PERILS OF LIFE

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 May 1936, Page 3

PERILS OF LIFE

GREAT IN ANCIENT TIMES. What with automobiles to rim ps down and aeroplanes to fail in mid-air and explosions to blow us up, we might call this not the machine a£e. but the dangerous age. But the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of New York has made a study which shows that the lives of the ancients were scarcely less precarious. Out of a representative sample of 275 celebrated Greeks and Romans IpJG came to violent ends —nearly half. The sceptical vital statistician of the Metropolitan Life approaches the figures cautiously. It is natural that violent deaths should attract more attention than deaths from, prosaic disease. So he casts about and finds, a supplementary grouping of 126 thecauses of whose’ ends were not re-’ corded. By adding these to the original 275 he obtains a total of 401. Bin the violent deaths still amount to 34': per cent. . . .: M Perhaps those who died with tliqirl boots on were soldiers and adyentiji’r’ ers. If so, the statistics are not tobe wondered at. So the statistician, classifies the 401 names into calling's —statesmen, soldiers, philosophers,authors. It turns out ‘ that of 180' statesmen 115 came to violent ends — 64 per cent. Including those who diqd from unknown causes the . totpl amounts to 222 and the percentage to 52.

Life is to-day no more perilous than? it was in ancient times. In spite of all our homicides, suicides arid Occidents only 9.5 per cent. of . the gem eral population dies violently. “These

figures are riot so widely different from the 12 per cent, which we have noted" as characteristic of persons following peaceful’pursuits in antiquity,” comments the Metropolitan Life’s : statistician. • ' ‘ ' ' - r ‘ ' ■

. Warfare. to<luy -is not much inoye terrible than ;it Was.in ancient, tiirids. Among the i-reach the proportion pf deaths in battle and from wounds in the World .War was 41.8 per cent, in the entire male population of military age over the peijpd of the war; among the'Germans, 42.4 per cent; ainorig the British, aJ.B ; per cent., and among, the Italians-, ’ 22.1 per cent. The figures are a little lower, though hpt much, for the soldiers and statesman of antiquity used as a; sahiple for com-, parison. We must;..not forget that tfie. World' War was a transitory conditioh.. The figures - for the .ancients cover tlie ! general records of history. “Surely the ancients did live dangerously.”