These are the kings who have been recorded as
long-lived by our predecessors. Since philosophers
and literary men in general, doubtless because they too
take good care of themselves, have attained old age,


 

I shall put down those whom there is record of,
beginning with the philosophers. Democritus ot
Abdera starved himself to death at the age of one
hundred and four. ' -Xenophilus the musician, we are
told by Aristoxenus, adopted the philosophical
system of Pythagoras, and lived in Athens. more
than one hundred and five years. Solon, Thales,
and Pittacus, who were of the so-called seven wise
men, each lived a hundred years, and Zeno, the
head of the Stoic school, ninety-eight.

 
They say
that when Zeno stumbled in entering the assembly,
he cried out: “Why do you call me?”
 Addressed to Pluto. According to Diogenes Laertius
7, 28 he said ἔρχομι· τί μ' αὔεις (“I come: why din it in my
ears?”), a quotation from a play called Niobe (Nauck,
Trag. Gr. Fragm. p. 51). 
and then,
returning home, starved himself to death. Cleanthes,
the pupil and successor of Zeno, was ninety-nine’
when he got a tumour on his lip. He was fasting
when letters from certain of his friends arrived, but
he had food brought him, did what his friends had
requested, and then fasted anew until he passed
away.

 

Xenophanes, son of Dexinus and disciple
of Archelaus the physicist, lived ninety-one years;
Xenocrates, the disciple of Plato, eighty-four;
Carneades, the head of the New Academy, eightyfive; Chrysippus, eighty-one; Diogenes of Seleucia
on the Tigris, a Stoic philosopher, eighty-eight;
Posidonius of Apameia in Syria, naturalised in Rhodes,



 

who was at once a philosopher and a historian,
eighty-four; Critolaus, the Peripatetic, more than
eighty-two: Plato the divine, eighty-one.

 
Athenodorus, son of Sando, of Tarsus, a Stoic, tutor
of Caesar Augustus the divine, through whose
influence the city of Tarsus was relieved of taxation,
died in his native land at the age of eighty-two, and
the people of Tarsus pay him honour each year as a
hero. Nestor, the Stoic from Tarsus, the tutor
of Tiberius Caesar, lived ninety-two years, and
Xenophon, son of Gryllus, more than ninety.1
These are the noteworthy philosophers.