18. Neglect not thy health . . .
I had at first the intention of making here some allusion to the manner in which Pythagoras and the ancient sages considered medicine; and I had wished to reveal their principles,
a It is true that Tiberius did not add to the precept the exercise of the temperance that Lysis did not forget to commend in the following lines, also he lived only seventy-eight years, notwithstanding the strength of his constitution promised him a much longer life. Hippocrates of Cos, the father of medicine in Greece and strongly attached to the doctrine of Pythagoras, lived one hundred and four years; Xenophile, Apollonius, Tyanæus, Demonax, and many other Pythagorean philosophers lived to one hundred and six and one-hundred and ten years; and Pythagoras himself, although violently persecuted towards the end of his life, attained to nearly ninety-nine years according to some and even to the century mark according to others. b
Footnotes
194:a Bacon, de le Vie et de la Mort; Sueton., in Tiber., § 66.
194:b Diogen. Laërt., in Pythag.
