338 HISTORY OF 



Pindarus, the Theban, lived to eighty years ; a poet of a 

 high fancy, singular in his conceits, and a great adorer of 

 the gods. Sophocles, the Athenian, attained to the like 

 age ; a lofty tragic poet, given over wholly to writing, and 

 neglectful of his family. 



10. Artaxerxes, king of Persia, lived ninety-four years ; a 

 man of a dull wit, averse to the dispatch of business, de 

 sirous of glory, but rather of ease. At the same time lived 

 Agesilaus, king of Sparta, to eighty-four years of age ; a 

 moderate prince, as being a philosopher among kings, but, 

 notwithstanding, ambitious, and a warrior, and no less stout 

 in war than in business. 



11. Gorgias, the Sicilian, was a hundred and eight years 

 old ; a rhetorician, and a great boaster of his faculty, one 

 that taught youth for profit. He had seen many countries, 

 and a little before his death said, that he had done nothing- 

 worthy of blame since he was an old man. Protagoras, of 

 Abdera, saw ninety years of age. This man was likewise 

 a rhetorician, but professed not so much to teach the liberal 

 arts, as the art of governing commonwealths and states; 

 notwithstanding he was a great wanderer in the world, no 

 less than Gorgias. Isocrates, the Athenian, lived ninety- 

 eight years ; he was a rhetorician also, but an exceeding 

 modest man, one that shunned the public light, and opened 

 his school only in his own house. Democritus, of Abdera, 

 reached to a hundred and nine years ; he was a great phi 

 losopher, and, if ever any man amongst the Grecians, a 

 true naturalist; a surveyor of many countries, but much 

 more of nature ; also a diligent searcher into experiments, 

 and (as Aristotle objected against him) one that followed 

 similitudes more than the laws of arguments. Diogenes, 

 the Sinopean, lived ninety years ; a man that used liberty 

 towards others, but tyranny over himself, a coarse diet, and 

 of much patience. Zeno, of Citium, lacked about two years 

 of a hundred ; a man of a high mind, and a contemner of 

 other men s opinions ; also of a great acuteness, but yet not 

 troublesome, choosing rather to take men s minds than to 

 enforce them. The like whereof afterwards was in Seneca. 

 Plato, the Athenian, attained to eighty-one years ; a man 

 of a great courage, but yet a lover of ease, in his notions 

 sublime, and of a fancy, neat and delicate in his life, rather 

 calm than merry, and one that carried a kind of majesty in 

 his countenance. Theophrastus, the Eressian, arrived at 

 eighty-five years of age; a man sweet for his eloquence, 

 sweet for the variety of his matters, and who selected the 



