Note 831 — Chapter VII · SCHOOLS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS AND SOPHISTS.

Diog. Laert. ix. 55. observes that, according to some writers, he died, at the age of 90, during a journey.—Geel, p. 81. It is sufficiently remarkable that most of the Sophists attained to a very great old age, and the same thing may be said generally of the philosophers of antiquity. Lord Bacon undertakes to account for the fact. Having given the palm of long life to hermits and anchorites, he says: “Next unto this is a life led in good letters, such as was that of Philosophers, Rhetoricians, Grammarians. This life is also led in leisure, and in those thoughts which, seeing they are severed from the affairs of the world, bite not, but rather delight through their vanity and impertinency: they live also at their pleasure, spending their time in such things as like them best, and for the most part in the company of young men, which is ever the most cheerful.”—History of Life and Death, p. 24.