---
type: article
status: Published
slug: "cicero-senectute"
title: "On Old Age"
author: "Marcus Tullius Cicero"
tradition: "roman"
language: "la"
genre: "philosophical dialogue"
period: "44 BCE"
source_url: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit/8b536bdf3ed1f43494055efe112433b4a58eab67/data/phi0474/phi051/phi0474.phi051.perseus-lat2.xml"
certainty: observed
source: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit/8b536bdf3ed1f43494055efe112433b4a58eab67/data/phi0474/phi051/phi0474.phi051.perseus-lat2.xml"
---
# On Old Age

## Original

### Chapter 1

[1]
O Tite, si quid ego adiuero curamve levasso
quae nunc te coquit et versat in pectore fixa,
ecquid erit praemi?
licet enim mihi versibus isdem affari te, Attice, quibus affatur Flamininum
ille vir haud magna cum re, sed plenus fidei,
quamquam certo scio non, ut Flamininum,
sollicitari te, Tite, sic noctesque diesque,
novi enim moderationem animi tui et aequitatem, teque non cognomen solum Athenis deportasse, sed humanitatem et prudentiam intellego. et tamen te suspicor isdem rebus quibus me ipsum interdum gravius commoveri, quarum consolatio et maior est et in aliud tempus differenda.

nunc autem visum est mihi de senectute aliquid ad te conscribere,

[2]
hoc enim onere, quod mihi commune tecum est, aut iam urgentis aut certe adventantis senectutis et te et me ipsum levari volo; etsi te quidem id modice ac sapienter, sicut omnia, et ferre et laturum esse certo scio. sed mihi, cum de senectute vellem aliquid scribere, tu occurrebas dignus eo munere, quo uterque nostrum communiter uteretur. mihi quidem ita iucunda huius libri confectio fuit, ut non modo omnis absterserit senectutis molestias, sed effecerit mollem etiam et iucundam senectutem. numquam igitur laudari satis digne philosophia poterit, cui qui pareat omne tempus aetatis sine molestia possit degere.

[3]
sed de ceteris et diximus multa et saepe dicemus: hunc librum ad te de senectute misimus. omnem autem sermonem tribuimus non Tithono, ut Aristo Cius, parum enim esset auctoritatis in fabula, sed M. Catoni seni, quo maiorem auctoritatem haberet oratio; apud quem Laelium et Scipionem facimus admirantis, quod is tam facile senectutem ferat, eisque eum respondentem; qui si eruditius videbitur disputare quam consuevit ipse in suis libris, attribuito litteris Graecis, quarum constat eum perstudiosum fuisse in senectute. sed quid opus est plura? iam enim ipsius Catonis sermo explicabit nostram omnem de senectute sententiam.

### Chapter 2

[4]
SCIPIO. Saepe numero admirari soleo cum hoc C. Laelio cum ceterarum rerum tuam excellentem, M. Cato, perfectamque sapientiam, tum vel maxime quod numquam tibi senectutem gravem esse senserim, quae plerisque senibus sic odiosa est, ut onus se Aetna gravius dicant sustinere.

CATO. Rem haud sane, Scipio et Laeli, difficilem admirari videmini. quibus enim nihil est in ipsis opis ad bene beateque vivendum, eis omnis aetas gravis est; qui autem omnia bona a se ipsi petunt, eis nihil potest malum videri quod naturae necessitas afferat. quo in genere est in primis senectus, quam ut adipiscantur omnes optant, eandem accusant adeptam; tanta est stultitiae inconstantia atque perversitas. obrepere aiunt eam citius quam putassent. primum quis coegit eos falsum putare? qui enim citius adulescentiae senectus quam pueritiae adulescentia obrepit? deinde qui minus gravis esset eis senectus, si octingentesimum annum agerent, quam si octogesimum? praeterita enim aetas quamvis longa, cum effluxisset, nulla consolatione permulcere posset stultam senectutem.

[5]
quocirca si sapientiam meam admirari soletis, quae utinam digna esset opinione vestra nostroque cognomine, in hoc sumus sapientes, quod naturam optimam ducem tamquam deum sequimur eique paremus; a qua non veri simile est, cum ceterae partes aetatis bene discriptae sint, extremum actum tamquam ab inerti poeta esse neglectum. sed tamen necesse fuit esse aliquid extremum et, tamquam in arborum bacis terraeque fructibus, maturitate tempestiva quasi vietum et caducum, quod ferendum est molliter sapienti. quid est enim aliud gigantum modo bellare cum dis nisi naturae repugnare?

[6]
LAELIUS. Atqui, Cato, gratissimum nobis, ut etiam pro Scipione pollicear, feceris, si, quoniam speramus, volumus quidem certe, senes fieri, multo ante a te didicerimus quibus facillime rationibus ingravescentem aetatem ferre possimus.

CATO. Faciam vero, Laeli, praesertim si utrique vestrum, ut dicis, gratum futurum est.

LAELIUS. Volumus sane, nisi molestum est, Cato, tamquam longam aliquam viam confeceris, quam nobis quoque ingrediendum sit, istuc, quo pervenisti, videre quale sit.

### Chapter 3

[7]
CATO. Faciam ut potero, Laeli. saepe enim interfui querellis aequalium meorum, pares autem vetere proverbio cum paribus facillime congregantur, quae C. Salinator, quae Sp. Albinus, homines consulares, nostri fere aequales, deplorare solebant, tum quod voluptatibus carerent, sine quibus vitam nullam putarent, tum quod spernerentur ab eis, a quibus essent coli soliti; qui mihi non id videbantur accusare, quod esset accusandum. nam si id culpa senectutis accideret, eadem mihi usu venirent reliquisque omnibus maioribus natu, quorum ego multorum cognovi senectutem sine querella, qui se et libidinum vinculis laxatos esse non moleste ferrent nec a suis despicerentur. sed omnium istius modi querellarum in moribus est culpa, non in aetate. moderati enim et nec difficiles nec inhumani senes tolerabilem senectutem agunt, importunitas autem et inhumanitas omni aetati molesta est.

[8]
LAELIUS. Est, ut dicis, Cato; sed fortasse dixerit quispiam tibi propter opes et copias et dignitatem tuam tolerabiliorem senectutem videri, id autem non posse multis contingere.

CATO. Est istuc quidem, Laeli, aliquid, sed nequaquam in isto sunt omnia; ut Themistocles fertur Seriphio cuidam in iurgio respondisse, cum ille dixisset non eum sua, sed patriae gloria splendorem assecutum: nec hercule, inquit, si ego Seriphius essem, nec tu, si Atheniensis, clarus umquam fuisses. quod eodem modo de senectute dici potest; nec enim in summa inopia levis esse senectus potest, ne sapienti quidem, nec insipienti etiam in summa copia non gravis.

[9]
aptissima omnino sunt, Scipio et Laeli, arma senectutis artes exercitationesque virtutum, quae in omni aetate cultae, cum diu multumque vixeris, mirificos ecferunt fructus, non solum quia numquam deserunt, ne extremo quidem tempore aetatis, quamquam id quidem maximum est, verum etiam quia conscientia bene actae vitae multorumque bene factorum recordatio iucundissima est.

### Chapter 4

[10]
ego Q. Maximum, eum qui Tarentum recepit, senem adulescens ita dilexi, ut aequalem. erat enim in illo viro comitate condita gravitas, nec senectus mores mutaverat. quamquam eum colere coepi non admodum grandem natu, sed tamen iam aetate provectum. anno enim post consul primum fuerat quam ego natus sum, cumque eo quartum consule adulescentulus miles ad Capuam profectus sum quintoque anno post ad Tarentum. quaestor deinde quadriennio post factus sum, quem magistratum gessi consulibus Tuditano et Cethego, cum quidem ille admodum senex suasor legis Cinciae de donis et muneribus fuit. hic et bella gerebat ut adulescens, cum plane grandis esset, et Hannibalem iuveniliter exsultantem patientia sua molliebat; de quo praeclare familiaris noster Ennius:
unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem;
noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem;
ergo plusque magisque viri nunc gloria claret.

