It does not appear possible from the inscriptions on tomb-stones to deduce any inference respecting the average length of human life in the centuries which they embrace. They usually record with exactness the age of the deceased; often with the mention of the months, days, and hours; but they are only fragments of the record of mortality as it originally existed, and that record was itself very imperfect. Vast numbers were, of course, burnt or buried, to whom no monument was raised. There were pits without the Esquiline Gate, in which the common people were buried promiscuously. According to the statement of Ulpian, who wrote in the reign of Alexander Severus, registers of population, age, sex, disease and death had been kept with exactness by the censors for ten centuries, and from observations grounded on these, according to Dr. Bissett Hawkins's Medical Statistics,[70] from which I quote, the expectation or mean term of human life among the Romans was thirty years; while that of England, according to Mr. Finlaison, is fifty for the easy classes of society, and forty-five for the whole population. I do not put much faith in bills of mortality of the time of Servius Tullius, considering the rarity even of historical documents in the early ages of Rome. The monuments, too, are, in a large proportion of cases, to military men, who appear to have been cut off at very early ages. But many reasons may be given why the average of life should be shorter than in England. There was no provision for the poor among them, unless the irregular profusion of _congiaria_ can be called so; there were no public hospitals; the city was in many parts unhealthy; their clothing not favourable to cleanliness, though remedied, in some measure, by the bath; and life was often shortened by suicide, which was regarded as venial if not meritorious. The average yielded by the inscriptions would certainly be low; I have noticed one death at 102 years,[71] 90 of which were passed without disease, and one at 100,[72] one at 92,[73] but these are rare. Valerius Julianus inscribes a monument to his son, who was three years old, and his mother (mammulæ), who was 80. Dispara damna lege Parcarum et stamina dispara; Hæc ridenda mihi est, hic lacrymandus erit. Hæc namque emeritos bis quadraginta per annos Vixit; at hic tertio Consule natus obit. Cur modo tam præceps, iterum tam sera fuisti Funeris amborum dic rea Persephone. Vix lucem vidisse satis qui vivere posset; Vivere quæ nollet vix potuisse mori.[74]