Translation: Evelyn Shuckburgh,
Introductory Note
Marcus Tullius Cicero, the greatest of Roman orators and the chief master of Latin
prose style, was born at Arpinum, Jan. 3, 106 B.C. His father, who was a man of property
and belonged to the class of the "Knights," moved to Rome when Cicero was a
child; and the future statesman received an elaborate education in rhetoric, law, and
philosophy, studying and practising under some of the most noted teachers of the time. He
began his career as an advocate at the age of twenty-five, and almost immediately came to
be recognized not only as a man of brilliant talents but also as a courageous upholder of
justice in the face of grave political danger. After two years of practice he left Rome to
travel in Greece and Asia, taking all the opportunities that offered to study his art
under distinguished masters. He returned to Rome greatly improved in health and in
professional skill, and in 76 B.C. was elected to the office of quaestor. He was assigned
to the province of Lilybaeum in Sicily, and the vigor and justice of his administration
earned him the gratitude of the inhabitants. It was at their request that he undertook in
70 B.C. the prosecution of Verres, who as praetor had subjected the Sicilians to
incredible extortion and oppression; and his successful conduct of this case, which ended
in the conviction and banishment of Verres, may be said to have launched him on his
political career. He became aedile in the same year, in 67 B.C. praetor, and in 64 B.C.
was elected consul by a large majority. The most important event of the year of his
consulship was the conspiracy of Catiline. This notorious criminal of patrician rank had
conspired with a number of others, many of them young men of high birth but dissipated
character, to seize the chief offices of the state, and to extricate themselves from the
pecuniary and other difficulties that had resulted from their excesses, by the wholesale
plunder of the city. The plot was unmasked by the vigilance of Cicero, five of the
traitors were summarily executed, and in the overthrow of the army that had been gathered
in their support Catiline himself perished. Cicero regarded himself as the savior of his
country, and his country for the moment seemed to give grateful assent.
But reverses were at hand. During the existence of the political combination of
Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus, known as the first triumvirate, P. Clodius, an enemy of
Cicero's, proposed a law banishing "any one who had put Roman citizens to death
without trial." This was aimed at Cicero on account of his share in the Catiline
affair, and in March, 58 B.C., he left Rome. The same day a law was passed by which he was
banished by name, and his property was plundered and destroyed, a temple to Liberty being
erected on the site of his house in the city. During his exile Cicero's manliness to some
extent deserted him. He drifted from place to place, seeking the protection of officials
against assassination, writing letters urging his supporters to agitate for his recall,
sometimes accusing them of lukewarmness and even treachery, bemoaning the ingratitude of
his country or regretting the course of action that had led to his outlawry, and suffering
from extreme depression over his separation from his wife and children and the wreck of
his political ambitions. Finally, in August, 57 B.C., the decree for his restoration was
passed, and he returned to Rome the next month, being received with immense popular
enthusiasm. During the next few years the renewal of the understanding among the triumvirs
shut Cicero out from any leading part in politics, and he resumed his activity in the law
courts, his most important case being, perhaps, the defense of Milo for the murder of
Clodius, Cicero's most troublesome enemy. This oration, in the revised form in which it
has come down to us, is ranked as among the finest specimens of the art of the orator,
though in its original form it failed to secure Milo's acquittal. Meantime, Cicero was
also devoting much time to literary composition, and his letters show great dejection over
the political situation, and a somewhat wavering attitude towards the various parties in
the state. In 51 B.C. he went to Cilicia in Asia Minor as proconsul, an office which he
administered with efficiency and integrity in civil affairs and with success in military.
He returned to Italy at the end of the following year, and he was publicly thanked by the
senate for his services, but disappointed in his hopes for a triumph. The war for
supremacy between Caesar and Pompey, which had for some time been gradually growing more
certain, broke out in 49 B.C., when Caesar led his army across the Rubicon, and Cicero
after much irresolution threw in his lot with Pompey, who was overthrown the next year in
the battle of Pharsalus and later murdered in Egypt. Cicero returned to Italy, where
Caesar treated him magnanimously, and for some time he devoted himself to philosophical
and rhetorical writing. In 46 B.C. he divorced his wife Terentia, to whom he had been
married for thirty years, and married the young and wealthy Publilia in order to relieve
himself from financial difficulties; but her also he shortly divorced. Caesar, who had now
become supreme in Rome, was assassinated in 44 B.C., and though Cicero was not a sharer in
the conspiracy, he seems to have approved the deed. In the confusion which followed he
supported the cause of the conspirators against Antony; and when finally the triumvirate
of Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus was established, Cicero was included among the
proscribed, and on December 7, 43 B.C., he was killed by agents of Antony. His head and
hand were cut off and exhibited at Rome.
The most important orations of the last months of his life were the fourteen
"Philippics" delivered against Antony, and the price of this enmity he paid with
his life.
To his contemporaries Cicero was primarily the great forensic and political orator
of his time, and the fifty-eight speeches which have come down to us bear testimony to the
skill, wit, eloquence, and passion which gave him his preeminence. But these speeches of
necessity deal with the minute details of the occasions which called them forth, and so
require for their appreciation a full knowledge of the history, political and personal, of
the time. The letters, on the other hand, are less elaborate both in style and in the
handling of current events, while they serve to reveal his personality, and to throw light
upon Roman life in the last days of the Republic in an extremely vivid fashion. Cicero as
a man, in spite of his self-importance, the vacillation of his political conduct in
desperate crises, and the whining despondency of his times of adversity, stands out as at
bottom a patriotic Roman of substantial honesty, who gave his life to check the inevitable
fall of the commonwealth to which he was devoted. The evils which were undermining the
Republic bear so many striking resemblances to those which threaten the civic and national
life of America today that the interest of the period is by no means merely historical.
As a philosopher, Cicero's most important function was to make his countrymen
familiar with the main schools of Greek thought. Much of this writing is thus of secondary
interest to us in comparison with his originals, but in the fields of religious theory and
of the application of philosophy to life he made important first-hand contributions. From
these works has been selected the following treatise, On Old Age, which has proved of most
permanent and widespread interest to posterity, and which gives a clear impression of the
way in which a high-minded Roman thought about some of the main problems of human life.
Part I.
1. And should my service, Titus, ease the weight Of care that wrings your heart, and
draw the sting Which rankles there, what guerdon shall there be?
For I may address you, Atticus, in the lines in which Flamininus was addressed by the
man
who, poor in wealth, was rich in honour's gold,
though I am well assured that you are not, as Flamininus was,
kept on the rack of care by night and day.
For I know how well - ordered and equable your mind is, and am fully aware that it was
not a surname alone which you brought home with you from Athens, but its culture and good
sense. And yet I have an idea that you are at times stirred to the heart by the same
circumstances as myself. To console you for these is a more serious matter, and must be
put off to another time. For the present I have resolved to dedicate to you an essay on
Old Age. For from the burden of impending or at least advancing age, common to us both, I
would do something to relieve us both: though as to yourself I am fully aware that you
support and will support it, as you do everything else, with calmness and philosophy. But
directly I resolved to write on old age, you at once occurred to me as deserving a gift of
which both of us might take advantage. To myself, indeed, the composition of this book has
been so delightful that it has not only wiped away all the disagreeables of old age, but
has even made it luxurious and delightful too. Never, therefore, can philosophy be praised
as highly as it deserves, considering that its faithful disciple is able to spend every
period of his life with unruffled feelings. However, on other subjects I have spoken at
large, and shall often speak again: this book which I herewith send you is on Old Age. I
have put the whole discourse not, as Alisto of Cos did, in the mouth of Tithonus - for a
mere fable would have lacked conviction - but in that of Marcus Cato when he was an old
man, to give my essay greater weight. I represent Laelius and Scipio at his house
expressing surprise at his carrying his years so lightly, and Cato answering them. If he
shall seem to shew somewhat more learning in this discourse than he generally did in his
own books, put it down to the Greek literature of which it is known that he became an
eager student in his old age. But what need of more? Cato's own words will at once explain
all I feel about old age.