[11]
Tarentum vero qua vigilantia, quo consilio recepit! cum quidem me audiente Salinatori, qui amisso oppido fugerat in arcem, glorianti atque ita dicenti, mea opera, Q. Fabi, Tarentum recepisti; certe, inquit ridens, nam nisi tu amisisses, numquam recepissem. nec vero in armis praestantior quam in toga; qui consul iterum, Sp. Carvilio collega quiescente, C. Flaminio tribuno plebis, quoad potuit, restitit agrum Picentem et Gallicum viritim contra senatus auctoritatem dividenti; augurque cum esset, dicere ausus est optimis auspiciis ea geri, quae pro rei publicae salute gererentur; quae contra rem publicam ferrentur, contra auspicia ferri.

[12]
multa in eo viro praeclara cognovi, sed nihil admirabilius quam quo modo ille mortem fili tulit, clari viri et consularis. est in manibus laudatio, quam cum legimus, quem philosophum non contemnimus? nec vero ille in luce modo atque in oculis civium magnus, sed intus domique praestantior. qui sermo, quae praecepta! quanta notitia antiquitatis, scientia iuris auguri! multae etiam, ut in homine Romano, litterae: omnia memoria tenebat non domestica solum, sed etiam externa bella. cuius sermone ita tum cupide fruebar, quasi iam divinarem, id quod evenit, illo exstincto fore unde discerem neminem.

### Chapter 5

[13]
quorsum igitur haec tam multa de Maximo? Quia profecto videtis nefas esse dictu miseram fuisse talem senectutem. nec tamen omnes possunt esse Scipiones aut Maximi, ut urbium expugnationes, ut pedestris navalisve pugnas, ut bella a se gesta, ut triumphos recordentur. est etiam quiete et pure atque eleganter actae aetatis placida ac lenis senectus, qualem accepimus Platonis, qui uno et octogesimo anno scribens est mortuus, qualem Isocratis, qui eum librum, qui Panathenaicus inscribitur, quarto nonagesimo anno scripsisse dicit vixitque quinquennium postea; cuius magister Leontinus Gorgias centum et septem complevit annos, neque umquam in suo studio atque opere cessavit. qui, cum ex eo quaereretur cur tam diu vellet esse in vita, nihil habeo, inquit, quod accusem senectutem.

[14]
praeclarum responsum et docto homine dignum!

sua enim vitia insipientes et suam culpam in senectutem conferunt, quod non faciebat is, cuius modo mentionem feci, Ennius:
sic ut fortis equus, spatio qui saepe supremo
vicit Olympia, nunc senio confectus quiescit.
equi fortis et victoris senectuti comparat suam; quem quidem probe meminisse potestis; anno enim undevicesimo post eius mortem hi consules, T. Flamininus et M’. Acilius, facti sunt; ille autem Caepione et Philippo iterum consulibus mortuus est, cum ego quinque et sexaginta annos natus legem Voconiam magna voce et bonis lateribus suasissem. Annos septuaginta natus, tot enim vixit Ennius, ita ferebat duo quae maxima putantur onera, paupertatem et senectutem, ut eis paene delectari videretur.

### Chapter 6

[15]
etenim, cum complector animo, quattuor reperio causas cur senectus misera videatur: unam, quod avocet a rebus gerendis; alteram, quod corpus faciat infirmius; tertiam, quod privet omnibus fere voluptatibus; quartam, quod haud procul absit a morte. earum, si placet, causarum quanta quamque sit iusta una quaeque videamus.

A rebus gerendis senectus abstrahit. quibus? An eis, quae iuventute geruntur et viribus? nullaene igitur res sunt seniles, quae vel infirmis corporibus animo et mente administrentur? nihil ergo agebat Q. Maximus, nihil L. Paulus, pater tuus, socer optimi viri fili mei? ceteri senes, Fabricii Curii Coruncanii, cum rem publicam consilio et auctoritate defendebant, nihil agebant?

ad Appi Claudi senectutem accedebat etiam ut caecus esset;

[16]
tamen is, cum sententia senatus inclinaret ad pacem cum Pyrrho foedusque faciendum, non dubitavit dicere illa, quae versibus persecutus est Ennius:
quo vobis mentes, rectae quae stare solebant
antehac, dementis sese flexere viai?
ceteraque gravissime, notum enim vobis carmen est, et tamen ipsius Appi exstat oratio. atque haec ille egit septemdecim annis post alterum consulatum, cum inter duos consulatus anni decem interfuissent censorque ante superiorem consulatum fuisset, ex quo intellegitur Pyrrhi bello grandem sane fuisse, et tamen sic a patribus accepimus.

[17]
nihil igitur afferunt qui in re gerenda versari senectutem negant, similesque sunt ut si qui gubernatorem in navigando nihil agere dicant, cum alii malos scandant, alii per foros cursent, alii sentinam exhauriant, ille clavum tenens quietus sedeat in puppi; non faciat ea, quae iuvenes; at vero multo maiora et meliora facit. non viribus aut velocitate aut celeritate corporum res magnae geruntur, sed consilio auctoritate sententia, quibus non modo non orbari, sed etiam augeri senectus solet.

[18]
nisi forte ego vobis, qui et miles et tribunus et legatus et consul versatus sum in vario genere bellorum, cessare nunc videor, cum bella non gero. At senatui quae sint gerenda praescribo et quo modo; Carthagini male iam diu cogitanti bellum multo ante denuntio, de qua vereri non ante desinam quam illam excisam esse cognovero. quam palmam utinam di immortales,

[19]
Scipio, tibi reservent, ut avi relliquias persequare, cuius a morte tertius hic et tricesimus annus est, sed memoriam illius viri omnes excipient anni consequentes. anno ante me censorem mortuus est, novem annis post meum consulatum, cum consul iterum me consule creatus esset. num igitur, si ad centesimum annum vixisset, senectutis eum suae paeniteret? nec enim excursione nec saltu, nec eminus hastis aut comminus gladiis uteretur, sed consilio ratione sententia, quae nisi essent in senibus, non summum consilium maiores nostri appellassent senatum. apud Lacedaemonios quidem ei,

[20]
qui amplissimum magistratum gerunt, ut sunt, sic etiam nominantur, senes. quod si legere aut audire voletis externa, maximas res publicas ab adulescentibus labefactatas, a senibus sustentatas et restitutas reperietis.
cedo qui vestram rem publicam tantam amisistis tam cito?
sic enim percontantur in Naevi poetae Lupo. Respondentur et alia et hoc in primis:
proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adulescentuli.
temeritas est videlicet florentis aetatis, prudentia senescentis.

### Chapter 7

[21]
At memoria minuitur. credo, nisi eam exerceas, aut etiam si sis natura tardior. Themistocles omnium civium perceperat nomina; num igitur censetis eum, cum aetate processisset, qui Aristides esset Lysimachum salutare solitum? equidem non modo eos novi qui sunt, sed eorum patres etiam et avos, nec sepulcra legens vereor, quod aiunt, ne memoriam perdam; his enim ipsis legendis in memoriam redeo mortuorum. nec vero quemquam senem audivi oblitum, quo loco thesaurum obruisset. omnia quae curant meminerunt, vadimonia constituta, quis sibi, cui ipsi debeant.

[22]
quid iuris consulti, quid pontifices, quid augures, quid philosophi senes? quam multa meminerunt! manent ingenia senibus, modo permaneat studium et industria, neque ea solum claris et honoratis viris, sed in vita etiam privata et quieta. Sophocles ad summam senectutem tragoedias fecit; quod propter studium cum rem neglegere familiarem videretur, a filiis in iudicium vocatus est, ut, quem ad modum nostro more male rem gerentibus patribus bonis interdici solet, sic illum quasi desipientem a re familiari removerent iudices. tum senex dicitur eam fabulam quam in manibus habebat et proxime scripserat, Oedipum Coloneum, recitasse iudicibus quaesisseque num illud carmen desipientis videretur,

[23]
quo recitato sententiis iudicum est liberatus. num igitur hunc, num Homerum Hesiodum Simoniden Stesichorum, num quos ante dixi Isocraten Gorgian, num philosophorum principes, Pythagoram Democritum, num Platonem Xenocraten, num postea Zenonem Cleanthem, aut eum, quem vos etiam vidistis Romae, Diogenem Stoicum coegit in suis studiis obmutescere senectus? An in omnibus studiorum agitatio vitae aequalis fuit?

[24]
Age, ut ista divina studia omittamus, possum nominare ex agro Sabino rusticos Romanos, vicinos et familiaris meos, quibus absentibus numquam fere ulla in agro maiora opera fiunt, non serendis, non percipiendis, non condendis fructibus. quamquam in aliis minus hoc mirum est, nemo enim est tam senex qui se annum non putet posse vivere; sed idem in eis elaborant, quae sciunt nihil ad se omnino pertinere:
serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint,
ut ait Statius noster in Synephebis.

