W. R. Macdonell 
Married Men. For the age of men at marriage the data are still scantier; 
I have found only 29 cases, and in these the ages at marriage run from 15 to 63, 
II of them lying between 17 and 20. 
Rome — (b) Soldiers in Garrison. 
The data have been collected from inscriptions 2424 — 3922 and 32668 — 
33038. They record the nationality of many of the soldiers, and it appears that 
they came from distant parts of the Empire — Dacia, Thracia, Pannonia, Egypt, 
Libya and so on, as well as from various parts of Italy itself. Indeed, if we may 
judge from these inscriptions, the great bulk of the garrison was recruited mainly 
in the Danubian provinces and the north of Italy. I have therefore dealt with 
the soldiers separately — there are 607 whose ages are recorded — and find that as 
regards expectation of life they compare unfavourably with Roman males, and 
from 25 to 50 even with Roman married women. But no very satisfactory 
comparison is possible owing to the scarcity of available inscriptions. 
The age of soldiers on entering the army can be found, as the inscriptions 
often record both age at death and length of service. Fortunately a considerable 
number of such inscriptions have come down to us, viz. 400 in Rome, and 
particulars will be found in Table III. From these figures it seems probable 
that the majority of the garrison soldiers joined at ages from 16 to 23, the 
greatest number centring round 19; but remembering the absence of precision 
in stating ages we can only look at the figures broadly and conclude with some 
probability that the hardships and risks of a military life, the change from the 
country to the capital, and perhaps the youthful age of the recruits had an 
important influence on the mortality. 
Amongst the soldiers were some very old men, 19 of them ranging in age from 
70 to 105 ; they were no doubt attached to the army in some sort of official 
capacity, apparently after receiving their formal discharge, if we may judge from 
No. 3453, which records the death of a soldier at the age of 70, and states that he 
was "probatus " at 22 years, served for 23, and lived 24 years 3 months and 11 days 
after receiving his discharge ("post missionem "). The length of service was 
sometimes very long; three inscriptions record 43, 51 and 55 years. 
Hispania and Lusitania. 
From the Corpus and Ephemeris I have extracted the ages at death of 
1111 males and 885 females. I have not kept a record of the social status of 
this population, but from an inspection of the index in the Swpplementum 
I find remarkably few set down as freedmen or slaves ; it may not have been the 
custom to give this information, or we may be dealing with a population of higher 
social status than the Romans. 
