus, the daughter of Vitorius. I lived for thrice nine years, poor me, and I was married for twice eight. I slept with one man, I was married to one man. After bearing six children, one of whom survived me, I died. Vitoria was lucky to survive so many childbirths without dying. By examining Roman children's skeletons from archaeological excavations and comparing them to more modern child skeletons, we can see that on average, Roman children died far younger, and had stunted growth due to lack of adequate nutrition when compared to more modern societies. The stunted growth of Roman children caused problems later on in life, and shortened their lives considerably. A lot of people make the claim that if you ignore high infant mortality, then ancient Romans could be expected to live into their 60s or even older quite happily. We do have plenty examples of ancient Romans making it to old age. The Emperor Augustus lived to the ripe old age of 75. Another argument often made is that modern medicine only treats modern diseases caused by the terrors of industrialization, living in crowded cities and eating poor quality food. Both arguments are wrong. Let's look at life expectancy in pre-industrial Britain to get some context for what a fairly advanced pre-industrial society might look like. In 1765, the earliest date with reliable data, life expectancy was just 39 years old, hardly a pre-industrial utopia. And this is with a superior understanding of medicine, fewer slaves, and a better understanding of nutrition than in ancient Rome. If you became sick in ancient Rome, the doctors would try and purge one of the body's four humours to make you better. They may cut and bleed you, or try to drain your bile. The best Roman doctor of the day was Galen, who mastered anatomy in the arena, performing surgery on mortally injured gladiators. This didn't necessarily help, however, since he was the personal doctor of Marcus Aurelius, the very same emperor who lost 8 out of 13 children during his lifetime. No reliable census data survives, and Roman tombstones are not reliable, so how can we calculate average life expectancy for ancient Romans? We have to make a best guess using empirical data from the real world. In 1966, two academics published life tables using statistical data from all over the world. Insurance companies use these tables to determine how long people of a certain nationality and of a certain lifestyle will live, so they have to be fairly reliable. Combining these data sets with the Roman's understanding of medicine, hygiene, and diet, the best guess for Roman life expectancy is just 25 years old. If you take a cohort of 100,000 babies born in ancient Rome, by age 1, 45,000 would already have died. By age 5, 50,000 are dead. By age 10, 52,000 are dead. Very young babies were most vulnerable to disease and illness, but as you'll see, Roman mortality doesn't stop after age 10, it just slightly slows down. By age 20, 56,500 are dead. By age 30, 64,500 are dead. By age 30, 70,000. By age 50, 79,000. By age 60, 87,000. And by age 70, 94,500 of the 100,000 Roman babies are dead. Life in ancient Rome was fleeting, lasting on average just 25 years. There are only two certainties in life, death and taxes. A Roman lawyer called Ulpian composed a table in the early 200s AD to help officials calculate how much tax people had to pay. By doing so, he inadvertently calculated how long he thought people in the Roman Empire were going to live for. In other words, Ulpian provided us with the only contemporary Roman account on life expectancy. Here's what he wrote. At 19, you could be expected to live for a further 30 years. If you are between 35 and 39, you may expect to live another 20 years. If you are 60 and over, you are looking at 5 more years on this mortal coil. We're not sure who Ulpian is referring to with this table. It's probably people who were due to leave an extensive inheritance, so not the poor and not the very young. Broadly speaking, Ulpian's unscientific table matches with the life tables calculated by sociologists. They show that in ancient Rome, you're most likely to die as an infant, but even if you do make it to 19 years old, your life will be a short one compared to today. The evidence we have from ancient Rome paints a grim picture of life expectancy. Despite the lack of comprehensive census data and the inherent biases in tombstone inscriptions, modern statistical methods combined with historical accounts provide a plausible estimate. High infant mortality and the harsh realities of ancient life, including disease and malnutrition, led to an average life expectancy of just 25 years. While there were outliers who lived to a ripe old age, the majority of Romans faced a fleeting existence. The lawyer Ulpian's life table, albeit unscientific, supports these findings, showing that even those who survived infancy had significantly shorter lifespans compared to today's standards. Life in ancient Rome, marked by frequent deaths at young ages, reflects the brutal and precarious nature of their world, emphasising the advancements in modern medicine and living conditions that have drastically increased our life expectancy today. Thank you for watching and making it to the end. Do you have a topic you want me to cover? Leave a comment below and I'll get back to you. This video was inspired by the excellent book Memento Mori, what the Romans can tell us about old age and death by Peter Jones. Aside from Jones' essential book, the sources I used to research this video are listed in the video description. Most are available after a quick search, although some are unfortunately behind a paywall.