### Chapter 8

[25]
nec vero dubitat agricola, quamvis sit senex, quaerenti cui serat respondere: dis immortalibus, qui me non accipere modo haec a maioribus voluerunt, sed etiam posteris prodere.

et melius Caecilius de sene alteri saeculo prospiciente, quam illud idem:
edepol, senectus, si nil quicquam aliud viti
adportes tecum, cum advenis, unum id sat est,
quod diu vivendo multa quae non volt videt.
Et multa fortasse quae volt, atque in ea, quae non volt, saepe etiam adulescentia incurrit. illud vero idem Caecilius vitiosius:
tum equidem in senecta hoc deputo miserrimum,
sentire ea aetate eumpse esse odiosum alteri.
iucundum potius quam odiosum!

[26]
ut enim adulescentibus bona indole praeditis sapientes senes delectantur, leviorque fit senectus eorum qui a iuventute coluntur et diliguntur, sic adulescentes senum praeceptis gaudent, quibus ad virtutum studia ducuntur; nec minus intellego me vobis quam mihi vos esse iucundos. sed videtis, ut senectus non modo languida atque iners non sit, verum etiam sit operosa et semper agens aliquid et moliens, tale scilicet, quale cuiusque studium in superiore vita fuit. quid, qui etiam addiscunt aliquid, ut et Solonem versibus gloriantem videmus, qui se cotidie aliquid addiscentem dicit senem fieri. et ego feci, qui litteras Graecas senex didici, quas quidem sic avide arripui quasi diuturnam sitim explere cupiens, ut ea ipsa mihi nota essent, quibus me nunc exemplis uti videtis. quod cum fecisse Socratem in fidibus audirem, vellem equidem etiam illud, discebant enim fidibus antiqui, sed in litteris certe elaboravi.

### Chapter 9

[27]
ne nunc quidem viris desidero adulescentis, is enim erat locus alter de vitiis senectutis, non plus quam adulescens tauri aut elephanti desiderabam. quod est, eo decet uti et quidquid agis agere pro viribus. quae enim vox potest esse contemptior quam Milonis Crotoniatae? qui cum iam senex esset athletasque se exercentis in curriculo videret, aspexisse lacertos suos dicitur illacrimansque dixisse, at hi quidem mortui iam sunt. non vero tam isti, quam tu ipse, nugator, neque enim ex te umquam es nobilitatus, sed ex lateribus et lacertis tuis. nihil Sex. Aelius tale, nihil multis annis ante Ti. Coruncanius, nihil modo P. Crassus, a quibus iura civibus praescribebantur, quorum usque ad extremum spiritum est provecta prudentia.

[28]
Orator metuo ne languescat senectute, est enim munus eius non ingeni solum, sed laterum etiam et virium. omnino canorum illud in voce splendescit etiam nescio quo pacto in senectute, quod equidem adhuc non amisi, et videtis annos. sed tamen est decorus seni sermo quietus et remissus, facitque persaepe ipsa sibi audientiam diserti senis composita et mitis oratio, quam si ipse exsequi nequeas, possis tamen Scipioni praecipere et Laelio. quid enim est iucundius senectute stipata studiis iuventutis?

[29]
An ne illas quidem viris senectuti relinquimus, ut adulescentis doceat, instituat, ad omne offici munus instruat? quo quidem opere quid potest esse praeclarius? mihi vero et Cn. et P. Scipiones et avi tui duo L. Aemilius et P. Africanus comitatu nobilium iuvenum fortunati videbantur, nec ulli bonarum artium magistri non beati putandi, quamvis consenuerint vires atque defecerint.

etsi ipsa ista defectio virium adulescentiae vitiis efficitur saepius quam senectute; libidinosa enim et intemperans adulescentia effetum corpus tradit senectuti.

[30]
Cyrus quidem apud Xenophontem eo sermone, quem moriens habuit, cum admodum senex esset, negat se umquam sensisse senectutem suam imbecilliorem factam quam adulescentia fuisset. ego L. Metellum memini puer, qui, cum quadriennio post alterum consulatum pontifex maximus factus esset, viginti et duos annos ei sacerdotio praefuit, ita bonis esse viribus extremo tempore aetatis, ut adulescentiam non requireret. nihil necesse est mihi de me ipso dicere, quamquam est id quidem senile aetatique nostrae conceditur.

### Chapter 10

[31]
videtisne, ut apud Homerum saepissime Nestor de virtutibus suis praedicet? Tertiam enim aetatem hominum videbat, nec erat ei verendum ne vera praedicans de se nimis videretur aut insolens aut loquax. etenim, ut ait Homerus, ex eius lingua melle dulcior fluebat oratio; quam ad suavitatem nullis egebat corporis viribus. et tamen dux ille Graeciae nusquam optat ut Aiacis similis habeat decem, sed ut Nestoris, quod si sibi acciderit, non dubitat quin brevi sit Troia peritura.

[32]
sed redeo ad me. quartum ago annum et octogesimum: vellem equidem idem posse gloriari quod Cyrus, sed tamen hoc queo dicere, non me quidem eis esse viribus, quibus aut miles bello Punico aut quaestor eodem bello aut consul in Hispania fuerim aut quadriennio post, cum tribunus militaris depugnavi apud Thermopylas M’. Glabrione consule; sed tamen, ut vos videtis, non plane me enervavit, non afflixit senectus: non curia viris meas desiderat, non rostra, non amici, non clientes, non hospites. nec enim umquam sum assensus veteri illi laudatoque proverbio, quod monet mature fieri senem, si diu velis senex esse. ego vero me minus diu senem esse mallem quam esse senem ante quam essem. itaque nemo adhuc convenire me voluit cui fuerim occupatus.

[33]
At minus habeo virium quam vestrum utervis. ne vos quidem T. Ponti centurionis viris habetis: num idcirco est ille praestantior? moderatio modo virium adsit et tantum quantum potest quisque nitatur, ne ille non magno desiderio tenebitur virium. olympiae per stadium ingressus esse Milo dicitur, cum umeris sustineret bovem: utrum igitur has corporis an Pythagorae tibi malis viris ingeni dari? Denique isto bono utare, dum adsit, cum absit, ne requiras: nisi forte adulescentes pueritiam, paulum aetate progressi adulescentiam debent requirere. cursus est certus aetatis et una via naturae eaque simplex, suaque cuique parti aetatis tempestivitas est data, ut et infirmitas puerorum et ferocitas iuvenum et gravitas iam constantis aetatis et senectutis maturitas naturale quiddam habet, quod suo tempore percipi debeat.

### Chapter 11

[34]
audire te arbitror, Scipio, hospes tuus avitus Masinissa quae faciat hodie nonaginta natus annos: cum ingressus iter pedibus sit, in equum omnino non ascendere; cum autem equo, ex equo non descendere; nullo imbri, nullo frigore adduci ut capite operto sit; summam esse in eo corporis siccitatem, itaque omnia exsequi regis officia et munera. Potest igitur exercitatio et temperantia etiam in senectute conservare aliquid pristini roboris.

ne sint in senectute vires: ne postulantur quidem vires a senectute. ergo et legibus et institutis vacat aetas nostra muneribus eis quae non possunt sine viribus sustineri. itaque non modo quod non possumus, sed ne quantum possumus quidem cogimur.

[35]
At multi ita sunt imbecilli senes, ut nullum offici aut omnino vitae munus exsequi possint. At id quidem non proprium senectutis vitium est, sed commune valetudinis. quam fuit imbecillus P. Africani filius, is qui te adoptavit, quam tenui aut nulla potius valetudine! quod ni ita fuisset, alterum illud exstitisset lumen civitatis; ad paternam enim magnitudinem animi doctrina uberior accesserat. quid mirum igitur in senibus, si infirmi sunt aliquando, cum id ne adulescentes quidem effugere possint?

resistendum, Laeli et Scipio, senectuti est eiusque vitia diligentia compensanda sunt, pugnandum tamquam contra morbum sic contra senectutem, habenda ratio valetudinis,

[36]
utendum exercitationibus modicis, tantum cibi et potionis adhibendum, ut reficiantur vires, non opprimantur. nec vero corpori solum subveniendum est, sed menti atque animo multo magis. nam haec quoque, nisi tamquam lumini oleum instilles, exstinguuntur senectute. et corpora quidem exercitationum defetigatione ingravescunt, animi autem exercitando levantur. nam quos ait Caecilius comicos stultos senes, hos significat credulos obliviosos dissolutos, quae vitia sunt non senectutis, sed inertis ignavae somniculosae senectutis. ut petulantia, ut libido magis est adulescentium quam senum, nec tamen omnium adulescentium, sed non proborum, sic ista senilis stultitia, quae deliratio appellari solet, senum levium est, non omnium.

