4 ms·

this is direct from wikipedia's article on ancient roman demographics. first result on google. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Roman_Empire#:~:

• woofie11 5y ago
  I figured. Google it, find the first random web page, and type it in. This article is a summary of one random historian, Frier. Probably better summary of evidence: https://archive.org/details/demographyromans0000park/page/20/mode/2up 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.