Memento Mori

What the Romans Can Tell Us About Old Age and Death

A thoughtful and revealing guide to how the Romans confronted their own mortality, with particular emphasis on how the old dealt with the certainty of death.
Romans inhabited a world where man, knowing nothing about hygiene let alone disease, had no defences against nature. Death was everywhere. Half of all Roman children were dead by the age of five. Only eight per cent of the population made it over sixty. One bizarre result was that half the population consisted of teenagers.
From the elites´ philosophical take on the brevity of life to the epitaphs left by butchers, bakers and buffoons, Memento Mori (´Remember you are mortal´) shows how the Romans faced up to this world and attempted to take the sting out of death.