[37]
quattuor robustos filios, quinque filias, tantam domum, tantas clientelas Appius regebat et caecus et senex; intentum enim animum tamquam arcum habebat nec languescens succumbebat senectuti. tenebat non modo auctoritatem, sed etiam imperium in suos: metuebant servi, verebantur liberi, carum omnes habebant; vigebat in illa domo mos patrius et disciplina.

[38]
Ita enim senectus honesta est, si se ipsa defendit, si ius suum retinet, si nemini emancipata est, si usque ad ultimum spiritum dominatur in suos. ut enim adulescentem in quo est senile aliquid, sic senem in quo est aliquid adulescentis probo, quod qui sequitur, corpore senex esse poterit, animo numquam erit.

septimus mihi liber Originum est in manibus; omnia antiquitatis monumenta colligo; causarum illustrium, quascunque defendi, nunc cum maxime conficio orationes; ius augurium pontificium civile tracto; multum etiam Graecis litteris utor; Pythagoriorumque more, exercendae memoriae gratia, quid quoque die dixerim audierim egerim commemoro vesperi. hae sunt exercitationes ingeni, haec curricula mentis; in his desudans atque elaborans corporis viris non magno opere desidero. adsum amicis, venio in senatum frequens ultroque affero res multum et diu cogitatas easque tueor animi, non corporis viribus. quas si exsequi nequirem, tamen me lectulus meus oblectaret ea ipsa cogitantem, quae iam agere non possem; sed ut possim facit acta vita. Semper enim in his studiis laboribusque viventi non intellegitur quando obrepat senectus: ita sensim sine sensu aetas senescit nec subito frangitur, sed diuturnitate exstinguitur.

### Chapter 12

[39]
sequitur tertia vituperatio senectutis, quod eam carere dicunt voluptatibus. O praeclarum munus aetatis, si quidem id aufert a nobis, quod est in adulescentia vitiosissimum! accipite enim, optimi adulescentes, veterem orationem Archytae Tarentini, magni in primis et praeclari viri, quae mihi tradita est cum essem adulescens Tarenti cum Q. Maximo. nullam capitaliorem pestem quam voluptatem corporis hominibus dicebat a natura datam, cuius voluptatis avidae libidines temere et effrenate ad potiendum incitarentur.

[40]
hinc patriae proditiones, hinc rerum publicarum eversiones, hinc cum hostibus clandestina colloquia nasci; nullum denique scelus, nullum malum facinus esse, ad quod suscipiendum non libido voluptatis impelleret; stupra vero et adulteria et omne tale flagitium nullis excitari aliis illecebris nisi voluptatis; cumque homini sive natura sive quis deus nihil mente praestabilius dedisset, huic divino muneri ac dono nihil tam esse inimicum quam voluptatem.

[41]
nec enim lubidine dominante temperantiae locum esse, neque omnino in voluptatis regno virtutem posse consistere.

quod quo magis intellegi posset, fingere animo iubebat tanta incitatum aliquem voluptate corporis, quanta percipi posset maxima; nemini censebat fore dubium quin tam diu, dum ita gauderet, nihil agitare mente, nihil ratione, nihil cogitatione consequi posset. quocirca nihil esse tam detestabile tamque pestiferum quam voluptatem, si quidem ea, cum maior esset atque longior, omne animi lumen exstingueret. haec cum C. Pontio Samnite, patre eius, a quo Caudino proelio Sp. Postumius T. Veturius consules superati sunt, locutum Archytam Nearchus Tarentinus hospes noster, qui in amicitia populi Romani permanserat, se a maioribus natu accepisse dicebat, cum quidem ei sermoni interfuisset Plato Atheniensis, quem Tarentum venisse L. Camillo Ap. Claudio consulibus reperio.

[42]
quorsus hoc? ut intellegeretis, si voluptatem aspernari ratione et sapientia non possemus, magnam esse habendam senectuti gratiam, quae efficeret ut id non liberet quod non oporteret. impedit enim consilium voluptas, rationi inimica est, mentis ut ita dicam praestringit oculos, nec habet ullum cum virtute commercium.

invitus feci ut fortissimi viri T. Flaminini fratrem L. Flamininum e senatu eicerem septem annis post quam consul fuisset, sed notandam putavi libidinem. ille enim cum esset consul in Gallia exoratus in convivio a scorto est ut securi feriret aliquem eorum qui in vinculis essent, damnati rei capitalis. hic Tito fratre suo censore, qui proximus ante me fuerat, elapsus est, mihi vero et Flacco neutiquam probari potuit tam flagitiosa et tam perdita libido, quae cum probro privato coniungeret imperi dedecus.

### Chapter 13

[43]
saepe audivi e maioribus natu, qui se porro pueros a senibus audisse dicebant, mirari solitum C. Fabricium quod, cum apud regem Pyrrhum legatus esset, audisset a Thessalo Cinea esse quendam Athenis qui se sapientem profiteretur, eumque dicere omnia quae faceremus ad voluptatem esse referenda. quod ex eo audientis M’. Curium et Ti. Coruncanium optare solitos ut id Samnitibus ipsique Pyrrho persuaderetur, quo facilius vinci possent cum se voluptatibus dedissent. vixerat M’. Curius cum P. Decio, qui quinquennio ante eum consulem se pro re publica quarto consulatu devoverat: norat eundem Fabricius, norat Coruncanius, qui cum ex sua vita tum ex eius quem dico Deci facto iudicabant esse profecto aliquid natura pulchrum atque praeclarum, quod sua sponte expeteretur quodque spreta et contempta voluptate optimus quisque sequeretur.

[44]
quorsum igitur tam multa de voluptate? quia non modo vituperatio nulla, sed etiam summa laus senectutis est, quod ea voluptates nullas magno opere desiderat. caret epulis exstructisque mensis et frequentibus poculis. caret ergo etiam vinulentia et cruditate et insomniis. sed si aliquid dandum est voluptati, quoniam eius blanditiis non facile obsistimus, divine enim Plato escam malorum appellat voluptatem quod ea videlicet homines capiantur ut pisces, quamquam immoderatis epulis caret senectus, modicis tamen conviviis delectari potest. C. Duellium M. F., qui Poenos classe primus devicerat, redeuntem a cena senem saepe videbam puer; delectabatur cereo funali et tibicine, quae sibi nullo exemplo privatus sumpserat: tantum licentiae dabat gloria.

[45]
sed quid ego alios? ad me ipsum iam revertar. primum habui semper sodalis—sodalitates autem me quaestore constitutae sunt sacris Idaeis Magnae Matris acceptis—epulabar igitur cum sodalibus, omnino modice, sed erat quidam fervor aetatis, qua progrediente omnia fiunt in dies mitiora. neque enim ipsorum conviviorum delectationem voluptatibus corporis magis quam coetu amicorum et sermonibus metiebar; bene enim maiores accubitionem epularem amicorum, quia vitae coniunctionem haberet, convivium nominaverunt, melius quam Graeci, qui hoc idem tum compotationem, tum concenationem vocant, ut, quod in eo genere minimum est, id maxime probare videantur.

### Chapter 14

[46]
ego vero propter sermonis delectationem tempestivis quoque conviviis delector, nec cum aequalibus solum, qui pauci admodum restant, sed cum vestra etiam aetate atque vobiscum, habeoque senectuti magnam gratiam, quae mihi sermonis aviditatem auxit, potionis et cibi sustulit. quod si quem etiam ista delectant, ne omnino bellum indixisse videar voluptati, cuius est fortasse quidam naturalis modus, non intellego ne in istis quidem ipsis voluptatibus carere sensu senectutem. me vero et magisteria delectant a maioribus instituta et is sermo, qui more maiorum a summo adhibetur in poculo, et pocula, sicut in Symposio Xenophontis est, minuta atque rorantia, et refrigeratio aestate et vicissim aut sol aut ignis hibernus. quae quidem etiam in Sabinis persequi soleo conviviumque vicinorum cotidie compleo, quod ad multam noctem quam maxime possumus vario sermone producimus.

