346 HISTORY OF 



India, with their wine of palms, are accounted long livers, 

 even to a hundred and thirty years. Euphranor, the gram 

 marian, grew old in his school, and taught scholars when 

 he was above a hundred years old. The elder Ovid, father 

 to the poet, lived ninety years, differing much from the dis 

 position of his son, for he contemned the muses, and dis 

 suaded his son from poetry. Asinius Pollio, intimate with 

 Augustus, exceeded the age of a hundred years; a man of 

 an unreasonable profuseness, eloquent, and a lover of learn 

 ing, but vehement, proud, cruel, and one that made his 

 private ends the centre of his thoughts. There was an 

 opinion, that Seneca was an extreme old man, no less than 

 a hundred and fourteen years of age, which could not pos 

 sibly be, it being as improbable that a decrepit old man 

 should be set over Nero s youth as, on the contrary, it was 

 true, that he was able to manage with great dexterity the 

 affairs of state. Besides, a little before, in the midst of 

 Claudius his reign, he was banished Rome for adulteries 

 committed with some noble ladies, which was a crime no 

 way compatible with so extreme old age. Johannes de 

 Temporibus, among all the men of our latter ages, out of a 

 common fame and vulgar opinion, was reputed long lived, 

 even to a miracle, or rather even to a fable ; his age hath 

 been counted above three hundred years. He was by 

 nation a Frenchman, and followed the wars under Charles 

 the Great. Garcius Aretine, great-grandfather to Petrarch, 

 arrived at the age of a hundred and four years ; he had ever 

 enjoyed the benefit of good health, besides, at the last, he 

 felt rather a decay of his strength than any sickness or ma 

 lady, which is the true resolution by old age. Amongst the 

 Venetians there have been found not a few long livers, and 

 those of the more eminent sort. Franciscus Donatus, duke ; 

 Thomas Contarerus, procurator of Saint Mark ; Franciscus 

 Molinus, procurator also of Saint Mark, and others. But 

 most memorable is that of Cornarus the Venetian, who, 

 being in his youth of a sickly body, began first to eat and 

 drink by measure to a certain weight, thereby to recover 

 his health ; this cure turned by use into a diet, that diet to 

 an extraordinary long life, even of a hundred years and 

 better, without any decay in his senses, and with a constant 

 enjoying of his health. In our age, William Pestel, a 

 Frenchman, lived to a hundred and well nigh twenty years, 

 the top of his beard on the upper lip being black, and not 

 gray at all ; a man crazed in his brain, and of a fancy not 

 altogether sound ; a great traveller, mathematician, and 

 somewhat stained with heresy. 