M. Cato. Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (the younger). Gaius Laelius.
2. Scipio. Many a time have I in conversation with my friend Gaius Laelius here
expressed my admiration, Marcus Cato, of the eminent, nay perfect, wisdom displayed by you
indeed at all points, but above everything because I have noticed that old age never
seemed a burden to you, while to most old men it is so hateful that they declare
themselves under a weight heavier than Aetna.
Cato. Your admiration is easily excited, it seems, my dear Scipio and Laelius. Men, of
course, who have no resources in themselves for securing a good and happy life find every
age burdensome. But those who look for all happiness from within can never think anything
bad which Nature makes inevitable. In that category before anything else comes old age, to
which all wish to attain, and at which all grumble when attained. Such is Folly's
inconsistency and unreasonableness! They say that it is stealing upon them faster than
they expected. In the first place, who compelled them to hug an illusion? For in what
respect did old age steal upon manhood faster than manhood upon childhood? In the next
place, in what way would old age have been less disagreeable to them if they were in their
eight - hundredth year than in their eightieth? For their past, however long, when once it
was past, would have no consolation for a stupid old age. Wherefore, if it is your wont to
admire my wisdom - and I would that it were worthy of your good opinion and of my own
surname of Sapiens - it really consists in the fact that I follow Nature, the best of
guides, as I would a god, and am loyal to her commands. It is not likely, if she has
written the rest of the play well, that she has been careless about the last act like some
idle poet. But after all some "last" was inevitable, just as to the berries of a
tree and the fruits of the earth there comes in the fulness of time a period of decay and
fall. A wise man will not make a grievance of this. To rebel against Nature - is not that
to fight like the giants with the gods?
Laelius. And yet, Cato, you will do us a very great favour (I venture to speak for
Scipio as for myself) if - since we all hope, or at least wish, to become old men - you
would allow us to learn from you in good time before it arrives, by what methods we may
most easily acquire the strength to support the burden of advancing age.
Cato. I will do so without doubt, Laelius, especially if, as you say, it will be
agreeable to you both.
Laelius. We do wish very much, Cato, if it is no trouble to you, to be allowed to see
the nature of the bourne which you have reached after completing a long journey, as it
were, upon which we too are bound to embark.
3. Cato. I will do the best I can, Laelius. It has often been my fortune to hear the
complaints of my contemporaries - like will to like, you know, according to the old
proverb - complaints to which men like C. Salinator and Sp. Albinus, who were of consular
rank and about my time, used to give vent. They were, first, that they had lost the
pleasures of the senses, without which they did not regard life as life at all; and,
secondly, that they were neglected by those from whom they had been used to receive
attentions. Such men appear to me to lay the blame on the wrong thing. For if it had been
the fault of old age, then these same misfortunes would have befallen me and all other men
of advanced years. But I have known many of them who never said a word of complaint
against old age; for they were only too glad to be freed from the bondage of passion, and
were not at all looked down upon by their friends. The fact is that the blame for all
complaints of that kind is to be charged to character, not to a particular time of life.
For old men who are reasonable and neither cross - grained nor churlish find old age
tolerable enough: whereas unreason and churlishness cause uneasiness at every time of
life.
Laelius. It is as you say, Cato. But perhaps some one may suggest that it is your large
means, wealth, and high position that make you think old age tolerable: whereas such good
fortune only falls to few.
Cato. There is something in that, Laelius, but by no means all. For instance, the story
is told of the answer of Themistocles in a wrangle with a certain Seriphian, who asserted
that he owed his brilliant position to the reputation of his country, not to his own.
"If I had been a Seriphian," said he, "even I should never have been
famous, nor would you if you had been an Athenian." Something like this may be said
of old age. For the philosopher himself could not find old age easy to bear in the depths
of poverty, nor the fool feel it anything but a burden though he were a millionaire. You
may be sure, my dear Scipio and Laelius, that the arms best adapted to old age are culture
and the active exercise of the virtues. For if they have been maintained at every period -
if one has lived much as well as long - the harvest they produce is wonderful, not only
because they never fail us even in our last days (though that in itself is supremely
important), but also because the consciousness of a well - spent life and the recollection
of many virtuous actions are exceedingly delightful.
4. Take the case of Q. Fabius Maximus, the man, I mean, who recovered Tarentum. When I
was a young man and he an old one, I was as much attached to him as if he had been my
contemporary. For that great man's serious dignity was tempered by courteous manners, nor
had old age made any change in his character. True, he was not exactly an old man when my
devotion to him began, yet he was nevertheless well on in life; for his first consulship
fell in the year after my birth. When quite a stripling I went with him in his fourth
consulship as a soldier in the ranks, on the expedition against Capua, and in the fifth
year after that against Tarentum. Four years after that I was elected quaestor, holding
office in the consulship of Tuditanus and Cethegus, in which year, indeed, he as a very
old man spoke in favour of the Cincian law "on gifts and fees."
Now this man conducted wars with all the spirit of youth when he was far advanced in
life, and by his persistence gradually wearied out Hannibal, when rioting in all the
confidence of youth. How brilliant are those lines of my friend Ennius on him!
For us, down beaten by the storms of fate, One man by wise delays restored the State.
Praise or dispraise moved not his constant mood, True to his purpose, to his country's
good! Down ever - lengthening avenues of fame Thus shines and shall shine still his
glorious name.
Again, what vigilance, what profound skill did he shew in the capture of Tarentum! It
was indeed in my hearing that he made the famous retort to Salinator, who had retreated
into the citadel after losing the town: "It was owing to me, Quintus Fabius, that you
retook Tarentum." "Quite so," he replied with a laugh; "for had you
not lost it, I should never have recovered it." Nor was he less eminent in civil life
than in war. In his second consulship, though his colleague would not move in the matter,
he resisted as long as he could the proposal of the tribune C. Flaminius to divide the
territory of the Picenians and Gauls in free allotments in defiance of a resolution of the
Senate. Again, though he was an augur, he ventured to say that whatever was done in the
interests of the State was done with the best possible auspices, that any laws proposed
against its interest were proposed against the auspices. I was cognisant of much that was
admirable in that great man, but nothing struck me with greater astonishment than the way
in which he bore the death of his son - a man of brilliant character and who had been
consul. His funeral speech over him is in wide circulation, and when we read it, is there
any philosopher of whom we do not think meanly? Nor in truth was he only great in the
light of day and in the sight of his fellow - citizens; he was still more eminent in
private and at home. What a wealth of conversation! What weighty maxims! What a wide
acquaintance with ancient history! What an accurate knowledge of the science of augury!
For a Roman, too, he had a great tincture of letters. He had a tenacious memory for
military history of every sort, whether of Roman or foreign wars. And I used at that time
to enjoy his conversation with a passionate eagerness, as though I already divined, what
actually turned out to be the case, that when he died there would be no one to teach me
anything.
5. What then is the purpose of such a long disquisition on Maximus? It is because you
now see that an old age like his cannot conscientiously be called unhappy. Yet it is after
all true that everybody cannot be a Scipio or a Maximus, with stormings of cities, with
battles by land and sea, with wars in which they themselves commanded, and with triumphs
to recall. Besides this there is a quiet, pure, and cultivated life which produces a calm
and gentle old age, such as we have been told Plato's was, who died at his writing - desk
in his eighty - first year; or like that of Isocrates, who says that he wrote the book
called The Panegyric in his ninety - fourth year, and who lived for five years afterwards;
while his master Gorgias of Leontini completed a hundred and seven years without ever
relaxing his diligence or giving up work. When some one asked him why he consented to
remain so long alive - "I have no fault," said he, "to find with old
age." That was a noble answer, and worthy of a scholar. For fools impute their own
frailties and guilt to old age, contrary to the practice of Ennius, whom I mentioned just
now. In the lines
Like some brave steed that oft before The Olympic wreath of victory bore, Now by the
weight of years oppressed, Forgets the race, and takes his rest
he compares his own old age to that of a high - spirited and successful race horse. And
him indeed you may very well remember. For the present consuls Titus Flamininus and Manius
Acilius were elected in the nineteenth year after his death; and his death occurred in the
consulship of Capeio and Philippus, the latter consul for the second time: in which year
I, then sixty - six years old, spoke in favour of the Voconian law in a voice that was
still strong and with lungs still sound; while he, though seventy years old, supported two
burdens considered the heaviest of all - poverty and old age in such a way as to be all
but fond of them.
