Thursday, November 14, 2013

Who Lives Longer?

In the first book of Herodotus, Herodotus tells the story of Solon visiting Croesus and figuring out how many days a seventy-year old lives. For us that is 365 x 70 = 25550 with an additional 17 days every fourth year for leap years. For the Greeks, however, there are not leap years but leap months which are added every other year.

Given twelve months of thirty days in a typical Greek year, how many days does Solon think a 70 year old lives for? Would you rather live to be seventy years old as an ancient Greek or a modern one?