[47]
At non est voluptatum tanta quasi titillatio in senibus. credo, sed ne desideratio quidem; nihil autem est molestum quod non desideres. bene Sophocles, cum ex eo quidam iam affecto aetate quaereret, utereturne rebus veneriis, di meliora! inquit; ego vero istinc sicut a domino agresti ac furioso profugi. cupidis enim rerum talium odiosum fortasse et molestum est carere, satiatis vero et expletis iucundius est carere quam frui; quamquam non caret is, qui non desiderat; ergo hoc non desiderare dico esse iucundius.

[48]
quod si istis ipsis voluptatibus bona aetas fruitur libentius, primum parvulis fruitur rebus, ut diximus, deinde eis, quibus senectus, etiam si non abunde potitur, non omnino caret. ut Turpione Ambivio magis delectatur qui in prima cavea spectat, delectatur tamen etiam qui in ultima, sic adulescentia voluptates propter intuens magis fortasse laetatur, sed delectatur etiam senectus, procul eas spectans, tantum quantum sat est.

[49]
At illa quanti sunt, animum tamquam emeritis stipendiis libidinis ambitionis, contentionum inimicitiarum, cupiditatum omnium secum esse secumque, ut dicitur, vivere! si vero habet aliquod tamquam pabulum studi atque doctrinae, nihil est otiosa senectute iucundius. videbamus in studio dimetiendi paene caeli atque terrae Gallum familiarem patris tui, Scipio. quotiens illum lux noctu aliquid describere ingressum, quotiens nox oppressit cum mane coepisset! quam delectabat eum defectiones solis et lunae multo ante nobis praedicere!

[50]
quid in levioribus studiis, sed tamen acutis? quam gaudebat Bello suo Punico Naevius, quam Truculento Plautus, quam Pseudolo! vidi etiam senem Livium, qui, cum sex annis ante quam ego natus sum fabulam docuisset Centone Tuditanoque consulibus, usque ad adulescentiam meam processit aetate.

quid de P. Licini Crassi et pontifici et civilis iuris studio loquar aut de huius P. Scipionis, qui his paucis diebus pontifex maximus factus est? atque eos omnis, quos commemoravi, his studiis flagrantis senes vidimus. M. vero Cethegum, quem recte suadae medullam dixit Ennius, quanto studio exerceri in dicendo videbamus etiam senem! quae sunt igitur epularum aut ludorum aut scortorum voluptates cum his voluptatibus comparandae? atque haec quidem studia doctrinae, quae quidem prudentibus et bene institutis pariter cum aetate crescunt, ut honestum illud Solonis sit, quod ait versiculo quodam, ut ante dixi, senescere se multa in dies addiscentem, qua voluptate animi nulla certe potest esse maior.

### Chapter 15

[51]
venio nunc ad voluptates agricolarum, quibus ego incredibiliter delector, quae nec ulla impediuntur senectute et mihi ad sapientis vitam proxime videntur accedere. habent enim rationem cum terra, quae numquam recusat imperium nec umquam sine usura reddit quod accepit, sed alias minore, plerumque maiore cum faenore; quamquam me quidem non fructus modo, sed etiam ipsius terrae vis ac natura delectat. quae cum gremio mollito ac subacto sparsum semen excepit, primum id occaecatum cohibet, ex quo occatio quae hoc efficit nominata est; deinde tepefactum vapore et compressu suo diffundit et elicit herbescentem ex eo viriditatem, quae nixa fibris stirpium sensim adolescit culmoque erecta geniculato vaginis iam quasi pubescens includitur; e quibus cum emersit, fundit frugem spici ordine structam et contra avium minorum morsus munitur vallo aristarum.

[52]
quid ego vitium ortus satus incrementa commemorem? satiari delectatione non possum, ut meae senectutis requietem oblectamentumque noscatis. omitto enim vim ipsam omnium quae generantur e terra, quae ex fici tantulo grano aut ex acini vinaceo aut ex ceterarum frugum aut stirpium minutissimis seminibus tantos truncos ramosque procreet; malleoli plantae sarmenta viviradices propagines nonne efficiunt ut quemvis cum admiratione delectent? vitis quidem quae natura caduca est et, nisi fulta est, fertur ad terram, eadem, ut se erigat, claviculis suis quasi manibus quidquid est nacta complectitur, quam serpentem multiplici lapsu et erratico, ferro amputans coercet ars agricolarum, ne silvescat sarmentis et in omnis partis nimia fundatur.

[53]
itaque ineunte vere in eis quae relicta sunt exsistit tamquam ad articulos sarmentorum ea quae gemma dicitur, a qua oriens uva se ostendit, quae et suco terrae et calore solis augescens primo est peracerba gustatu, dein maturata dulcescit vestitaque pampinis nec modico tepore caret et nimios solis defendit ardores. qua quid potest esse cum fructu laetius, tum aspectu pulchrius?

cuius quidem non utilitas me solum, ut ante dixi, sed etiam cultura et natura ipsa delectat: adminiculorum ordines, capitum iugatio, religatio et propagatio vitium, sarmentorum ea, quam dixi, aliorum amputatio, aliorum immissio.

quid ego irrigationes, quid fossiones agri repastinationesque proferam, quibus fit multo terra fecundior? quid de utilitate loquar stercorandi? dixi in eo libro, quem de rebus rusticis scripsi.

[54]
De qua doctus Hesiodus ne verbum quidem fecit, cum de cultura agri scriberet. At Homerus, qui multis ut mihi videtur, ante saeculis fuit, Laertam lenientem desiderium, quod capiebat e filio, colentem agrum et eum stercorantem facit. nec vero segetibus solum et pratis et vineis et arbustis res rusticae laetae sunt, sed hortis etiam et pomariis, tum pecudum pastu, apium examinibus, florum omnium varietate. nec consitiones modo delectant, sed etiam insitiones, quibus nihil invenit agri cultura sollertius.

### Chapter 16

[55]
possum persequi permulta oblectamenta rerum rusticarum, sed ea ipsa quae dixi sentio fuisse longiora. ignoscetis autem, nam et studio rerum rusticarum provectus sum, et senectus est natura loquacior, ne ab omnibus eam vitiis videar vindicare. ergo in hac vita M’. Curius, cum de Samnitibus, de Sabinis, de Pyrrho triumphavisset, consumpsit extremum tempus aetatis; cuius quidem ego villam contemplans, abest enim non longe a me, admirari satis non possum vel hominis ipsius continentiam vel temporum disciplinam.

[56]
curio ad focum sedenti magnum auri pondus Samnites cum attulissent, repudiati sunt; non enim aurum habere praeclarum sibi videri dixit, sed eis qui haberent aurum imperare. poteratne tantus animus efficere non iucundam senectutem?

sed venio ad agricolas, ne a me ipso recedam. in agris erant tum senatores, id est senes—si quidem aranti L. Quinctio Cincinnato nuntiatum est eum dictatorem esse factum, cuius dictatoris iussu magister equitum C. Servilius Ahala Sp. Maelium regnum appetentem occupatum interemit. A villa in senatum arcessebatur et Curius et ceteri senes, ex quo qui eos arcessebant viatores nominati sunt. num igitur horum senectus miserabilis fuit, qui se agri cultione oblectabant? mea quidem sententia haud scio an nulla beatior possit esse, neque solum officio, quod hominum generi universo cultura agrorum est salutaris, sed et delectatione quam dixi, et saturitate copiaque rerum omnium, quae ad victum hominum, ad cultum etiam deorum pertinent, ut, quoniam haec quidam desiderant, in gratiam iam cum voluptate redeamus. Semper enim boni assiduique domini referta cella vinaria, olearia, etiam penaria est, villaque tota locuples est, abundat porco haedo agno gallina, lacte caseo melle. iam hortum ipsi agricolae succidiam alteram appellant. conditiora facit haec supervacaneis etiam operis aucupium atque venatio.