The fact is that when I come to think it over, I find that there are four reasons for
old age being thought unhappy: First, that it withdraws us from active employments;
second, that it enfeebles the body; third, that it deprives us of nearly all physical
pleasures; fourth, that it is the next step to death. Of each of these reasons, if you
will allow me, let us examine the force and justice separately.
6. Old age withdraws us from active employments. From which of them? Do you mean from
those carried on by youth and bodily strength? Are there then no old men's employments to
be after all conducted by the intellect, even when bodies are weak? So then Q. Maximus did
nothing; nor L. Aemilius - your father, Scipio, and my excellent son's father - in - law!
So with other old men - the Fabricii, the Curii and Coruncanii - when they were supporting
the State by their advice and influence, they were doing nothing! To old age Appius
Claudius had the additional disadvantage of being blind; yet it was he who, when the
Senate was inclining towards a peace with Pyrrhus and was for making a treaty, did not
hesitate to say what Ennius has embalmed in the verses:
Whither have swerved the souls so firm of yore? Is sense grown senseless? Can feet
stand no more?
And so on in a tone of the most passionate vehemence. You know the poem, and the speech
of Appius himself is extant. Now, he delivered it seventeen years after his second
consulship, there having been an interval of ten years between the two consulships, and he
having been censor before his previous consulship. This will show you that at the time of
the war with Pyrrhus he was a very old man. Yet this is the story handed down to us.
There is therefore nothing in the arguments of those who say that old age takes no part
in public business. They are like men who would say that a steersman does nothing in
sailing a ship, because, while some of the crew are climbing the masts, others hurrying up
and down the gangways, others pumping out the bilge water, he sits quietly in the stern
holding the tiller. He does not do what young men do; nevertheless he does what is much
more important and better. The great affairs of life are not performed by physical
strength, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but by deliberation, character, expression
of opinion. Of these old age is not only not deprived, but, as a rule, has them in a
greater degree. Unless by any chance I, who as a soldier in the ranks, as military
tribune, as legate, and as consul have been employed in various kinds of war, now appear
to you to be idle because not actively engaged in war. But I enjoin upon the Senate what
is to be done, and how. Carthage has long been harbouring evil designs, and I accordingly
proclaim war against her in good time. I shall never cease to entertain fears about her
till I hear of her having been levelled with the ground. The glory of doing that I pray
that the immortal gods may reserve for you, Scipio, so that you may complete the task
begun by your grandfather, now dead more than thirty - two years ago; though all years to
come will keep that great man's memory green. He died in the year before my censorship,
nine years after my consulship, having been returned consul for the second time in my own
consulship. If then he had lived to his hundredth year, would he have regretted having
lived to be old? For he would of course not have been practising rapid marches, nor
dashing on a foe, nor hurling spears from a distance, nor using swords at close quarters -
but only counsel, reason, and senatorial eloquence. And if those qualities had not resided
in us seniors, our ancestors would never have called their supreme council a Senate. At
Sparta, indeed, those who hold the highest magistracies are in accordance with the fact
actually called "elders." But if you will take the trouble to read or listen to
foreign history, you will find that the mightiest States have been brought into peril by
young men, have been supported and restorte by old. The question occurs in the poet
Naevius' Sport:
Pray, who are those who brought your State With such despatch to meet its fate?
There is a long answer, but this is the chief point:
A crop of brand - new orators we grew, And foolish, paltry lads who thought they knew.
For of course rashness is the note of youth, prudence of old age.
7. But, it is said, memory dwindles. No doubt, unless you keep it in practice, or if
you happen to be somewhat dull by nature. Themistocles had the names of all his fellow -
citizens by heart. Do you imagine that in his old age he used to address Aristides as
Lysimachus? For my part, I know not only the present generation, but their father, also,
and their grandfathers. Nor have I any fear of losing my memory by reading tombstones,
according to the vulgar superstition. On the contrary, by reading them I renew my memory
of those who are dead and gone. Nor, in point of fact, have I ever heard of any old man
forgetting where he had hidden his money. They remember everything that interests them:
when to answer to their bail, business appointments, who owes them money, and to whom they
owe it. What about lawyers, pontiffs, augurs, philosophers, when old? What a multitude of
things they remember! Old men retain their intellects well enough, if only they keep their
minds active and fully employed. Nor is that the case only with men of high position and
great office: it applies equally to private life and peaceful pursuits. Sophocles composed
tragedies to extreme old age; and being believed to neglect the care of his property owing
to his devotion to his art, his sons brought him into court to get a judicial decision
depriving him of the management of his property on the ground of weak intellect - just as
in our law it is customary to deprive a paterfamilias of the management of his property if
he is squandering it. Thereupon the old poet is said to have read to the judges the play
he had on hand and had just composed - the Oedipus Coloneus - and to have asked them
whether they thought that the work of a man of weak intellect. After the reading he was
acquitted by the jury. Did old age then compel this man to become silent in his particular
art, or Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, or Isocrates and Gorgias, whom I mentioned before, or
the founders of schools of philosophy, Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, Xenocrates, or later
Zeno and Cleanthus, or Diogenes the Stoic, whom you too saw at Rome? Is it not rather the
case with all these that the active pursuit of study only ended with life?
But, to pass over these sublime studies, I can name some rustic Romans from the Sabine
district, neighbours and friends of my own, without whose presence farm work of importance
is scarcely ever performed - whether sowing, or harvesting or storing crops. And yet in
other things this is less surprising; for no one is so old as to think that he may not
live a year. But they bestow their labour on what they know does not affect them in any
case:
He plants his trees to serve a race to come,
as our poet Statius says in his Comrades. Nor indeed would a farmer, however old,
hesitate to answer any one who asked him for whom he was planting: "For the immortal
gods, whose will it was that I should not merely receive these things from my ancestors,
but should also hand them on to the next generation."
8. That remark about the old man is better than the following:
If age brought nothing worse than this, It were enough to mar our bliss, That he who
bides for many years Sees much to shun and much for tears.
Yes, and perhaps much that gives him pleasure too. Besides, as to subjects for tears,
he often comes upon them in youth as well.
A still more questionable sentiment in the same Caecilius is:
No greater misery can of age be told Than this: be sure, the young dislike the old.
Delight in them is nearer the mark than dislike. For just as old men, if they are wise,
take pleasure in the society of young men of good parts, and as old age is rendered less
dreary for those who are courted and liked by the youth, so also do young men find
pleasure in the maxims of the old, by which they are drawn to the pursuit of excellence.
Nor do I perceive that you find my society less pleasant than I do yours. But this is
enough to show you how, so far from being listless and sluggish, old age is even a busy
time, always doing and attempting something, of course of the same nature as each man's
taste had been in the previous part of his life. Nay, do not some even add to their stock
of learning? We see Solon, for instance, boasting in his poems that he grows old
"daily learning something new." Or again in my own case, it was only when an old
man that I became acquainted with Greek literature, which in fact I absorbed with such
avidity - in my yearning to quench, as it were, a long - continued thirst - that I became
acquainted with the very facts which you see me now using as precedents. When I heard what
Socrates had done about the lyre I should have liked for my part to have done that too,
for the ancients used to learn the lyre, but, at any rate, I worked hard at literature.
9. Nor, again, do I now miss the bodily strength of a young man (for that was the
second point as to the disadvantages of old age) any more than as a young man I missed the
strength of a bull or an elephant. You should use what you have, and whatever you may
chance to be doing, do it with all your might. What could be weaker than Milo of Croton's
exclamation? When in his old age he was watching some athletes practising in the course,
he is said to have looked at his arms and to have exclaimed with tears in his eyes:
"Ah, well! these are now as good as dead." Not a bit more so than yourself, you
trifler! For at no time were you made famous by your real self, but by chest and biceps.
