A Demometric Analysis of Ulpian’s Table

Abstract

Ulpian’s table is a famous ancient text that is preserved in edited form in Justinian’s Digest, a compendium of Roman law compiled by order of the emperor Justinian I in the sixth century AD. This passage probably provides a rough estimation of Roman life expectancy in the early third century AD. The paper begins with a discussion of the demographic properties and peculiarities of Ulpian´s table. Then the Gompertz distribution and some of its extensions are used to fit life expectation functions to Ulpian´s data. The model can be used to estimate important demographic functions and parameters of the Roman life table. Inter alia, the average and median remaining life expectancies are calculated, and compared with the results of other investigations, e.g., Frier’s life table for the Roman Empire. It turns out that Ulpian´s life table is characterized by a steep decline of the life expectancy function in the advanced age classes, which is much steeper than in life expectancy functions of other life tables based on data. The modal or normal age at death, which is between 55 and 60 years, is comparatively high.