Erasistratus, that sickness is caused by the excess of nourishment, indigestion, and corruptions; on the contrary, health is the moderation of the diet, and the taking that which is convenient and sufficient for us.

It is the unanimous opinion of the Stoics that the want of heat brings old age, for (they say) those persons in whom heat more abounds live the longer.
Asclepiades, that the Ethiopians soon grow old, and at thirty years of age are ancient men, their bodies being excessively heated and scorched by the sun; in Britain persons live a hundred and twenty years, on account of the coldness of the country, and because the people keep the fiery element within their bodies; the bodies of the Ethiopians are more fine and thin, because they are relaxed by the sun's heat, while they who live in northern countries are condensed and robust, and by consequence are more long lived.
END OF THREE--------- ABSTRACT OF A DISCOURSE SHOWING THAT THE STOICS SPEAK GREATER IMPROBABILITIES THAN THE POETS.
Pinder's Caeneus hath been taken to task by several, for being improbably feigned, impenetrable by steel and impassible in his body, and so Descending, into hell without a wound.
And with sound foot parting in two the ground.
But the Stoics' Lapithes, as if they had carved him out of the very adamantine matter of impassibility itself, though he is not invulnerable, nor exempt from either sickness or pain, yet remains fearless, regretless, invincible, and unconstrainable in the midst of wounds, dolors, and torments, and in the very subversions of the walls of his native city, and other such like great calamities.

Again, Pindar's Caeneus is not wounded when struck; but the Stoics' wise man is not detained when shut up in a prison, suffers no compulsion by being thrown down a precipice, is not tortured when on the rack, takes no hurt by being maimed, and when he catches a fall in wrestling he is still unconquered; when he is encompassed with a vampire, he is not besieged; and when sold by his enemies, he is still not made a prisoner.

The wonderful man is like to those ships that have inscribed upon them A PROSPEROUS VOYAGE, OR PROTECTING PROVIDENCE, or A PRESERVATIVE AGAINST DANGERS, and yet for all that endure storms, and are miserably shattered and overturned.
Euripides's Iolaus of a feeble, superannuated old man, by means of a certain prayer, became on a sudden youthful and strong for battle; but the Stoics wise man was yesterday most detestable and the worst of villains, but today is changed on a sudden into a state of virtue, and is become of a wrinkled, pale fellow, and as Aeschylus speaks, Of an old sickly wretch with stitch in 's back, Distent with rending pains as on a rack, a gallant, godlike, and beauteous person.
The goddess Minerva took from Ulysses his wrinkles, baldness, and deformity, to make him appear a handsome man.

But these men's wise man, though old age quits not his body, but contrariwise still lays on and heaps more upon it, though he remains (for instance) humpbacked, toothless, one-eyed, is yet neither deformed, disfigured, nor ill-favored.