Sext. Aelius never gave vent to such a remark, nor, many years before him, Titus
Coruncanius, nor, more recently, P. Crassus - all of them learned jurisconsults in active
practice, whose knowledge of their profession was maintained to their last breath. I am
afraid an orator does lose vigour by old age, for his art is not a matter of the intellect
alone, but of lungs and bodily strength. Though as a rule that musical ring in the voice
even gains in brilliance in a certain way as one grows old - certainly I have not yet lost
it, and you see my years. Yet after all the style of speech suitable to an old man is the
quiet and unemotional, and it often happens that the chastened and calm delivery of an old
man eloquent secures a hearing. If you cannot attain to that yourself, you might still
instruct a Scipio and a Laelius. For what is more charming than old age surrounded by the
enthusiasm of youth? Shall we not allow old age even the strength to teach the young, to
train and equip them for all the duties of life? And what can be a nobler employment? For
my part, I used to think Publius and Gnaeus Scipio and your two grandfathers, L. Aemilius
and P. Africanus, fortunate men when I saw them with a company of young nobles about them.
Nor should we think any teachers of the fine arts otherwise than happy, however much their
bodily forces may have decayed and failed. And yet that same failure of the bodily forces
is more often brought about by the vices of youth than of old age; for a dissolute and
intemperate youth hands down the body to old age in a worn - out state. Xenophon's Cyrus,
for instance, in his discourse delivered on his death - bed and at a very advanced age,
says that he never perceived his old age to have become weaker than his youth had been. I
remember as a boy Lucius Metellus, who, having been created Pontifex Maximus four years
after his second consulship, held that office twenty - two years, enjoying such excellent
strength of body in the very last hours of his life as not to miss his youth. I need not
speak of myself; though that indeed is an old man's way and is generally allowed to my
time of life. Don't you see in Homer how frequently Nestor talks of his own good
qualities? For he was living through a third generation; nor had he any reason to fear
that upon saying what was true about himself he should appear either over vain or
talkative. For, as Homer says, "from his lips flowed discourse sweeter than
honey," for which sweet breath he wanted no bodily strength. And yet, after all, the
famous leader of the Greeks nowhere wishes to have ten men like Ajax, but like Nestor: if
he could get them, he feels no doubt of Troy shortly falling.
10. But to return to my own case: I am in my eighty - fourth year. I could wish that I
had been able to make the same boast as Cyrus; but, after all, I can say this: I am not
indeed as vigorous as I was as a private soldier in the Punic war, or as quaestor in the
same war, or as consul in Spain, and four years later when as a military tribune I took
part in the engagement at Thermopylae under the consul Manius Acilius Glabrio; but yet, as
you see, old age has not entirely destroyed my muscles, has not quite brought me to the
ground. The Senate - house does not find all my vigour gone, nor the rostra, nor my
friends, nor my clients, nor my foreign guests. For I have never given in to that ancient
and much - praised proverb:
Old when young
Is old for long.
For myself, I had rather be an old man a somewhat shorter time than an old man before
my time. Accordingly, no one up to the present has wished to see me, to whom I have been
denied as engaged. But, it may be said, I have less strength than either of you. Neither
have you the strength of the centurion T. Pontius: is he the more eminent man on that
account? Let there be only a proper husbanding of strength, and let each man proportion
his efforts to his powers. Such an one will assuredly not be possessed with any great
regret for his loss of strength. At Olympia Milo is said to have stepped into the course
carrying a live ox on his shoulders. Which then of the two would you prefer to have given
to you - bodily strength like that, or intellectual strength like that of Pythagoras? In
fine, enjoy that blessing when you have it; when it is gone, don't wish it back - unless
we are to think that young men should wish their childhood back, and those somewhat older
their youth! The course of life is fixed, and nature admits of its being run but in one
way, and only once; and to each part of our life there is something specially seasonable;
so that the feebleness of children, as well as the high spirit of youth, the soberness of
maturer years, and the ripe wisdom of old age - all have a certain natural advantage which
should be secured in its proper season. I think you are informed, Scipio, what your
grandfather's foreign friend Masinissa does to this day, though ninety years old. When he
has once begun a journey on foot he does not mount his horse at all; when on horseback he
never gets off his horse. By no rain or cold can he be induced to cover his head. His body
is absolutely free from unhealthy humours, and so he still performs all the duties and
functions of a king. Active exercise, therefore, and temperance can preserve some part of
one's former strength even in old age.
11. Bodily strength is wanting to old age; but neither is bodily strength demanded from
old men. Therefore, both by law and custom, men of my time of life are exempt from those
duties which cannot be supported without bodily strength. Accordingly not only are we not
forced to do what we cannot do; we are not even obliged to do as much as we can. But, it
will be said, many old men are so feeble that they cannot perform any duty in life of any
sort or kind. That is not a weakness to be set down as peculiar to old age: it is one
shared by ill health. How feeble was the son of P. Africanus, who adopted you! What weak
health he had, or rather no health at all! If that had not been the case, we should have
had in him a second brilliant light in the political horizon; for he had added a wider
cultivation to his father's greatness of spirit. What wonder then, that old men are
eventually feeble, when even young mencannot escape it? My dear Laelius and Scipio, we
must stand up against old age and make up for its drawbacks by taking pains. We must fight
it as we should an illness. We must look after our health, use moderate exercise, take
just enough food and drink to recruit, but not to overload, our strength. Nor is it the
body alone that must be supported, but the intellect and soul much more. For they are like
lamps: unless you feed them with oil, they too go out from old age. Again, the body is apt
to get gross from exercise; but the intellect becomes nimbler by exercising itself. For
what Caecilius means by "old dotards of the comic stage" are the credulous, the
forgetful, and the slipshod. These are faults that do not attach to old age as such, but
to a sluggish, spiritless, and sleepy old age. Young men are more frequently wanton and
dissolute than old men; but yet, as it is not all young men that are so, but the bad set
among them, even so senile folly - usually called imbecility applies to old men of unsound
character, not to all. Appius governed four sturdy sons, five daughters, that great
establishment, and all those clients, though he was both old and blind. For he kept his
mind at full stretch like a bow, and never gave in to old age by growing slack. He
maintained not merely an influence but an absolute command over his family: his slaves
feared him, his sons were in awe of him, all loved him. In that family, indeed, ancestral
custom and discipline were in full vigour. The fact is that old age is respectable just as
long as it asserts itself, maintains its proper rights, and is not enslaved to any one.
For as I admire a young man who has something of the old man in him, so do I an old one
who has something of a young man. The man who aims at this may possibly become old in body
- in mind he never will. I am now engaged in composing the seventh book of my Origins. I
collect all the records of antiquity. The speeches delivered in all the celebrated cases
which I have defended I am at this particular time getting into shape for publication. I
am writing treatises on augural, pontifical, and civil law. I am, besides, studying hard
at Greek, and after the manner of the Pythagoreans -
to keep my memory in working order - I repeat in the evening whatever I have said, heard,
or done in the course of each day. These are the exercises of the intellect, these the
training - grounds of the mind: while I sweat and labour on these I don't much feel the
loss of bodily strength. I appear in court for my friends; I frequently attend the Senate
and bring motions before it on my own responsibility, prepared after deep and long
reflection. And these I support by my intellectual, not my bodily forces. And if I were
not strong enough to do these things, yet I should enjoy my sofa imagining the very
operations which I was now unable to perform. But what makes me capable of doing this is
my past life. For a man who is always living in the midst of these studies and labours
does not perceive when old age creeps upon him. Thus, by slow and imperceptible degrees
life draws to its end. There is no sudden breakage; it just slowly goes out.
Part II.
12. The third charge against old age is that it lacks sensual pleasures. What a
splendid service does old age render, if it takes from us the greatest blot of youth!
