The accounts we have of the longevity of men in heathen authors are little to be depended on; both because of the fables into which relations of this kind are very apt to run, and the fallacies of calculation. The accounts extant afford nothing remarkable of the Egyptians, as to the point of long life; for their kings who reigned the longest, exceeded not fifty or fifty five years; which is no great matter, as we sometimes find the same in later days. But the kings of Arcadia are fabled to have been exceedingly long lived: indeed the country was mountainous, full of flocks and herds, and productive of wholesome nourishment; but as it had Pan for its tutelar God, so all the things related of it, seem to have been but panical, idle, and fabulous.

Numa, king of the Romans, lived to eighty; a peaceable contemplative man, addicted to religion. Marcus Valerius Corvinus lived to an hundred, there being forty six years between his first and sixth consulship; a man of great valour, and courage, courteous, popular, and always fortunate.

Solon the legislator of Athens, and one of the seven wise men, lived to above eighty; a man of spirit, yet popular, and a lover of his country: he was also learned, yet no stranger to pleasure, and a soft life. Epimenides of Crete, is reported to

have lived a hundred and fifty-seven years; though the relation has somewhat of the prodigy: for he is said to have passed, or slept away fifty-seven of them in a cave. Half an age after this, Xenophanes the Colophonian lived a hundred and two years, or more; for at the age of twenty-five, he left his native country, and travelled abroad seventy-seven years complete; then returned: but how long he lived afterwards is not certain. He was a man as wandering in mind as body, insomuch that his name, by reason of his wild opinions, was changed from Xenophanes to Xenomanes; though doubtless a man of a vast imagination, and breathing nothing but infinity.

Anacreon, the poet, lived to above eighty; an amorous, voluptuary man, and given to wine. Pindar of Thebes likewise lived to eighty; a sublime poet, of a singular genius, and a great worshipper of the gods. Sophocles of Athens arrived to the same age; a lofty tragic poet, wholly given to writing, regardless of his family-affairs.

Artaxerxes, king of Persia, lived ninety-four years; a man of little genius, impatient of weighty affairs, a lover of glory, but a greater lover of ease. At the same time, Agesilaus, king of Sparta, lived eighty-four years a moderate

man, and a philosopher among princes; yet ambitious and a warrior: though no less effective in business than in battle.

Gorgias, of Sicily, lived to a hundred and eight; a rhetorician, a boaster of his knowledge, and one who taught for profit: he was a great traveller, and a little before his death declared he had no accusation to bring against old age. Protagoras, of Abdera, lived ninety years; he likewise was a rhetorician, but professed not arts and sciences so much as civil and political matters; being a great traveller as well as Gorgias. Isocrates of Athens, lived to ninety-eight: he too was a rhetorician, though a very modest man, that appeared not in public, but had his school at home. Democritus, of Abdera, lived to a hundred and nine; a great philosopher, and of all the Greeks the best skilled in physics, or natural philosophy; a great traveller of countries, but a greater still in the works of nature: he was a diligent experimenter; and pursued analogy, rather than observed the laws of disputation. Diogenes, of Sinope, lived ninety years; a man who used great liberty towards others, and tyrannized over himself, chusing a sordid diet, and practising patience. Zeno, of Citium, lived to ninety-eight; a man of lofty thoughts, great subtilty, and a despiser of opinions; yet not troublesome, but rather catched the mind than bound it,

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in the manner of Seneca after him. Plato, of Athens, lived to eighty one; a person of courage, but a lover of quiet; sublime of thought and speculative; a polite well-bred man, though rather agreeable and majestic than chearful. Theophrastus, of Eresus, lived to eighty five; a man of graceful eloquence, and a grateful variety of matter, who collected all that was pleasing out of philosophy, without meddling with what was troublesome or disagreeable. Carneades, of

Cyrene, a long time after, also lived to eightyfive; a man of a ready eloquence, who delighted both himself and others with a pleasant and agreeable variety of thought. In Cicero's time, Orbilius the Grammarian lived to near an hundred, having been first a soldier, then a schoolmaster; a sharp and austere man, both with his tongue and pen, and no less severe to his scholars.

Quintus Fabius Maximus, continued augur sixty three years; whence he must needs have lived to above eighty; though in the augurship, nobility was more regarded than age. He was a prudent slow man, moderate in all the parts of life, and courteously severe. Masinissa, king of Numidia, lived ninety years, and had a son after eighty-five. He was a bold man, that relied upon fortune, and experienced many vicissitudes of affairs in his youth; but afterwards enjoyed

a continued run of felicity. Marcus Porcius Cato, lived to above ninety; a man of a very hale constitution, both in body and mind; he was severe in speech with his tongue, delighted in faction, took pleasure in agriculture, and was physician to himself and family.

Terentia, wife to Cicero, lived to a hundred and three; a woman that struggled with many calamities; as first, the banishment of her husband, next the difference between them, again with his final misfortune, and with frequent fits of the gout. Luceia must have lived above a hundred years; for she is said to have acted upon the stage during a complete century; playing perhaps, first the part of a child, and at last that of a decrepit old woman. Galeria Copiola, who was both a player and a dancer, was brought upon the stage again, ninety-nine years after her first appearance thereon; not now indeed as an actress, but as a wonder, at the dedication of the theatre by Pompey the Great; and again also at the votive solemnities for the life of Augustus.

There was another actress inferior to her in age, but superior in dignity, who lived, almost to ninety, viz, Livia Julia Augusta, wife to Augustus Cæsar, and mother to Tiberius: for if the life of Augustus were a play, as himself would have it, and desired his friends to clap him as he