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Work:
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On Old Age |
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Author: |
Marcus Tullius Cicero |
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Original
Language:
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Latin |
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Translation:
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E. S. Shuckburgh |
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Credits:
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The Gutenberg Project |
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Cicero — On Old Age
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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, hut 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.
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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 bear 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 5 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 show 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 Caepio 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-our father, Scipio, and my excellent son's father-in-law!
So with other old men-the Fabricii, the Guru 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 bear 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 grand-father, 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 restored by old. The question
occurs in the poet Naevius's _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 fathers 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. There-upon 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 s' 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 juris-consults 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 consul-ship, 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
men cannot 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 how, 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.
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 more
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 Caius
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 mali, 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 anyone 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 hy 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 it] 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's 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 'n 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
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
grape-stone 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 anyone 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
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 over long. 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, lie 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. Tn
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 circumstance 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 _Oceonomicus_! 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 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, no-where 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 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 them-selves 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 _Adeiphi_. 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 heaven! 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 easier 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 beliefs 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 borderline 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. As
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 lie 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 be-sides 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 T 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 souls
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 remaindered 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.
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