[57]
quid de pratorum viriditate aut arborum ordinibus aut vinearum olivetorumve specie plura dicam? brevi praecidam. agro bene culto nihil potest esse nec usu uberius nec specie ornatius, ad quem fruendum non modo non retardat, verum etiam invitat atque allectat senectus. ubi enim potest illa aetas aut calescere vel apricatione melius vel igni, aut vicissim umbris aquisve refrigerari salubrius? sibi habeant igitur arma,

[58]
sibi equos, sibi hastas, sibi clavam et pilam, sibi natationes atque cursus; nobis senibus ex lusionibus multis talos relinquant et tesseras; id ipsum ut lubebit, quoniam sine eis beata esse senectus potest.

### Chapter 17

[59]
multas ad res perutiles Xenophontis libri sunt, quos legite, quaeso, studiose, ut facitis. quam copiose ab eo agri cultura laudatur in eo libro, qui est de tuenda re familiari, qui Oeconomicus inscribitur! atque ut intellegatis nihil ei tam regale videri quam studium agri colendi, Socrates in eo libro loquitur cum Critobulo Cyrum minorem, Persarum regem, praestantem ingenio atque imperi gloria, cum Lysander Lacedaemonius, vir summae virtutis, venisset ad eum Sardis eique dona a sociis attulisset, et ceteris in rebus communem erga Lysandrum atque humanum fuisse et ei quendam consaeptum agrum diligenter consitum ostendisse. cum autem admiraretur Lysander et proceritates arborum et directos in quincuncem ordines et humum subactam atque puram et suavitatem odorum qui afflarentur ex floribus, tum eum dixisse mirari se non modo diligentiam sed etiam sollertiam eius a quo essent illa dimensa atque discripta; et Cyrum respondisse: atqui ego ista sum omnia dimensus, mei sunt ordines, mea discriptio; multae etiam istarum arborum mea manu sunt satae. tum Lysandrum, intuentem purpuram eius et nitorem corporis ornatumque Persicum multo auro multisque gemmis, dixisse: recte vero te, Cyre, beatum ferunt, quoniam virtuti tuae fortuna coniuncta est!

[60]
hac igitur fortuna frui licet senibus, nec aetas impedit quo minus et ceterarum rerum et in primis agri colendi studia teneamus usque ad ultimum tempus senectutis. M. quidem Valerium Corvinum accepimus ad centesimum annum perduxisse, cum esset acta iam aetate in agris eosque coleret, cuius inter primum et sextum consulatum sex et quadraginta anni interfuerunt. ita quantum spatium aetatis maiores ad senectutis initium esse voluerunt, tantus illi cursus honorum fuit; atque huius extrema aetas hoc beatior quam media, quod auctoritatis habebat plus, laboris minus.

[61]
apex est autem senectutis auctoritas. quanta fuit in L. Caecilio Metello, quanta in A. Atilio Calatino! in quem illud elogium:
hunc unum plurimae consentiunt gentes
populi primarium fuisse virum.
notum est totum carmen incisum in sepulcro. iure igitur gravis, cuius de laudibus omnium esset fama consentiens. quem virum nuper P. Crassum, pontificem maximum, quem postea M. Lepidum eodem sacerdotio praeditum vidimus! quid de Paulo aut Africano loquar, aut, ut iam ante, de Maximo? quorum non in sententia solum, sed etiam in nutu residebat auctoritas. habet senectus, honorata praesertim, tantam auctoritatem, ut ea pluris sit quam omnes adulescentiae voluptates.

### Chapter 18

[62]
sed in omni orationemementote eam me senectutem laudare, quae fundamentis adulescentiae constituta sit. ex quo efficitur id, quod ego magno quondam cum assensu omnium dixi, miseram esse senectutem quae se oratione defenderet. non cani nec rugae repente auctoritatem arripere possunt, sed honeste acta superior actas fructus capit auctoritatis extremos.

[63]
haec enim ipsa sunt honorabilia, quae videntur levia atque communia—salutari appeti decedi assurgi deduci reduci consuli, quae et apud nos et in aliis civitatibus, ut quaeque optime morata est, ita diligentissime observantur. Lysandrum Lacedaemonium, cuius modo feci mentionem, dicere aiunt solitum Lacedaemonem esse honestissimum domicilium senectutis; nusquam enim tantum tribuitur aetati, nusquam est senectus honoratior. quin etiam memoriae proditum est, cum Athenis ludis quidam in theatrum grandis natu venisset, magno consessu locum nusquam ei datum a suis civibus, cum autem ad Lacedaemonios accessisset, qui, legati cum essent, certo in loco considerant, consurrexisse omnes illi dicuntur et senem sessum recepisse;

[64]
quibus cum a cuncto consessu plausus esset multiplex datus, dixisse ex eis quendam Atheniensis scire quae recta essent, sed facere nolle.

multa in nostro collegio praeclara, sed hoc, de quo agimus, in primis, quod, ut quisque aetate antecedit, ita sententiae principatum tenet, neque solum honore antecedentibus, sed eis etiam, qui cum imperio sunt, maiores natu augures anteponuntur. quae sunt igitur voluptates corporis cum auctoritatis praemiis comparandae? quibus qui splendide usi sunt, ei mihi videntur fabulam aetatis peregisse nec tamquam inexercitati histriones in extremo actu corruisse.

[65]
At sunt morosi et anxii et iracundi et difficiles senes. si quaerimus, etiam avari; sed haec morum vitia sunt, non senectutis. ac morositas tamen et ea vitia, quae dixi, habent aliquid excusationis, non illius quidem iustae, sed quae probari posse videatur: contemni se putant, despici, illudi; praeterea in fragili corpore odiosa omnis offensio est; quae tamen omnia dulciora fiunt et moribus bonis et artibus, idque cum in vita tum in scaena intellegi potest ex eis fratribus qui in Adelphis sunt. quanta in altero diritas, in altero comitas! Sic se res habet: ut enim non omne vinum, sic non omnis natura vetustate coacescit. severitatem in senectute probo, sed eam, sicut alia, modicam; acerbitatem nullo modo; avaritia vero senilis quid sibi velit, non intellego.

### Chapter 19

[66]
Potest enim quicquam esse absurdius quam, quo viae minus restet, eo plus viatici quaerere?

quarta restat causa, quae maxime angere atque sollicitam habere nostram aetatem videtur, appropinquatio mortis, quae certe a senectute non potest esse longe. O miserum senem, qui mortem contemnendam esse in tam longa aetate non viderit! quae aut plane neglegenda est, si omnino exstinguit animum, aut etiam optanda, si aliquo eum deducit ubi sit futurus aeternus. atqui tertium certe nihil inveniri potest.

[67]
quid igitur timeam, si aut non miser post mortem, aut beatus etiam futurus sum? quamquam quis est tam stultus, quamvis sit adulescens, cui sit exploratum se ad vesperum esse victurum? quin etiam aetas illa multo pluris quam nostra casus mortis habet: facilius in morbos incidunt adulescentes, gravius aegrotant, tristius curantur. itaque pauci veniunt ad senectutem; quod ni ita accideret, melius et prudentius viveretur. mens enim et ratio et consilium in senibus est, qui si nulli fuissent, nullae omnino civitates fuissent.

sed redeo ad mortem impendentem. quod est istud crimen senectutis, cum id ei videatis cum adulescentia esse commune?

[68]
sensi ego in optimo filio, tu in exspectatis ad amplissimam dignitatem fratribus, Scipio, mortem omni aetati esse communem. At sperat adulescens diu se victurum, quod sperare idem senex non potest. insipienter sperat; quid enim stultius quam incerta pro certis habere, falsa pro veris? At senex ne quod speret quidem habet. At est eo meliore condicione quam adulescens, quioniam id quod ille sperat hic consecutus est: ille volt diu vivere, hic diu vixit.

[69]
quamquam, o di boni, quid est in hominis natura diu? da enim supremum tempus; exspectemus Tartessiorum regis aetatem—fuit enim, ut scriptum video, Arganthonius quidam Gadibus, qui octoginta regnaverat annos, centum viginti vixerat—sed mihi ne diuturnum quidem quicquam videtur, in quo est aliquid extremum; cum enim id advenit, tum illud, quod praeteriit, effluxit; tantum remanet, quod virtute et recte factis consecutus sis. horae quidem cedunt et dies et menses et anni, nec praeteritum tempus umquam revertitur nec quid sequatur sciri potest. quod cuique temporis ad vivendum datur, eo debet esse contentus.

