ANTAEUS THE GIANT. 583 



selah lived, will be reduced to two hundred, an age which is 

 not impossible, and to which some men in modern times 

 have nearly approached."* 



So Methuselah appears on the record, not as a fable, 

 but as a possible and actual fact. He (Hufeland) then ad- 

 duces the facts of " profane history, the account of many 

 heroes and Arcadian kings of those periods who attained to 

 the age of several hundred years ; but these pretended in- 

 stances of longevity can be explained in the same manner. 

 With the period of Abraham, a period when history seems 

 first to be established on more certain grounds, we find men- 

 tion of a duration of life which can still be attained, and 

 which no longer appears extraordinary, especially when we 

 consider the temperate manner in which the patriarchs lived ; 

 and that as they were nomads, or a wandering people, they 

 were much exposed to the FREE OPEN AiR."f 



He then recites the Hebrew record. Abraham, a " man of 

 great and resolute mind, fortunate in all his undertakings," 

 lived 175 years: Isaac, "a chaste, peaceable man, and fond 

 of tranquillity," 180; Jacob, "a lover of peace, crafty and 

 cunning," only 147; "Ishmael, a warrior, 137;" "Sarah, 

 the only female of the ancients with whose duration of life 

 we are acquainted, lived 127 years;" Joseph, with whose 

 history all boys are acquainted, lived 110 years; Moses, a 

 "man of extraordinary strength and spirit," but a murderer, 

 weathered it 120 years. He complained of the shortness 

 of life, as everybody does now. " His eye was not dim, nor 

 his natural force abated." Joshua, " the warlike and ac- 

 tive," was 110; while "Eli, the high-priest, a corpulent, 

 phlegmatic man, of a resigned disposition, lived only 90 

 years;" and Elisha, the austere, attained to 100; whereas 

 Simeon, a " man full of hope and confidence in God," survived 

 only 90 years. The Egyptians, notwithstanding the immor- 

 tality of the pyramids, were not extremely long livers, "the 



* Hufeland, "Art of Prolonging Life." Many quotations are made 

 here from this interesting work. 

 f Hufeland. 



