At the behest of a dream, illustrious Quintillus,
I make you a present of the “Octogenarians.” I
had the dream and told my friends of it long since,
when you were christening your second child. At
the time, however, not being able to understand
what the god meant by commanding me to “present
you the octogenarians,” I merely offered a prayer that
you and your children might live very long, thinking
that this would benefit not only the whole human
race but, more than anyone else, me in person and
all my kin; for I too, it seemed, had a blessing
predicted for me by the god.

 

But as I thought the
matter over by myself, I hit upon the idea that very
likely in giving such an order to a literary man, the
gods were commanding him to present you something from his profession. Therefore, on this your
birthday, which I thought the most auspicious
occasion, I give you the men who are related to have
attained great age with a sound mind and a perfect
body. Some profit may accrue to you from the
treatise in two ways: on the one hand, encouragement
and good hopes of being able to live long yourself,
and on the other hand, instruction by examples, if
you observe that it is the men who have paid most


 

attention to body and mind that have reached an
advanced age in full health.

 

Nestor, you know,
the wisest of the Achaeans, outlasted three genera-
tions, Homer says:
 Il, 1, 250; Odyss. 3, 245. 
and he tells us that he was
splendidly trained. in mind and in body. ‘Likewise
Teiresias the seer outlasted six generations, tragedy
says: The source is unknown. 
and one may well believe that a man
consecrated to the gods, following a simpler diet,
lives very long.

 

Moreover, it is related that, owing
to their diet, whole castes of men live long like
the so-called scribes in Egypt, the story-tellers
in Syria and Arabia, and the so-called Brahmins in
India, men scrupulously attentive to philosophy.
Also the so-called Magi, a prophetic caste consecrated to the gods, dwelling among the Persians,
the Parthians, the Bactrians, the Chorasmians, the
Arians, the Sacae, the Medes and many other
barbarian peoples, are strong and long-lived, on
account of practising magic, for they diet very scrupulously.

 
Indeed, there are even whole nations that
are very long-lived, like the Seres, who are said to live
three hundred years: some attribute their old age to
the climate, others to the soil and still others to their
diet, for they say that this entire nation drinks
nothing but water. The people of Athos are also
said to live a hundred and thirty years, and it is
reported that the Chaldeans live more than a
hundred, using barley bread to preserve the sharpness of their eyesight. They say, too, that on
account of this diet their other faculties are more
vigorous than those of the rest of mankind.