THE BIOLOGY OF DEATH 



451 



extensive material extracted from the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 

 of the Berlin Academy, which gives records as to age of death for many 

 thousand Roman citizens dying, for the most part, within the first three 

 or four centuries of the Christian era. His material may, therefore, 

 be taken to represent the conditions a few centuries later than those of 

 Pearson's Romano-Egyptian population. Macdonell was able to cal- 

 culate three tables of expectation of life — the first for Roman citizens 

 living in the city of Rome itself; second, for those living in the provinces 

 of Hispania and Lusitania; and third, for those living in Africa. The 

 results are plotted against the United States 1910 data, as before, in 

 Figures 5, 6 and 7. 



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YEARS OF AGE 

 FIG. 5. COMPARING THE EXPECTATION OF LIFE OF ANCIENT ROMANS WITH THAT OF 

 PRESENT DAY AMERICANS. Plotted from Macdonell's and Glover's data 



Figure 5 relates to inhabitants of the city of Rome itself. The 

 populations from which the expectations are calculated run into the 

 thousands, and fortunately one is able to separate males and females. 

 As in Pearson's case, which we have just examined, modern American 

 data are entered for comparison. It will be noted at once that just as 

 in the Romano-Egyptian population the expectation of life of inhabi- 

 tants of ancient Rome was, in the early years of life, immensely in- 

 ferior to that of the modern population. From about age 60 on, how- 

 ever, the expectation of life was better then than now. Curiously 

 enough, the expectation 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 popu- 