Listen, my dear young friends, to a speech of Archytas of Tarentum, among the greatest and
most illustrious of men, which was put into my hands when as a young man I was at Tarentum
with Q. Maximus. "No ore deadly curse than sensual pleasure has been inflicted on
mankind by nature, to gratify which our wanton appetites are roused beyond all prudence or
restraint. It is a fruitful source of treasons, revolutions, secret communications with
the enemy. In fact, there is no crime, no evil deed, to which the appetite for sensual
pleasures does not impel us. Fornications and adulteries, and every abomination of that
kind, are brought about by the enticements of pleasure and by them alone. Intellect is the
best gift of nature or God: to this divine gift and endowment there is nothing so inimical
as pleasure. For when appetite is our master, there is no place for self control; nor
where pleasure reigns supreme can virtue hold its ground. To see this more vividly,
imagine a man excited to the highest conceivable pitch of sensual pleasure. It can be
doubtful to no one that such a person, so long as he is under the influence of such
excitation of the senses, will be unable to use to any purpose either intellect, reason,
or thought. Therefore nothing can be so execrable and so fatal as pleasure; since, when
more than ordinarily violent and lasting, it darkens all the light of the soul."
These were the words addressed by Archytas to the Samnite Gaius Pontius, father of the
man by whom the consuls Spurius Postumius and Titus Veturius were beaten in the battle of
Caudium. My friend Nearchus of Tarentum, who had remained loyal to Rome, told me that he
had heard them repeated by some old men; and that Plato the Athenian was present, who
visited Tarentum, I find, in the consulship of L. Camillus and Appius Claudius.
What is the point of all this? It is to show you that, if we were unable to scorn
pleasure by the aid of reason and philosophy, we ought to have been very grateful to old
age for depriving us of all inclination for that which it was wrong to do. For pleasure
hinders thought, is a foe to reason, and, so to speak, blinds the eyes of the mind. It is,
moreover, entirely alien to virtue. I was sorry to have to expel Lucius, brother of the
gallant Titus Flamininus, from the Senate seven years after his consulship; but I thought
it imperative to affix a stigma on an act of gross sensuality. For when he was in Gaul as
consul, he had yielded to the entreaties of his paramour at a dinner - party to behead a
man who happened to be in prison condemned on a capital charge. When his brother Titus was
Censor, who preceded me, he escaped; but I and Flaccus could not countenance an act of
such criminal and abandoned lust, especially as, besides the personal dishonour, it
brought disgrace on the Government.
13. I have often been told by men older than myself, who said that they had heard it as
boys from old men, that Gaius Fabricius was in the habit of expressing astonishment at
having heard, when envoy at the headquarters of King Pyrrhus, from the Thessalian Cineas,
that there was a man of Athens who professed to be a "philosopher," and affirmed
that everything we did was to be referred to pleasure. When he told this to Manius Curius
and Publius Decius, they used to remark that they wished that the Samnites and Pyrrhus
himself would hold the same opinion. It would be much easier to conquer them, if they had
once given themselves over to sensual indulgences. Manius Curius had been intimate with P.
Decius, who four years before the former's consulship had devoted himself to death for the
Republic. Both Fabricius and Coruncanius knew him also, and from the experience of their
own lives, as well as from the action of P. Decius, they were of opinion that there did
exist something intrinsically noble and great, which was sought for its own sake, and at
which all the best men aimed, to the contempt and neglect of pleasure. Why then do I spend
so many words on the subject of pleasure? Why, because, far from being a charge against
old age, that it does not much feel the want of any pleasures, it is its highest praise.
But, you will say, it is deprived of the pleasures of the table, the heaped - up board,
the rapid passing of the wine - cup. Well, then, it is also free from headache, disordered
digestion, broken sleep. But if we must grant pleasure something, since we do not find it
easy to resist its charms, - for Plato, with happy inspiration, calls pleasure
"vice's bait," because of course men are caught by it as fish by a hook, - yet,
although old age has to abstain from extravagant banquets, it is still capable of enjoying
modest festivities. As a boy I often used to see Gaius Duilius, the son of Marcus, then an
old man, returning from a dinner - party. He thoroughly enjoyed the frequent use of torch
and flute - player, distinctions which he had assumed though unprecedented in the case of
a private person. It was the privilege of his glory. But why mention others? I will come
back to my own case. To begin with, I have always remained a member of a "club"
- clubs, you know, were established in my quaestorship on the reception of the Magna Mater
from Ida. So I used to dine at their feast with the members of my club - on the whole with
moderation, though there was a certain warmth of temperament natural to my time of life;
but as that advances there is a daily decrease of all excitement. Nor was I, in fact, ever
wont to measure my enjoyment even of these banquets by the physical pleasures they gave
more than by the gathering and conversation of friends. For it was a good idea of our
ancestors to style the presence of guests at a dinner - table - seeing that it implied a
community of enjoyment - a convivium, "a living together." It is a better term
than the Greek words which mean "a drinking together" or "an eating
together." For they would seem to give the preference to what is really the least
important part of it.
14. For myself, owing to the pleasure I take in conversation, I enjoy even banquets
that begin early in the afternoon, and not only in company with my contemporaries - of
whom very few survive - but also with men of your age and with yourselves. I am thankful
to old age, which has increased my avidity for conversation, while it has removed that for
eating and drinking. But if any one does enjoy these - not to seem to have proclaimed war
against all pleasure without exception, which is perhaps a feeling inspired by nature - I
fail to perceive even in these very pleasures that old age is entirely without the power
of appreciation. For myself, I take delight even in the old fashioned appointment of
master of the feast; and in the arrangement of the conversation, which according to
ancestral custom is begun from the last place on the left - hand couch when the wine is
brought in; as also in the cups which, as in Xenophon's banquet, are small and filled by
driblets; and in the contrivance for cooling in summer, and for warming by the winter sun
or winter fire. These things I keep up even among my Sabine countrymen, and every day have
a full dinner - party of neighbours, which we prolong as far into the night as we can with
varied conversation.
But you may urge - there is not the same tingling sensation of pleasure in old men. No
doubt; but neither do they miss it so much. For nothing gives you uneasiness which you do
not miss. That was a fine answer of Sophocles to a man who asked him, when in extreme old
age, whether he was still a lover. "Heaven forbid!" he replied; "I was only
too glad to escape from that, as though from a boorish and insane master." To men
indeed who are keen after such things it may possibly appear disagreeable and
uncomfortable to be without them; but to jaded appetites it is pleasanter to lack than to
enjoy. However, he cannot be said to lack who does not want: my contention is that not to
want is the pleasanter thing.
But even granting that youth enjoys these pleasures with more zest; in the first place,
they are insignificant things to enjoy, as I have said; and in the second place, such as
age is not entirely without, if it does not possess them in profusion. Just as a man gets
greater pleasure from Ambivius Turpio if seated in the front row at the theatre than if he
was in the last, yet, after all, the man in the last row does get pleasure; so youth,
because it looks at pleasures at closer quarters, perhaps enjoys itself more, yet even old
age, looking at them from a distance, does enjoy itself well enough. Why, what blessings
are these - that the soul, having served its time, so to speak, in the campaigns of desire
and ambition, rivalry and hatred, and all the passions, should live in its own thoughts,
and, as the expression goes, should dwell apart! Indeed, if it has in store any of what I
may call the food of study and philosophy, nothing can be pleasanter than an old age of
leisure. We were witnesses to C. Gallus - a friend of your father's, Scipio - intent to
the day of his death on mapping out the sky and land. How often did the light surprise him
while still working out a problem begun during the night! How often did night find him
busy on what he had begun at dawn! How he delighted in predicting for us solar and lunar
eclipses long before they occurred! Or again in studies of a lighter nature, though still
requiring keenness of intellect, what pleasure Naevius took in his Punic War! Plautus in
his Truculentus and Pseudolus! I even saw Livius Andronicus, who, having produced a play
six years before I was born - in the consulship of Cento and Tuditanus - lived till I had
become a young man. Why speak of Publius Licinius Crassus' devotion to pontifical and
civil law, or of the Publius Scipio of the present time, who within these last few days
has been created Pontifex Maximus? And yet I have seen all whom I have mentioned ardent in
these pursuits when old men. Then there is Marcus Cethegus, whom Ennius justly called
"Persuasion's Marrow" - with what enthusiasm did we see him exert himself in
oratory even when quite old! What pleasures are there is feasts, games, or mistresses
comparable to pleasures such as these? And they are all tastes, too, connected with
learning, which in men of sense and good education grow with their growth. It is indeed an
honourable sentiment which Solon expresses in a verse which I have quoted before - that he
grew old learning many a fresh lesson every day. Than that intellectual pleasure none
certainly can be greater.
