Garreth Martin:
> > 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.
Compared to whom? Your statistic by itself does not say anything about the proportion of old people in the general population. Thus quoting life expectancy figures to show that there will be very few older people in the army is incorrect.
> > 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.
The average age of an army of ancient soldiers is older than an army of modern conscripts and would be much closer to an army of modern reservists.
>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.
That was done during a particular period of the Roman army and it was not done in Greece.
>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).
Then what was the point of bringing up the life expectancy figures then?
--Peter Metcalfe
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