He records the table in his systematic commentary on the lex Julia de vicesima hereditatium, an Augustan law of 6 AD that put a 5 percent tax on inheritances.
[11] Frier states that the table does not plausibly represent life expectancy either in early childhood, between forty and fifty, or after sixty.
[12] Despite these errors, the table corresponds well to other observed populations with abnormally high mortality rates (such as postwar Mauritius), and to a priori constructions of plausible Roman age structures.
[13] The picture the table presents is appalling: a society with one of the highest mortality rates on record, with a predicted life expectancy at birth of between 19 and 23.
[15] Richard P. Saller concluded that the table "includes too many schematic and unrealistic elements" to persuade him that it was "based on good data using appropriate demographic techniques".
The beneficiaries of life annuities were typically members of the decedent's household, which meant slaves or ex-slaves.