Abstract
The discovery early in this century of the exceptional longevity of the Sardinian population has given new impetus to demographic studies of this phenomenon during the classical period. In the 1970s, it was hypothesised that the average mortality rate in Roman Sardinia was lower than in metropolitan Rome itself, postulating an ancient precedent for the remarkable longevity observable nowadays in the island's population. In the present study, the available evidence was examined in order to test this hypothesis. Literary, juridical, epigraphic, papyrological, anthropological and archaeological sources regarding the population of the Roman Empire, including Sardinia, were retrieved by accessing Science Direct, PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar databases, as well as regional libraries, regardless of time limitation, and were independently reviewed by the authors. For Roman Sardinia, only funerary epitaphs were retrieved, in contrast with the numerous sources available for the whole Roman Empire. Inscriptions revealing the existence of three alleged nonagenarians, two centenarians, two ultracentenarians and one supercentenarian were found, corresponding to 2% in a total of 381 inscriptions. The majority were located in a highly Romanised rural area of central-western Sardinia. However, the ages reported in the epitaphs may be inaccurate because of the influence of confounders such as age rounding, approximations and/or amplifications, and are unrelated to the total number of inhabitants. In conclusion, the funerary evidence, the only available data from Roman Sardinia, is too weak to estimate the life expectancy of the local ancient population and cannot offer valuable arguments to support the hypothesis that exceptional longevity has been a Sardinian trait since Roman times.
Highlights
In this study we reviewed all available evidence about Roman Sardinia to answer the following questions: was mortality in Roman Sardinia comparable to that of other regions of the empire? Is it possible that the current longevity of the Sardinian population has its roots in Roman times?
Following the preliminary screening only funerary epitaphs were retrieved for Roman Sardinia, including the texts of all 390 Latin funerary inscriptions reported by Rowland [9]
Articles of historical demography, from the end of the 19th century to the present, reporting data on the average lifespan in Sardinia compared to other regions of the Roman Empire were considered eligible and used to discuss similarities and differences
Summary
Modern demographic research on Antiquity owes much to the analyses conducted by Karl Julius Beloch towards the end of the 19th century [11], and by Keith Hopkins since the 1960s [12, 13] Current developments in this field have proceeded, roughly, since 1980 and have been animated by lively discussions on methodology and the use of sources [14,15,16,17,18,19]. The application to the Roman world of demographic models developed for human societies considered similar, closer in time and better known, has long been an important feature of the debate In this regard, scholars tend to be divided between more or less sceptical (e.g. Walter Scheidel) and optimistic (e.g. Bruce Frier) approaches [16, 17]. In this study we reviewed all available evidence about Roman Sardinia to answer the following questions: was mortality in Roman Sardinia comparable to that of other regions of the empire? Is it possible that the current longevity of the Sardinian population has its roots in Roman times?
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