for relatives, and for civic and religious authorities. Erker (2011) proposes that this had little connection with modern notions of public health and pollution, as the measure of "death-pollution in Roman burials varied according to the social status of the deceased." The corpses of slaves and the indigent must be separated from the living, removed from the city and disposed without ceremony, virtually as soon as found. The cleansing rituals prescribed for members of the elite minority, who might lie "in state" for several days prior to disposal, were complex, detailed, and sensitive to error. The nobility were thought responsible, above all others and even in death, for sustaining Rome's traditional identity, purity, and divine approval Bodel describes the dumping of low-status corpses on the streets as public nuisances, listed by Roman authorities as civil offences, on a par with the dumping of dung and unwanted animal products, and public brawling, all of which were dealt with by fining perpetrators in the civil courts, not by ritual cleansing. Mortality John Bodel calculates an annual death rate of 30,000 among a population of about 750,000 in the city of Rome, not counting victims of plague and pandemic. At birth, Romans of all classes had an approximate life expectancy of 20–30 years: men and women of citizen class who reached maturity could expect to live until their late 50's or much longer, barring illness, disease and accident. Married women, expected to bear children as a duty to family and state, were at particular risk of mortality through childbirth - 25 maternal deaths per 1,000 births (including still-births) is suggested. The death rate among newborns and young children was very high – around 1 in 4 births, or at worst, up to 50% mortality before age 5. There were extreme variations in living conditions; dietary deficiencies hindered growth and immunity among the poor, whether slave or free. The law prescribed the killing of any newborn by its father, if it was patently "unfit to live". Those less severely deformed, or of doubtful paternity, or born to impoverished or enslaved parents, or simply unwanted, might be exposed "for the gods to take care of". Exposure did not change their status, but if they were freeborn their father automatically lost his legal power over them, having surrendered it through abandonment. The status of an abandoned infant would have been difficult to prove. Some were adopted