THE CHANCES OF DEATH 



91 



data are entered for comparison. It will be noted at 

 once that just as in the Romano-Egyptian population the 

 expectation of life of inhabitants of ancient Rome was, 

 in the early years of life, apparently immensely inferior to 

 that of the modern population. From about the age of 60 

 on, however, the expectation of life appears to have been 

 better then than now. Curiously enough, the expectation 



10 



15 2O 



3O 



4O 



50 



YEARS OT AC-L 



IOO 



FIG. 23 Comparing the expectation of life of the population of the Roman provinces 

 Hispania and Lusitania with that of present day Americans. Plotted from Macdonell's and 



Glover's data. 



of life of females was poorer at practically all ages of life 

 than that of the males which exactly reverses the modern 

 state of affairs. Macdonell believes this difference to be 

 real and to indicate that there were special influences 

 adversely affecting the health of females in the Roman 

 Empire, which no longer operate in the modern world. Up 

 to something like age 25 the expectation of life of dwellers 

 in the city of Rome was extremely bad, worse than in the 

 Romano-Egyptian population which Pearson studied, or 

 in the populations of other parts of the Roman Empire as 

 we shall see in the following diagram. Macdonell thinks 



