[idoubtit]

This BBC article intends to surprise the reader, and I think the reader has to be extremly cautious with its content. Yet, it briefly mentions that the Roman longevity concerned only the nobility.

> all working-class people who were buried in common graves. The average age of death was 30, and that wasn’t a mere statistical quirk

Back to the BBC article, some of its source are dubious, and I suppose they were selected only because of their "selling power". For instance, the paper on Victorian life expectancy was debated here[^0] with much skepticism.

[^0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14586145

[rjf72]

There was no magic longevity potion those of means had. All they had over the common class are the things we all have and take for granted today - protection from the consequences war and mostly stable access to clean food and water. The upper class of times back then arguably less so on both accounts than even a lower class individual today. This was the whole point. It's not like you could attribute their longevity to sophisticated medicine, because it literally did not exist at the time.