At birth, life expectancy was only 27 years.
To shorten the average life were mainly bone fractures, diseases of the mouth such as abscesses and caries, but also deformation of the back bones due to a workload too heavy.
It was difficult to overcome the age of 49 even among the patricians, but thanks to natural selection there were also those who quietly reached the age of 60.
Life expectancy increased as an individual grown and exceeds the most critical stages of development and the most susceptible to diseases, hunger, war and natural disasters. For example, the life expectancy at birth between the nobility of classical Rome before the age of 10 was only 20-30 years.
Once exceeded 10 years of age, the life expectancy was between 50-60 years.
The Roman historians do not tell us what was the record of longevity among their fellow citizens, and probably for a good reason.
Marcus Terenzius Varrone reports that in ancient Rome (period of the reigns and the first republic) the over sixties were "invited" to step aside and throw themselves into the Tiber (from the “bridge sexuagenarii” - the bridge of the over-60) to gracefully “remove the disturbance” and not to weigh on families and the city.
However, in 44 BC Cicero (aged 62) composed a treatise on senescence and dedicates the writing to his friend "Titus Pomponius Atticus" (aged 66).
Obviously those who had the best lifestyle had more chances to live long, far from diseases and hardships. But not from wars and conspiracies.
The emperor Marcus Ulpius Trajanus lived 66 years, Publius Aelius Adrianus 62, and they both died in their bed: the others were practically all killed.
The infectious diseases that we suffer today were not widespread at the time, even if present, because those who became ill from any childhood illness or respiratory infection or trauma simply died long before reaching age to reproduce.
this mechanism in the past made it - thanks to a ferocious natural selection - that people were much more robust and resistant than today.
On the other hand - excluding diseases - the occasions for premature death were many more: wars, fights, accidents but especially the burning and bad nutrition.
Finally it is interesting to see how the average age of patricians and plebeians is quite similar. In fact the latter lived a much harder life, but rarely ate elaborate meat dishes (which were cooked in lead pots) while the patricians who did it even if they had a comfortable life tended to be slowly poisoned and die before time.