Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Persian, Babylonian, and Indian wisdom: Pseudo-Lucian on long-living sages and peoples (third century CE and earlier),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified July 4, 2024, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=19366.

Ancient author: Anonymous / Pseudo-Lucian, Long Lives / Makrobians 1-7 (link).

Comments: This anonymous discourse presenting a list of people who lived long was likely already in existence in some form by the time that Cicero wrote Cato the Elder on Old Age. It was further supplemented in the time of Tiberius (14-37 CE) and then further revised some time after 212 CE (for these stages, see János 2013). The most pertinent section for our purposes immediately follows the new, final framing as a gift to someone on their birthday.

Before turning to many Greek and Roman examples of people who lived long, the author presents a number of elite sub-groups among eastern peoples who lived long due to their climate and / or way of life. Particularly prominent here are the Magians, who are explained as diviners originating in Persia but also attested among Parthians, Baktrians, Chorasmians, Arians, Sakians, and Medes. The Magians appear alongside groups that are sometimes encompassed under the Greek concept of wise barbarians, including Indian Brahmans, Syrian myth-interpreters and Egyptian sacred-scribes. Then the author goes on to entire populations who lived to old age, including Serians (i.e. Chinese) and Chaldeans, or Babylonians.

Works consulted: B. János, “A Cato maior egy elfeledett forrása,” in Philologia Nostra: Bollók János Összegyűjtött Anulmányai, ed. Mészáros Tamás (Budapest: ELTE Eötvös József Collegium, 2013), 141–52 [in Hungarian] (link).

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[Introduction]

As a result of some dream, most brilliant Quintillus, I make you a present of the “Long-Lives” (Macrobians). I had the dream and told my friends about it long ago, when you were naming your second child. At the time, however, not being able to understand what the god meant by commanding me to “present you the long lives,” I merely offered a prayer so that you and your children might live very long, thinking that this would benefit not only all of humanity but, more than anyone else, me in person and all my relatives. For it seemed that I also had a blessing predicted for me by the god. Now as I thought through the matter myself, I came 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 work 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.

[Greek examples]

Nestor, you know, the wisest among the Achaians outlasted three generations, Homer [Iliad 1.250; Odyssey 3.245] says. Homer tells us that Nestor was thoroughly trained in mind and in body. Likewise Teiresias the seer outlasted six generations, tragedy says. A person may well believe that a man consecrated to the gods, following a simpler diet, lives very long.

[Examples among foreign elite sub-groups: Egyptian scribes, Syrian interpreters, Indian Brahmans, and Persian Magians]

Moreover, it is related that, owing to their diet, whole groups (genē) of men live long, like the so-called sacred-scribes (hierogrammateis) in Egypt, myth-interpreters (exēgētai) in Syria and Arabia, and the so-called Brahmans in India, men carefully attentive to pursuit of wisdom (philosophia). Furthermore, the so-called Magians – a group of diviners consecrated to the gods, dwelling among the Persians, the Parthians, the Baktrians, the Chorasmians, the Arians, the Sakians, the Medes, and many other barbarians – are strong and long-lived, on account of practising Magian skill (mageuein), because they diet very carefully.

[Examples among entire foreign populations: Serians, Chaldeans]

Actually, there are even entire peoples (ethnē) that are very long-lived, like the Serians [i.e. far eastern or Chinese peoples], 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, because they say that this entire people drinks nothing but water. The Athotians [i.e. those near mount Athos or perhaps descendants of the mythical Athos] are also said to live a hundred and thirty years, and it is reported that the Chaldeans live more than a hundred years, 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 humankind.

[Transition to Greek and Roman examples of old age]

But this must suffice about the long-lived groups and peoples who are said to exist for a very long period either on account of their soil and climate, or of their diet, or of both. I can fittingly show you that your good hopes are of easy attainment by recounting that on every soil and in every clime men who observe the proper exercise and the diet most suitable for health have been long-lived. . . [omitted remainder of the discourse about local examples of long lives].

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Source of translation: A. M. Harmon, Lucian, volumes 1-5, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913-1936), public domain (passed away in 1950), adapted and modernized by Harland.