periods of time. According to the generally-received chronology of the Scriptures, the average duration of patriarchal life, previously to the Deluge, was about nine hundred years. Immediately after the Flood, when animal food was permitted as an article of diet, the average period of life was reduced to four hundred years; and when Jacob lived, it had gradually declined to one hundred and fifty years. This abbreviated period of human existence may not have been the effect solely of animal diet; but it doubtless had a considerable influence.
13. Lucretius, when describing the first ages of mankind, observes:
"The nerves that joined their limbs were firm and strong;
Their life was healthy, and their age was long:
Returning years still saw them in their prime;
They wearied e'en the wings of measuring time:
No colds nor heats, no strong diseases wait,
And tell sad news of coming hasty fate;
Nature not yet grew weak, nor yet began
To shrink into an inch the larger span."[1]
14. Sanchoniathon, a Phœnician historian who flourished about four hundred years after Moses, says, that "the first men lived upon the plants shooting out of the ground." Hesiod, the Greek poet, also says, "the uncultivated fields afforded them their fruits, and supplied their bountiful and unenvied repast." So also Lucretius:
"Soft acorns were their first and chiefest food,
And those red apples that adorn the wood."[2]
15. Similar testimony respecting the food and longevity of the ancients is also afforded by Manetho, who wrote the Egyptian History; Berosus, who collected the Chaldean monuments; Mochus, Hestiæus, Hierouymus the Egyptian, and those who composed the Phœnician History; also by Hecatæus, Hellanicus, Acusilaus, Ephorus, Nicolaus, Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus, Strabo, and Jerome of Egypt.
16. Ælian[3] tells us, "that the diet of the first race of men differed according to the different productions of their respective countries: the Athenians lived on figs, the Argives on pears, and the Arcadians on acorns." Herodotus, who wrote about four hundred and fifty years before Christ, relates that, "upon the death of Lycurgus, the Lacedemonians, meditating the conquest of Arcadia, were told by the Oracle, that there were many brave Βαλανηφάγοι ἄνδρες (acorn-eaters) in that country, who would repel them if they attempted to carry their arms thither; as it afterwards happened."
