Did they really live as long as us in antiquity?

The statement is often made, in some form or another, that if you throw out childhood diseases (and greater maternal pregnancy risks), the ancients did indeed live as long as we do.

And, it's easy to point to a Socrates (70), Plato (either 75 or 80) or Aristotle (only 62) as proof, or even a Cicero who hit 63 before his murder. Or, at the end of antiquity, Augustine hitting 75.

But, there's logical fallacies and other issues behind that.

First is availability bias or similar, obviously.

Second, also obviously, is small sample size on top of that.

Third is questions of adequate representation.

I just listed three philosophers and a politician-philosopher.

To the degree we can project today's classes back to the past? All would be considered "upper middle class." Or higher. All had leisure. All had the service of servants, slaves or both.

The reality?

Compound fractures or deep cuts always ran the risk of inducing blood poisoning. It might not always be lethal, but could be.

Even without that, compound fractures were usually poorly set back then. For a poor free wage laborer, that would leave one dependent to some degree on others for help. For a slave, it might well mean death.

Many cancers, such as leukemia and lymphoma, treatable if not even curable today, hit in middle age, even early middle age. They were a death sentence in antiquity.

Tooth decay? Dental caries? To the degree we know it appears to contribute to body-wide inflammation, let alone affecting eating and digestion, it would have lopped a few years, at least, off the lives of many. 

Plagues? The one during Marcus Aurelius' reign devastated Antioch. "Childhood diseases" (this plague was possibly measles, but we're not sure, smallpox is also possible) weren't limited to childhood. The Plague of Justinian, the first occurrence of bubonic plague, wreaked havoc. As for claims these were intermittent and shouldn't totally count? Wrong? The Plague of Justinian was part of a multi-century First Plague Pandemic. That was followed by the Second Plague Pandemic, of three centuries from the Black Death through the Great Plague of London. A much shorter Third Pandemic hit mainly East and South Asia.

My Bayesian guess? Probably half the population that made it past 21 2,000 or more years ago did not make it past 50.