15. I come now to the pleasures of the farmer, in which I take amazing delight. These
are not hindered by any extent of old age, and seem to me to approach nearest to the ideal
wise man's life. For he has to deal with the earth, which never refuses its obedience, nor
ever returns what it has received without usury; sometimes, indeed, with less, but
generally with greater interest. For my part, however, it is not merely the thing
produced, but the earth's own force and natural productiveness that delight me. For having
received in its bosom the seed scattered broadcast upon it, softened and broken up, she
first keeps it concealed therein (hence the harrowing which accomplishes this gets its
name from a word meaning "to hide"); next, when it has been warmed by her heat
and close pressure, she splits it open and draws from it the greenery of the blade. This,
supported by the fibres of the root, little by little grows up, and held upright by its
jointed stalk is enclosed in sheaths, as being still immature. When it has emerged from
them it produces an ear of corn arranged in order, and is defended against the pecking of
the smaller birds by a regular palisade of spikes.
Need I mention the starting, planting, and growth of vines? I can never have too much
of this pleasure - to let you into the secret of what gives my old age repose and
amusement. For I say nothing here of the natural force which all things propagated from
the earth possess - the earth which from that tiny grain in a fig, or the grapestone in a
grape, or the most minute seeds of the other cereals and plants, produces such huge trunks
and boughs. Mallet shoots, slips, cuttings, quicksets, layers - are they not enough to
fill any one with delight and astonishment? The vine by nature is apt to fall, and unless
supported drops down to the earth; yet in order to keep itself upright it embraces
whatever it reaches with its tendrils as though they were hands. Then as it creeps on,
spreading itself in intricate and wild profusion, the dresser's art prunes it with the
knife and prevents it growing a forest of shoots and expanding to excess in every
direction. Accordingly at the beginning of spring in the shoots which have been left there
protrudes at each of the joints what is termed an "eye." From this the grape
emerges and shows itself; which, swollen by the juice of the earth and the heat of the
sun, is at first very bitter to the taste, but afterwards grows sweet as it matures; and
being covered with tendrils is never without a moderate warmth, and yet is able to ward
off the fiery heat of the sun. Can anything be richer in product or more beautiful to
contemplate? It is not its utility only, as I said before, that charms me, but the method
of its cultivation and the natural process of its growth: the rows of uprights, the cross
- pieces for the tops of the plants, the tying up of the vines and their propagation by
layers, the pruning, to which I have already referred, of some shoots, the setting of
others. I need hardly mention irrigation, or trenching and digging the soil, which much
increase its fertility. As to the advantages of manuring I have spoken in my book on
agriculture. The learned Hesiod did not say a single word on this subject, though he was
writing on the cultivation of the soil; yet Homer, who in my opinion was many generations
earlier, represents Laertes as softening his regret for his son by cultivating and
manuring his farm. Nor is it only in cornfields and meadows and vineyards and plantations
that a farmer's life is made cheerful. There are the garden and the orchard, the feeding
of sheep, the swarms of bees, endless varieties of flowers. Nor is it only planting out
that charms: there is also grafting - surely the most ingenious invention ever made by
husbandmen.
16. I might continue my list of the delights of country life; but even what I have said
I think is somewhat overlong. However, you must pardon me; for farming is a very favourite
hobby of mine, and old age is naturally rather garrulous - for I would not be thought to
acquit it of all faults.
Well, it was in a life of this sort that Manius Curius, after celebrating triumphs over
the Samnites, the Sabines, and Pyrrhus, spent his last days. When I look at his villa -
for it is not far from my own - I never can enough admire the man's own frugality or the
spirit of the age. As Curius was sitting at his hearth the Samnites, who brought him a
large sum of gold, were repulsed by him; for it was not, he said, a fine thing in his eyes
to possess gold, but to rule those who possessed it. Could such a high spirit fail to make
old age pleasant?
But to return to farmers - not to wander from my own metier. In those days there were
senators, i.e., old men, on their farms. For L. Quinctius Cincinnatus was actually at the
plough when word was brought him that he had been named Dictator. It was by his order as
Dictator, by the way, that C. Servilius Ahala, the Master of the Horse, seized and put to
death Spurius Maelius when attempting to obtain royal power. Curius as well as other old
men used to receive their summonses to attend the Senate in their farm - houses, from
which circumstances the summoners were called viatores or "travellers." Was
these men's old age an object of pity who found their pleasure in the cultivation of the
land? In my opinion, scarcely any life can be more blessed, not alone from its utility
(for agriculture is beneficial to the whole human race), but also as much from the mere
pleasure of the thing, to which I have already alluded, and from the rich abundance and
supply of all things necessary for the food of man and for the worship of the gods above.
So, as these are objects of desire to certain people, let us make our peace with pleasure.
For the good and hard - working farmer's wine - cellar and oil store, as well as his
larder, are always well filled, and his whole farm house is richly furnished. It abounds
in pigs, goats, lambs, fowls, milk, cheese, and honey. Then there is the garden, which the
farmers themselves call their "second flitch." A zest and flavour is added to
all these by hunting and fowling in spare hours. Need I mention the greenery of meadows,
the rows of trees, the beauty of vineyard and olive - grove? I will put it briefly:
nothing can either furnish necessaries more richly, or present a fairer spectacle, than
well - cultivated land. And to the enjoyment of that, old age does not merely present no
hindrance - it actually invites and allures to it. For where else can it better warm
itself, either by basking in the sun or by sitting by the fire, or at the proper time cool
itself more wholesomely by the help of shade or water? Let the young keep their arms then
to themselves, their horses, spears, their foils and ball, their swimming - baths and
running - path. To us old men let them, out of the many forms of sport, leave dice and
counters; but even that as they choose, since old age can be quite happy without them.
17. Xenophon's books are very useful for many purposes. Pray go on reading them with
attention, as you have ever done. In what ample terms is agriculture lauded by him in the
book about husbanding one's property, which is called Oeconomicus! But to show you that he
thought nothing so worthy of a prince as the taste for cultivating the soil, I will
translate what Socrates says to Critobulus in that book:
"When that most gallant Lacedaemonian, Lysander, came to visit the Persian prince
Cyrus at Sardis, so eminent for his character and the glory of his rule, bringing him
presents from his allies, he treated Lysander in all ways with courteous familiarity and
kindness, and, among other things, took him to see a certain park carefully planted.
Lysander expressed admiration of the height of the trees and the exact arrangement of
their rows in the quincunx, the careful cultivation of the soil, its freedom from weeds,
and the sweetness of the odours exhaled from the flowers, and went on to say that what he
admired was not the industry only, but also the skill of the man by whom this had been
planned and laid out. Cyrus replied: 'Well, it was I who planned the whole thing; these
rows are my doing, the laying out is all mine: many of the trees were even planted by my
own hand.' Then Lysander, looking at his purple robe, the brilliance of his person, and
his adornment Persian fashion with gold and many jewels, said: 'People are quite right,
Cyrus, to call you happy, since the advantages of high fortune have been joined to an
excellence like yours.'"
This kind of good fortune, then, it is in the power of old men to enjoy; nor is age any
bar to our maintaining pursuits of every other kind, and especially of agriculture, to the
very extreme verge of old age. For instance, we have it on record that M. Valerius Corvus
kept it up to his hundredth year, living on his land and cultivating it after his active
career was over, though between his first and sixth consulships there was an interval of
six and forty years. So that he had an official career lasting the number of years which
our ancestors defined as coming between birth and the beginning of old age. Moreover, that
last period of his old age was more blessed than that of his middle life, inasmuch as he
had greater influence and less labour. For the crowning grace of old age is influence.
