HUMAN LONGEVITY. 119 



Koman State ; and we know it to have been applied to that 

 record of births which is essential to all evidence regarding 

 longevity. We may refer, as an example of the completeness 

 of some of these documents, to the account Pliny gives us 

 of the Italian census instituted in the time of Vespasian ; in 

 which, to some extent at least, the classification by ages 

 seems to have been conducted on the same plan as that we 

 now follow. To this author we are indebted for much in- 

 formation on the subject of longevity; and the caution he 

 applies to such instances as are presumably fabulous, or 

 dependent on other modes of estimating years, is some 

 security for the exactness of the cases which he admits 

 without such suggestion. They are probably as authentic 

 as the similar records of any modern people two or three 

 centuries ago. 



Premising this, we may mention a few of the particular 

 instances of longevity belonging to those times ; and such 

 especially as are associated with the eminent names of anti- 

 quity. The first case, indeed, that of Epimenides the 

 Cretan (the subject of the famous example of the circulating 

 syllogism), we must regard as very doubtful ; the authorities 

 for his alleged age of 167 being exceedingly slender. The 

 Greek philosophers generally, however, of all sects and 

 tenets, make fair show on the list ; and under better evidence 

 of authenticity. Zeno is stated to have lived 102 years ; 

 Democritus, 104; Pyrrho, 90; Diogenes, 90; Hippocrates, 

 99 ; Plato, 82 ; Isocrates, 98 ; Grorgias, the master of Iso- 

 crates, 107. But for the cup of hemlock, and the sword of 

 the Eoman soldier, the 70 years of Socrates and the 75 years 

 of Archimedes might well have reached the same high class 

 of longevities. The old age of Sophocles, 90 years, is asso- 

 ciated with the touching anecdote of his recitation of verses 

 from the (Edipus in Colonus, in proof of his sanity of mind 

 at that age. The lofty lyric genius of Pindar was not lost to 