[70]
neque enim histrioni, ut placeat, peragenda fabula est, modo in quocunque fuerit actu probetur; neque sapientibus usque ad plaudite veniendum est, breve enim tempus aetatis satis longum est ad bene honesteque vivendum; sin processerit longius, non magis dolendum est, quam agricolae dolent praeterita verni temporis suavitate aestatem autumnumque venisse. ver enim tamquam adulescentia significat ostenditque fructus futuros; reliqua autem tempora demetendis fructibus et percipiendis accommodata sunt.

[71]
fructus autem senectutis est, ut saepe dixi, ante partorum bonorum memoria et copia. omnia autem, quae secundum naturam fiunt, sunt habenda in bonis; quid est autem tam secundum naturam quam senibus emori? quod idem contingit adulescentibus adversante et repugnante natura. itaque adulescentes mihi mori sic videntur, ut cum aquae multitudine flammae vis opprimitur, senes autem sic, ut cum sua sponte, nulla adhibita vi, consumptus ignis exstinguitur, et quasi poma ex arboribus, cruda si sunt, vix evelluntur, si matura et cocta, decidunt, sic vitam adulescentibus vis aufert, senibus maturitas; quae quidem mihi tam iucunda est, ut, quo propius ad mortem accedam, quasi terram videre videar aliquandoque in portum ex longa navigatione esse venturus.

### Chapter 20

[72]
senectutis autem nullus est certus terminus, recteque in ea vivitur, quoad munus offici exsequi et tueri possit mortemque contemnere, ex quo fit ut animosior etiam senectus sit quam adulescentia et fortior. hoc illud est, quod Pisistrato tyranno a Solone responsum est, cum illi quaerenti qua tandem re fretus sibi tam audaciter obsisteret respondisse dicitur senectute. sed vivendi est finis optimus, cum integra mente certisque sensibus opus ipsa suum eadem quae coagmentavit natura dissolvit. ut navem, ut aedificium idem destruit facillime qui construxit, sic hominem eadem optime quae conglutinavit natura dissolvit. iam omnis conglutinatio recens aegre, inveterata facile divellitur.

ita fit ut illud breve vitae reliquum nec avide appetendum senibus nec sine causa deserendum sit;

[73]
vetatque Pythagoras iniussu imperatoris, id est dei, de praesidio et statione vitae decedere. Solonis quidem sapientis est elogium, quo se negat velle suam mortem dolore amicorum et lamentis vacare. volt, credo, se esse carum suis. sed haud scio an melius Ennius:
nemo me lacrumis decoret, neque funera fletu faxit.
non censet lugendam esse mortem, quam immortalitas consequatur.

[74]
iam sensus moriendi aliquis esse potest, isque ad exiguum tempus, praesertim seni: post mortem quidem sensus aut optandus aut nullus est. sed hoc meditatum ab adulescentia debet esse, mortem ut neglegamus; sine qua meditatione tranquillo animo esse nemo potest. moriendum enim certe est, et incertum an hoc ipso die. mortem igitur omnibus horis impendentem timens qui poterit animo consistere?

[75]
De qua non ita longa disputatione opus esse videtur, cum recordor non L. Brutum, qui in liberanda patria est interfectus, non duos Decios, qui ad voluntariam mortem cursum equorum incitaverunt, non M. Atilium, qui ad supplicium est profectus ut fidem hosti datam conservaret, non duos Scipiones, qui iter Poenis vel corporibus suis obstruere voluerunt, non avum tuum L. Paulum, qui morte luit collegae in Cannensi ignominia temeritatem, non M. Marcellum, cuius interitum ne crudelissimus quidem hostis honore sepulturae carere passus est, sed legiones nostras, quod scripsi in Originibus, in eum locum saepe profectas alacri animo et erecto, unde se redituras numquam arbitrarentur. quod igitur adulescentes, et ei quidem non solum indocti sed etiam rustici contemnunt, id docti senes extimescent?

[76]
omnino, ut mihi quidem videtur studiorum omnium satietas vitae facit satietatem. sunt pueritiae studia certa: num igitur ea desiderant adulescentes? sunt ineuntis adulescentiae: num ea constans iam requirit aetas, quae media dicitur? sunt etiam eius aetatis: ne ea quidem quaeruntur in senectute. sunt extrema quaedam studia senectutis: ergo, ut superiorum aetatum studia occidunt, sic occidunt etiam senectutis; quod cum evenit, satietas vitae tempus maturum mortis affert.

### Chapter 21

[77]
non enim video, cur, quid ipse sentiam de morte, non audeam vobis dicere, quod eo cernere mihi melius videor, quo ab ea propius absum. ego vestros patres, P. Scipio tuque, C. Laeli, viros clarissimos mihique amicissimos, vivere arbitror et eam quidem vitam, quae est sola vita nominanda. nam dum sumus inclusi in his compagibus corporis, munere quodam necessitatis et gravi opere perfungimur; est enim animus caelestis ex altissimo domicilio depressus et quasi demersus in terram, locum divinae naturae aeternitatique contrarium. sed credo deos immortalis sparsisse animos in corpora humana, ut essent qui terras tuerentur quique caelestium ordinem contemplantes imitarentur eum vitae modo atque constantia. nec me solum ratio ac disputatio impulit ut ita crederem, sed nobilitas etiam summorum philosophorum et auctoritas.

[78]
audiebam Pythagoram Pythagoriosque, incolas paene nostros, qui essent Italici philosophi quondam nominati, numquam dubitasse quin ex universa mente divina delibatos animos haberemus. demonstrabantur mihi praeterea quae Socrates supremo vitae die de immortalitate animorum disseruisset, is qui esset omnium sapientissimus oraculo Apollinis iudicatus. quid multa? Sic mihi persuasi, sic sentio, cum tanta celeritas animorum sit, tanta memoria praeteritorum futurorumque prudentia, tot artes, tantae scientiae, tot inventa, non posse eam naturam, quae res eas contineat, esse mortalem; cumque semper agitetur animus nec principium motus habeat, quia se ipse moveat, ne finem quidem habiturum esse motus, quia numquam se ipse sit relicturus; et cum simplex animi natura esset neque haberet in se quicquam admixtum dispar sui atque dissimile, non posse eum dividi, quod si non posset, non posse interire; magnoque esse argumento homines scire pleraque ante quam nati sint, quod iam pueri, cum artis difficilis discant, ita celeriter res innumerabilis arripiant, ut eas non tum primum accipere videantur, sed reminisci et recordari. haec Platonis fere.

### Chapter 22

[79]
apud Xenophontem autem moriens Cyrus maior haec dicit: nolite arbitrari, o mihi carissimi filii, me, cum a vobis discessero, nusquam aut nullum fore. nec enim, dum eram vobiscum, animum meum videbatis, sed eum esse in hoc corpore ex eis rebus quas gerebam intellegebatis. eundem igitur esse creditote, etiam si nullum videbitis.

[80]
nec vero clarorum virorum post mortem honores permanerent, si nihil eorum ipsorum animi efficerent, quo diutius memoriam sui teneremus. mihi quidem numquam persuaderi potuit animos dum in corporibus essent mortalibus vivere, cum excessissent ex eis emori; nec vero tum animum esse insipientem cum ex insipienti corpore evasisset, sed cum omni admixtione corporis liberatus purus et integer esse coepisset, tum esse sapientem. atque etiam, cum hominis natura morte dissolvitur, ceterarum rerum perspicuum est quo quaeque discedat, abeunt enim illuc omnia, unde orta sunt; animus autem solus nec cum adest nec cum discessit apparet. iam vero videtis nihil esse morti tam simile quam somnum.

### Chapter 23

[81]
atqui dormientium animi maxime declarant divinitatem suam; multa enim, cum remissi et liberi sunt, futura prospiciunt; ex quo intellegitur quales futuri sint, cum se plane corporis vinculis relaxaverint. qua re, si haec ita sunt, sic me colitote, inquit, ut deum, sin una est interiturus animus cum corpore, vos tamen, deos verentes, qui hanc omnem pulchritudinem tuentur et regunt, memoriam nostri pie inviolateque servabitis. Cyrus quidem haec moriens; nos, si placet, nostra videamus.

