> The relevance of which escapes me. Your original comment
> implied that for a life expectancy of 30 to 50 years, a
> person of that age was old. The point at which one is old
> is different from the life expectancy.
Whether they are seen as "old" or not is irrelevant; the point is that there are few of them.
> You will still see quite a lot more older men in ancient
> armies than in modern ones. In Ancient Greece, sixty-year
> olds still had to serve in the phalanx.
Sure, but less out of necessity than social convention, inasmuch soldiering was part of the maintenance of a position of rank, a social virtue, and there was little in the way of retirement opportunities (bar politics). Icertainly rtecognise there will be many older men, I merely mention that I think the bulk of the troops would be relatively young. Another interesting feature of the highly organised classical armies was frex the Roman habit of putting the youngest soldiers in the first rank, and similar practices elsewhere. I just feel that for Heortlings, war is not an abnormal risk from which children need to be protected; it is a normal risk and confronting it is part of the normal responsibility for all males from the time of maturity (even where that age is much younger than ours).
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