Macrobii

Ptolemy, son of Lagus, the most fortunate of the kings of his day, ruled over Egypt, and at the age of eighty-four, two years before his death, abdicated in favour of his son Ptolemy, called Philadelphus, who succeeded to his father’s throne in lieu of his elder brothers.1 Philetaerus, an eunuch, secured and kept the throne of Pergamus, and closed his life at [*](At least one word, perhaps more than one, has fallen out of the Greek text. Schwartz would read ἀδελφὴν γαμῶν ("and married his sister"): my supplement is based on Justinus 16, 27: is (i.e. Ptolemy Soter) contra ius gentium minimo natu ex filiis ante infirmitatem regnum tradiderat, eiusque rei rationem populo reddiderat.)

Mithridates, king of Pontus, called the Founder, exiled by Antigonus One-eye, died in Pontus at eighty-four, as Hieronymus and other writers say. Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, lived eighty-two years, as Hieronymus says: perhaps he would have lived longer if he had not been captured in the battle with Perdiccas and crucified.

Cyrus, king ot the Persians in olden times, according to the Persian and Assyrian annals (with which Onesicritus, who wrote a history of Alexander, seems to agree) at the age of a hundred asked for all his friends by name and learned that most of them had been put to death by his son Cambyses. When Cambyses asserted that he had done this by order of Cyrus, he died of a broken heart, partly because he had been slandered for his son’s cruelty, partly because he accused himself of being feeble-minded.

Artaxerxes, called the Unforgetting, against whom Cyrus, his brother, made the expedition, was king of Persia when he died of illness at the age of eighty-six (according to Dinon ninetyfour). Another Artaxerxes, king of Persia, who, Isidore the Characene historian says, occupied the throne in the time of Isidore’s fathers, was assassinated at the age of ninety-three through the machinations of his brother Gosithras. Sinatroces,

Tiraeus, the second: successor of Hyspausines on the throne, died of * illness at the age of ninety-two. Artabazus, the sixth successor of Tiraeus on the throne of Charax, was reinstated by the Parthians and became king at the age of eighty-six. Cammascires, king of the Parthians, lived ninety-six years.

Massinissa, king of the Moors, lived ninety years. Asandrus, who, after being ethnarch, was proclaimed king of Bosporus by the divine Augustus, at about ninety years proved himself a match for anyone in fighting from horseback or on foot ; but when he saw his subjects going over to Scribonius on the eve of battle, he* starved himself to death at the age of ninety-three. According to Isidore the Characene, Goaesus, who was king of spice-bearing Omania in Isidore’s time, died of illness at one hundred and fifteen years.

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,

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,