The discovery early in this century of the exceptional longevity of the Sardinian population has given new impetus to demographic studies of this phenomenon during the classical period. In the 1970s, it was hypothesised that the average mortality rate in Roman Sardinia was lower than in metropolitan Rome itself, postulating an ancient precedent for the remarkable longevity observable nowadays in the island’s population. In the present study, the available evidence was examined in order to test this hypothesis. Literary, juridical, epigraphic, papyrological, anthropological and archaeological sources regarding the population of the Roman Empire, including Sardinia, were retrieved by accessing Science Direct, PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar databases, as well as regional libraries, regardless of time limitation, and were independently reviewed by the authors. For Roman Sardinia, only funerary epitaphs were retrieved, in contrast with the numerous sources available for the whole Roman Empire. Inscriptions revealing the existence of three alleged nonagenarians, two centenarians, two ultracentenarians and one supercentenarian were found, corresponding to 2% in a total of 381 inscriptions. The majority were located in a highly Romanised rural area of central-western Sardinia. However, the ages reported in the epitaphs may be inaccurate because of the influence of confounders such as age rounding, approximations and/or amplifications, and are unrelated to the total number of inhabitants. In conclusion, the funerary evidence, the only available data from Roman Sardinia, is too weak to estimate the life expectancy of the local ancient population and cannot offer valuable arguments to support the hypothesis that exceptional longevity has been a Sardinian trait since Roman times.

在本世纪初，撒丁岛人口的超长寿命的发现为古典时期对该现象的人口学研究提供了新的动力。假设在1970年代，罗马撒丁岛的平均死亡率低于大都市罗马本身，这为该岛人口如今可观察到的长寿奠定了古老的先例。在本研究中，检查了可用证据以检验该假设。通过访问Science Direct，PubMed，Scopus和Google Scholar数据库以及地区图书馆，无论时间限制如何，都可以检索有关包括撒丁岛在内的罗马帝国人口的文学，司法，人口统计学，古生物学，人类学和考古学资料，并由作者独立审查。对于罗马撒丁岛，仅获得了丧葬墓志铭，与整个罗马帝国可用的大量文献形成对比。发现的铭文揭示了三名据称的非agenararians，两名百岁老人，两名超百岁老人和一名超百岁老人的存在，占总共381种铭文的2％。大多数人位于撒丁岛中西部的一个高度罗马化的农村地区。但是，由于混杂因素的影响（例如年龄舍入，近似和/或放大），墓志中所报告的年龄可能是不准确的，并且与居民总数无关。最后，葬礼证据，罗马撒丁岛的唯一可用数据，