Chapter XIII. The Long Life of the Ancients Mentioned by Many Authors, From Josephus, Antiquities

BUT again, as Moses asserted that the first generations of mankind had been long-lived, Josephus brings forward the Greek writers as witnesses of this statement also, speaking as follows:

[JOSEPHUS] [1] ‘From comparing the life of the men of old with the life now, and the short years that we live, let no one suppose that the statements concerning the former are false, inferring that they did not attain to that length of life from the fact that men do not now extend the time of their life so long.

‘For as they were beloved of God, and created by God Himself, and as their kinds of food were better fitted for a longer continuance, it was natural for them to live so many years.

‘Further, God may have granted them a longer life on account of their virtue, and the usefulness of the arts which they invented, astronomy and geometry, things which they could not have announced with certainty, had they not lived at least six hundred years, for by that number the great year is completed.

‘And the truth of my argument is testified by all who have written on ancient history among Greeks and Barbarians. For both Manetho who recorded the Egyptian History,and Berossus who collected the Chaldean annals, and Molos, and Hestiaeus, and in addition to them the Egyptian Hieronymus, and the compilers of Phoenician history, agree with what I say. Hesiod too, and Hecataeus, and Hellanicus, and Acusilaus, and besides these Ephorus and Nicolaus record that the ancients lived a thousand years. So on these matters let men speculate each as it may please him.’