How great was that of L. Caecilius Metellus! How great that of Atilius Calatinus, over
whom the famous epitaph was placed, "Very many classes agree in deeming this to have
been the very first man of the nation"! The line cut on his tomb is well known. It is
natural, then, that a man should have had influence, in whose praise the verdict of
history is unanimous. Again, in recent times, what a great man was Publius Crassus,
Pontifex Maximus, and his successor in the same office, M. Lepidus! I need scarcely
mention Paulus or Africanus, or, as I did before, Maximus. It was not only their
senatorial utterances that had weight: their least gesture had it also. In fact, old age,
especially when it has enjoyed honours, has an influence worth all the pleasures of youth
put together.
18. But throughout my discourse remember that my panegyric applies to an old age that
has been established on foundations laid by youth. From which may be deduced what I once
said with universal applause, that it was a wretched old age that had to defend itself by
speech. Neither white hairs nor wrinkles can at once claim influence in themselves: it is
the honourable conduct of earlier days that is rewarded by possessing influence at the
last. Even things generally regarded as trifling and matters of course - being saluted,
being courted, having way made for one, people rising when one approaches, being escorted
to and from the forum, being referred to for advice - all these are marks of respect,
observed among us and in other States - always most sedulously where the moral tone is
highest. They say that Lysander the Spartan, whom I have mentioned before, used to remark
that Sparta was the most dignified home for old age; for that nowhere was more respect
paid to years, nowhere was old age held in higher honour. Nay, the story is told of how
when a man of advanced years came into the theatre at Athens when the games were going on,
no place was given him anywhere in that large assembly by his own countrymen; but when he
came near the Lacedaemonians, who as ambassadors had a fixed place assigned to them, they
rose as one man out of respect for him, and gave the veteran a seat. When they were
greeted with rounds of applause from the whole audience, one of them remarked: "The
Athenians know what is right, but will not do it."
There are many excellent rules in our augural college, but among the best is one which
affects our subject - that precedence in speech goes by seniority; and augurs who are
older are preferred not only to those who have held higher office, but even to those who
are actually in possession of imperium. What then are the physical pleasures to be
compared with the reward of influence? Those who have employed it with distinction appear
to me to have played the drama of life to its end, and not to have broken down in the last
act like unpractised players.
But, it will be said, old men are fretful, fidgety, ill - tempered, and disagreeable.
If you come to that, they are also avaricious. But these are faults of character, not of
the time of life. And, after all, fretfulness and the other faults I mentioned admit of
some excuse - not, indeed, a complete one, but one that may possibly pass muster: they
think themselves neglected, looked down upon, mocked. Besides, with bodily weakness every
rub is a source of pain. Yet all these faults are softened both by good character and good
education. Illustrations of this may be found in real life, as also on the stage in the
case of the brothers in the Adelphi. What harshness in the one, what gracious manners in
the other! The fact is that, just as it is not every wine, so it is not every life, that
turns sour from keeping. Serious gravity I approve of in old age, but, as in other things,
it must be within due limits: bitterness I can in no case approve. What the object of
senile avarice may be I cannot conceive. For can there be anything more absurd than to
seek more journey money, the less there remains of the journey?
19. There remains the fourth reason, which more than anything else appears to torment
men of my age and keep them in a flutter - The Nearness Of Death, which, it must be
allowed, cannot be far from an old man. But what a poor dotard must he be who has not
learnt in the course of so long a life that death is not a thing to be feared? Death, that
is either to be totally disregarded, if it entirely extinguishes the soul, or is even to
be desired, if it brings him where he is to exist forever. A third alternative, at any
rate, cannot possibly be discovered. Why then should I be afraid if I am destined either
not to be miserable after death or even to be happy? After all, who is such a fool as to
feel certain - however young he may be - that he will be alive in the evening? Nay, that
time of life has many more chances of death than ours. Young men more easily contract
diseases; their illnesses are more serious; their treatment has to be more severe.
Accordingly, only a few arrive at old age. If that were not so, life would be conducted
better and more wisely; for it is in old men that thought, reason, and prudence are to be
found; and if there had been no old men, States would never have existed at all. But I
return to the subject of the imminence of death. What sort of charge is this against old
age, when you see that it is shared by youth? I had reason in the case of my excellent son
- as you had, Scipio, in that of your brothers, who were expected to attain the highest
honours - to realise that death is common to every time of life. Yes, you will say; but a
young man expects to live long; an old man cannot expect to do so. Well, he is a fool to
expect it. For what can be more foolish than to regard the uncertain as certain, the false
as true? "An old man has nothing even to hope." Ah, but it is just there that he
is in a better position than a young man, since what the latter only hopes he has
obtained. The one wishes to live long; the other has lived long.
And yet, good heavens! what is "long" in a man's life? For grant the utmost
limit: let us expect an age like that of the King of the Tartessi. For there was, as I
find recorded, a certain Agathonius at Gades who reigned eighty years and lived a hundred
and twenty. But to my mind nothing seems even long in which there is any "last,"
for when that arrives, then all the past has slipped away - only that remains to which you
have attained by virtue and righteous actions. Hours indeed, and days and months and years
depart, nor does past time ever return, nor can the future be known. Whatever time each is
granted for life, with that he is bound to be content. An actor, in order to earn
approval, is not bound to perform the play from beginning to end; let him only satisfy the
audience in whatever act he appears. Nor need a wise man go on to the concluding
"plaudite." For a short term of life is long enough for living well and
honourably. But if you go farther, you have no more right to grumble than farmers do
because the charm of the spring season is past and the summer and autumn have come. For
the word "spring" in a way suggests youth, and points to the harvest to be: the
other seasons are suited for the reaping and storing of the crops. Now the harvest of old
age is, as I have often said, the memory and rich store of blessings laid up in earlier
life. Again, all things that accord with nature are to be counted as good. But what can be
more in accordance with Nature than for old men to die? A thing, indeed, which also
befalls young men, though Nature revolts and fights against it. Accordingly, the death of
young men seems to me like putting out a great fire with a deluge of water; but old men
die like a fire going out because it has burnt down of its own nature without artificial
means. Again, just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow
drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This
ripeness is so delightful to me that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem, as it were,
to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage.
20. Again, there is no fixed border - line for old age, and you are making a good and
proper use of it as long as you can satisfy the call of duty and disregard death. The
result of this is, that old age is even more confident and courageous than youth. That is
the meaning of Solon's answer to the tyrant Pisistratus. When the latter asked him what he
relied upon in opposing him with such boldness, he is said to have replied, "On my
old age." But that end of life is the best when, without the intellect or senses
being impaired, Nature herself takes to pieces her own handiwork which she also put
together. Just as the builder of a ship or a house can break them up more easily than any
one else, so the Nature that knit together the human frame can also best unfasten it.
Moreover, a thing freshly glued together is always difficult to pull asunder; if old, this
is easily done.
The result is that the short time of life left to them is not to be grasped at by old
men with greedy eagerness, or abandoned without cause. Pythagoras forbids us, without an
order from our commander, that is God, to desert life's fortress and outpost. Solon's
epitaph, indeed, is that of a wise man, in which he says that he does not wish his death
to be unaccompanied by the sorrow and lamentations of his friends. He wants, I suppose, to
be beloved by them. But I rather think Ennius says better:
None grace me with their tears, nor weeping loud
Make sad my funeral rites!
He holds that a death is not a subject for mourning when it is followed by immortality.
Again, there may possibly be some sensation of dying - and that only for a short time,
especially in the case of an old man: after death, indeed, sensation is either what one
would desire, or it disappears altogether. But to disregard death is a lesson which must
be studied from our youth up; for unless that is learnt, no one can have a quiet mind. For
die we certainly must, and that too without being certain whether it may not be this very
day. A death, therefore, is hanging over our head every hour, how can a man ever be
unshaken in soul if he fears it?
