FW: fourscore...

[Frank Abate]

This is perhaps a bit off topic, but since Safire brought it up . . .

What Mark M says below re lifespan and life expectancy and actuaries is
correct, and is backed up by ancient evidence.  It has long been the case
that if one lives past childhood diseases, war, famine, etc., then one's
lifespan can well be very long indeed.  This has been true for many
centuries.  Two examples come to mind: Sophocles, the Athenian dramatist,
lived some 90 years and was still writing in his old age, Socrates was 70
and quite spry, until he was executed.  There are many other examples,
biblical, too.

Modern medical science has made it possible to extend life and avoid death
from various diseases, but barring violence or disease, it has not been that
unusual -- since ancient times -- for people to live into their 80s and 90s,
at least in urban cultures.

In rural societies things are quite different.  Following the fall of the
Roman Empire, in western Europe at least, life expectancy declined with the
collapse of urban centers and the coming of much tribal and "national"
fighting.  In what used to be called the Dark Ages things really were grim
and dark, compared to the imperial days.  With the fall of the Western
Empire urban living was much diminished if not wiped out, and there were
"barbarians" not just at the gates but in charge of things.  Intellectual
activity all but ceased in western Europe, as did schooling and writing,
except for a few monastic enclaves.  The populace was mostly peasant
farmers, lorded over by nobles who were beholden to royals and churchmen.
In those times life expectancy was very low, except for the very well-to-do
who didn't have to fight, a tiny minority of the population.  Much that had
been known and that was common in Roman imperial days was lost, forgotten,
even destroyed (examples: literature, philosophy, the use of concrete for
building, etc.).  Hence "the Dark Ages", which to me is a very accurately
descriptive term.

Frank Abate

************************
BTW, Safire got something wrong in his bit about "fourscore" this past
Sunday. I don't have it in front of me, but he commented, w.r.t. the
Psalmist's description of the human lifetime, that only in recent
centuries has life expectancy gotten up even to fifty or so.

Life expectancy is an actuarial concept, derived by statistical analysis
of how long a person born under given circumstances (e.g., in country X
in year Y) can expect to live, on the average. That changes drastically
with war, health, and so on. But the Psalmist was talking about life
SPAN: how long a person can HOPE to live, or the upper bound on a
lifetime. It's not statistically calculated, but based on observation
and experience: If a person isn't killed by violence or disease or
hardship, how old might he reasonably hope to get to be? "Threescore and
ten, or by reason of strength fourscore". That hasn't changed.

-- Mark A. Mandel