Megasthenes divides the philosophers into two kinds, the Brahmans and the Garmanes. The Brahmans are held in greater repute. They do not communicate their philosophy to their wives, for fear they should divulge to the profane anything which ought to be concealed. They discourse much on death, and discipline themselves to prepare for it. According to the Brahmans, the world was created and is liable to corruption; it is of a spheroidal figure; the god who made and governs it, pervades the whole of it; the earth is situated in the centre of the universe. Many other peculiar things they say of the principles of generation and of the soul. They invent fables also, after the manner of Plato, on immortality and on the punishment in Hades; and other things of this kind.”—FALCONER. THE FIRST THREE CHRISTIAN CENTURIES. =Josephus=, born A.D. 37 at Jerusalem, was the scion of a noble line. At the early age of fourteen he astonished the chief priests by his mental power and familiarity with the intricacies of Jewish law. We next hear of him as spending three years in the desert with a hermit, and then as joining the Pharisees. The revolutionary tendencies of his countrymen brought on a war with the Romans, in the course of which Josephus, after the brave defence of a city under his command, was made prisoner by the Roman general Flavius Vespasian. Prophesying that Vespasian would one day wear the purple of the emperors, he alone of the captives was spared; the fulfilment of this prediction about three years later insured him the favor of the Flavian family, whose name he prefixed to his own. Vespasian’s son, Titus, he accompanied to the siege of Jerusalem, receiving at the hands of the victorious general after its capture the lives of two hundred and forty of his friends, together with the sacred volumes which he greatly prized. From the desolation of his country, Josephus returned to Rome as the honored guest of the emperor and his sons, during whose reigns he produced his great works,—“the History of the Jewish War” and “Jewish Antiquities.” These interesting standards, though written in a style which has led to their author’s being called “the Grecian Livy,” are yet tinged with vanity and skepticism. =Plutarch= (50-120 A.D.), the great biographer of antiquity, was born in Chæronea, a Bœotian town. After completing his education at Athens, he sailed to Egypt, and in Domitian’s reign (81-96 A.D.) visited Rome, where his lectures won golden opinions from the learned.