But on this theme I don't think I need much enlarge: when I remember what Lucius Brutus
did, who was killed while defending his country; or the two Decii, who spurred their
horses to a gallop and met a voluntary death; or M. Atilius Regulus, who left his home to
confront a death of torture, rather than break the word which he had pledged to the enemy;
or the two Scipios, who determined to block the Carthaginian advance even with their own
bodies; or your grandfather Lucius Paulus, who paid with his life for the rashness of his
colleague in the disgrace at Cannae; or M. Marcellus, whose death not even the most
bloodthirsty of enemies would allow to go without the honour of burial. It is enough to
recall that our legions (as I have recorded in my Origins) have often marched with
cheerful and lofty spirit to ground from which they believed that they would never return.
That, therefore, which young men - not only uninstructed, but absolutely ignorant - treat
as of no account, shall men who are neither young nor ignorant shrink from in terror? As a
general truth, as it seems to me, it is weariness of all pursuits that creates weariness
of life. There are certain pursuits adapted to childhood: do young men miss them? There
are others suited to early manhood: does that settled time of life called "middle
age" ask for them? There are others, again, suited to that age, but not looked for in
old age. There are, finally, some which belong to old age. Therefore, as the pursuits of
the earlier ages have their time for disappearing, so also have those of old age. And when
that takes place, a satiety of life brings on the ripe time for death.
21. For I do not see why I should not venture to tell you my personal opinion as to
death, of which I seem to myself to have a clearer vision in proportion as I am nearer to
it. I believe, Scipio and Laelius, that your fathers - those illustrious men and my
dearest friends - are still alive, and that too with a life which alone deserves the name.
For as long as we are imprisoned in this framework of the body, we perform a certain
function and laborious work assigned us by fate. The soul, in fact, is of heavenly origin,
forced down from its home in the highest, and, so to speak, buried in earth, a place quite
opposed to its divine nature and its immortality. But I suppose the immortal gods to have
sown souls broadcast in human bodies, that there might be some to survey the world, and
while contemplating the order of the heavenly bodies to imitate it in the unvarying
regularity of their life. Nor is it only reason and arguments that have brought me to this
belief, but the great fame and authority of the most distinguished philosophers. I used to
be told that Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans - almost natives of our country, who in old
times had been called the Italian school of philosophers - never doubted that we had souls
drafted from the universal Divine intelligence. I used besides to have pointed out to me
the discourse delivered by Socrates on the last day of his life upon the immortality of
the soul - Socrates, who was pronounced by the oracle at Delphi to be the wisest of men. I
need say no more. I have convinced myself, and I hold - in view of the rapid movement of
the soul, its vivid memory of the past and its prophetic knowledge of the future, its many
accomplishments, its vast range of knowledge, its numerous discoveries - that a nature
embracing such varied gifts cannot itself be mortal. And since the soul is always in
motion and yet has no external source of motion, for it is self - moved, I conclude that
it will also have no end to its motion, because it is not likely ever to abandon itself.
Again, since the nature of the soul is not composite, nor has in it any admixture that is
not homogeneous and similar, I conclude that it is indivisible, and, if indivisible, that
it cannot perish. It is again a strong proof of men knowing most things before birth, that
when mere children they grasp innumerable facts with such speed as to show that they are
not then taking them in for the first time, but remembering and recalling them. This is
roughly Plato's argument.
22. Once more in Xenophon we have the elder Cyrus on his deathbed speaking as follows:
"Do not suppose, my dearest sons, that when I have left you I shall be nowhere and
no one. Even when I was with you, you did not see my soul, but knew that it was in this
body of mine from what I did. Believe then that it is still the same, even though you see
it not. The honours paid to illustrious men had not continued to exist after their death,
had the souls of these very men not done something to make us retain our recollection of
them beyond the ordinary time. For myself, I never could be persuaded that soul while in
mortal bodies were alive, and died directly they left them; nor, in fact, that the soul
only lost all intelligence when it left the unintelligent body. I believe rather that
when, by being liberated from all corporeal admixture, it has begun to be pure and
undefiled, it is then that it becomes wise. And again, when man's natural frame is
resolved into its elements by death, it is clearly seen whither each of the other elements
departs: for they all go to the place from which they came: but the soul alone is
invisible alike when present and when departing. Once more, you see that nothing is so
like death as sleep. And yet it is in sleepers that souls most clearly reveal their divine
nature; for they foresee many events when they are allowed to escape and are left free.
This shows what they are likely to be when they have completely freed themselves from the
fetters of the body. Wherefore, if these things are so, obey me as a god. But if my soul
is to perish with my body, nevertheless do you from awe of the gods, who guard and govern
this fair universe, preserve my memory by the loyalty and piety of your lives."
23. Such are the words of the dying Cyrus. I will now, with your good leave, look at
home. No one, my dear Scipio, shall ever persuade me that your father, Paulus, and your
two grandfathers, Paulus and Africanus, or the father of Africanus, or his uncle, or many
other illustrious men not necessary to mention, would have attempted such lofty deeds as
to be remembered by posterity, had they not seen in their minds that future ages concerned
them. Do you suppose - to take an old man's privilege of a little self - praise that I
should have been likely to undertake such heavy labours by day and night, at home and
abroad, if I had been destined to have the same limit to my glory as to my life? Had it
not been much better to pass an age of ease and repose without any labour or exertion? But
my soul, I know not how, refusing to be kept down, ever fixed its eyes upon future ages,
as though from a conviction that it would begin to live only when it had left the body.
But had it not been the case that souls were immortal, it would not have been the souls of
all the best men that made the greatest efforts after an immortality of fame.
Again, is there not the fact that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest
cheerfulness, the most unwise with the least? Don't you think that the soul which has the
clearer and longer sight sees that it is starting for better things, while the soul whose
vision is dimmer does not see it? For my part, I am transported with the desire to see
your fathers, who were the object of my reverence and affection. Nor is it only those whom
I knew that I long to see; it is those also of whom I have been told and have read, whom I
have myself recorded in my history. When I am setting out for that, there is certainly no
one who will find it easy to draw me back, or boil me up again like second Pelios. Nay, if
some god should grant me to renew my childhood from my present age and once more to be
crying in my cradle, I would firmly refuse; nor should I in truth be willing, after
having, as it were, run the full course, to be recalled from the winning - crease to the
barriers. For what blessing has life to offer? Should we not rather say, what labour? But
granting that it has, at any rate it has after all a limit either to enjoyment or to
existence. I don't wish to depreciate life, as many men and good philosophers have often
done; nor do I regret having lived, for I have done so in a way that lets me think that I
was not born in vain. But I quit life as I would an inn, not as I would a home. For nature
has given us a place of entertainment, not of residence.
Oh, glorious day when I shall set out to join that heavenly conclave and company of
souls, and depart from the turmoil and impurities of this world! For I shall not go to
join only those whom I have before mentioned, but also my son Cato, than whom no better
man was ever born, nor one more conspicuous for piety. His body was burnt by me, though
mine ought, on the contrary, to have been burnt by him; but his spirit, not abandoning,
but ever looking back upon me, has certainly gone whither he saw that I too must come. I
was thought to bear that loss heroically, not that I really bore it without distress, but
I found my own consolation in the thought that the parting and separation between us was
not to be for long.
It is by these means, my dear Scipio, - for you said that you and Laelius were wont to
express surprise on this point, - that my old age sits lightly on me, and is not only not
oppressive but even delightful. But if I am wrong in thinking the human soul immortal, I
am glad to be wrong; nor will I allow the mistake which gives me so much pleasure to be
wrested from me as long as I live. But if when dead, as some insignificant philosophers
think, I am to be without sensation, I am not afraid of dead philosophers deriding my
errors. Again, if we are not to be immortal, it is nevertheless what a man must wish to
have his life end at its proper time. For nature puts a limit to living as to everything
else. Now, old age is, as it were, the playing out of the drama, the full fatigue of which
we should shun, especially when we also feel that we have had more than enough of it.
This is all I had to say on old age. I pray that you may arrive at it, that you may put
my words to a practical test.