[82]
nemo umquam mihi, Scipio,persuadebit aut patrem tuum Paulum, aut duos avos Paulum et Africanum, aut Africani patrem aut patruum, aut multos praestantis viros, quos enumerare non est necesse, tanta esse conatos quae ad posteritatis memoriam pertinerent, nisi animo cernerent posteritatem ad ipsos pertinere. anne censes, ut de me ipse aliquid more senum glorier, me tantos labores diurnos nocturnosque domi militiaeque suscepturum fuisse, si isdem finibus gloriam meam quibus vitam essem terminaturus? nonne melius multo fuisset otiosam et quietam aetatem sine ullo labore et contentione traducere? sed nescio quo modo animus erigens se posteritatem ita semper prospiciebat, quasi, cum excessisset e vita, tum denique victurus esset. quod quidem ni ita se haberet ut animi immortales essent, haud optimi cuiusque animus maxime ad immortalitatis gloriam niteretur. quid quod sapientissimus quisque aequissimo animo moritur,

[83]
stultissimus iniquissimo, nonne vobis videtur is animus, qui plus cernat et longius, videre se ad meliora proficisci, ille autem, cuius obtusior sit acies, non videre?

equidem efferor studio patres vestros quos colui et dilexi videndi, neque vero eos solum convenire aveo, quos ipse cognovi, sed illos etiam, de quibus audivi et legi et ipse conscripsi; quo quidem me proficiscentem haud sane quid facile retraxerit, nec tamquam Peliam recoxerit. et si quis deus mihi largiatur ut ex hac aetate repuerascam et in cunis vagiam, valde recusem, nec vero velim quasi decurso spatio ad carceres a calce revocari.

[84]
quid habet enim vita commodi? quid non potius laboris? sed habeat sane; habet certe tamen aut satietatem aut modum. non libet enim mihi deplorare vitam, quod multi et ei docti saepe fecerunt, neque me vixisse paenitet, quoniam ita vixi, ut non frustra me natum existimem, et ex vita ita discedo tamquam ex hospitio, non tamquam e domo; commorandi enim natura devorsorium nobis, non habitandi dedit.

O praeclarum diem cum in illud divinum animorum concilium coetumque proficiscar cumque ex hac turba et colluvione discedam! proficiscar enim non ad eos solum viros, de quibus ante dixi, verum etiam ad Catonem meum, quo nemo vir melior natus est, nemo pietate praestantior, cuius a me corpus est crematum, quod contra decuit ab illo meum, animus vero non me deserens sed respectans, in ea profecto loca discessit quo mihi ipsi cernebat esse veniendum. quem ego meum casum fortiter ferre visus sum, non quo aequo animo ferrem, sed me ipse consolabar existimans non longinquum inter nos digressum et discessum fore.

[85]
His mihi rebus, Scipio, id enim te cum Laelio admirari solere dixisti, levis est senectus, nec solum non molesta, sed etiam iucunda. quod si in hoc erro, qui animos hominum immortalis esse credam, libenter erro nec mihi hunc errorem, quo delector, dum vivo, extorqueri volo; sin mortuus, ut quidam minuti philosophi censent, nihil sentiam, non vereor ne hunc errorem meum philosophi mortui irrideant. quod si non sumus immortales futuri, tamen exstingui homini suo tempore optabile est. nam habet natura, ut aliarum omnium rerum, sic vivendi modum. senectus autem aetatis est peractio tamquam fabulae, cuius defetigationem fugere debemus, praesertim adiuncta satietate.

haec habui de senectute quae dicerem, ad quam utinam veniatis, ut ea, quae ex me audistis, re experti probare possitis!

## Translation — Mouseia

> Complete machine-assisted Musean translation made directly from the Latin in all 23 chapters and 85 sections. Latin-source editorial review recorded; no human specialist certification is claimed.

### Chapter 1

[1]
“O Titus, if I brought you help, or lightened the care
That burns you now and, lodged within your breast, torments you,
What would my reward be?”
For I may address you, Atticus, in the same verses that were addressed to Flamininus by
“That man of little wealth, but rich in loyalty,”
although I know for certain that you are not, like Flamininus,
“So troubled, Titus, through the nights and days.”
I know your self-command and even temper; I understand that you brought home from Athens not merely a surname, but cultivation and good judgment. Yet I suspect that the same matters which sometimes trouble me deeply trouble you as well. Consolation for those calls for a greater undertaking and must wait for another time.

For now I have thought it right to write you something on old age,

[2]
since I wish to lighten, for you and for myself, this burden we share: old age, already pressing upon us, or at least approaching. I know, of course, that you bear it and will bear it, as you bear everything, with moderation and wisdom. But when I wanted to write about old age, you came to mind as a man worthy of a gift from which we might both draw benefit. For my part, composing this book gave me such pleasure that it not only brushed away all the troubles of old age but made old age itself gentle and delightful. Philosophy, then, can never receive the praise it deserves: whoever obeys it may pass every season of life without distress.

[3]
On other subjects we have said much and shall often speak again; this book I send you is on old age. I have entrusted the whole discussion not to Tithonus, as Aristo of Ceos did—a fable would carry too little authority—but to Marcus Cato in his old age, to give the argument greater weight. I represent Laelius and Scipio expressing their wonder that he bears old age so easily, and Cato answering them. If his discussion seems more learned than his own books usually are, attribute it to Greek literature, which he is known to have studied with great devotion in his later years. But why say more? Cato’s own words will now unfold our entire view of old age.

### Chapter 2

[4]
Scipio: “Gaius Laelius here and I often marvel, Marcus Cato, at your outstanding and consummate wisdom in other matters, but most of all because I have never seen you find old age burdensome. Most old men detest it so much that they say they bear a load heavier than Mount Etna.”

Cato: “You seem to marvel, Scipio and Laelius, at something not particularly difficult. Those who have no resources within themselves for living well and happily find every age burdensome. But those who seek all their goods within themselves can regard nothing that nature’s necessity brings as an evil. Old age belongs above all to this class: everyone wishes to reach it, yet complains when it arrives. Such is the inconsistency and perversity of folly. They say it crept upon them sooner than they had thought. First, who compelled them to think falsely? Does old age steal upon youth any faster than youth upon childhood? And then, would old age weigh any less upon them in their eight-hundredth year than in their eightieth? However long a life has been, once it has flowed away, it can offer no consolation to a foolish old age.”

[5]
“So if you are accustomed to admire my wisdom—and I wish it deserved your opinion and my surname—my wisdom lies in this: I follow nature, our best guide, as I would a god, and obey her. Having planned the other parts of life well, she is unlikely to have neglected its final act like an incompetent poet. Yet something had to come last, something that, like berries on the trees and the fruits of the earth, would wither and fall when its proper ripeness came. A wise person must bear that gently. For what else is resisting nature but waging war upon the gods, as the Giants did?”

[6]
Laelius: “But Cato, you would do us a very great kindness—I can promise this for Scipio too—if, since we hope to grow old, and certainly wish to, we could learn from you long beforehand how best to bear the growing weight of years.”

Cato: “I certainly will, Laelius, especially if, as you say, it will please you both.”

Laelius: “Indeed we wish it, Cato, if it is no trouble. You have, so to speak, completed a long road that we too must travel, and we want to see what the place you have reached is like.”

### Chapter 3

[7]
Cato: “I shall do what I can, Laelius. I have often heard the complaints of men my own age—for, as the old proverb says, like most readily gathers with like. Gaius Salinator and Spurius Albinus, both former consuls and about my own age, used to lament that they were deprived of pleasures without which they thought life no life at all, and that those who once honored them now held them in contempt. To my mind they were blaming the wrong thing. If old age were responsible, the same would happen to me and to every other elderly man. Yet I have known many whose old age was free of complaint, who did not resent their release from the chains of desire and were not despised by their families. In complaints of this kind the fault lies in character, not in years. Moderate old men, neither difficult nor unkind, enjoy a tolerable old age; harshness and inhumanity make every age a burden.”

[8]
Laelius: “It is as you say, Cato. Yet someone might suggest that your wealth, resources, and standing make old age seem more tolerable to you, and that few can have those advantages.”

Cato: “There is something in that, Laelius, but it is very far from the whole. Themistocles is said to have answered a man from Seriphus during a quarrel, when the man said that his distinction came not from his own glory but from his country’s: ‘By Hercules, if I were from Seriphus I should never have become famous; nor would you, if you were an Athenian.’ The same may be said of old age. In utter poverty it cannot be easy even for a wise man; nor, even amid great abundance, can it fail to burden a fool.”

[9]
“Altogether the best weapons of old age, Scipio and Laelius, are the arts of virtue and their practice. Cultivated at every age, they bear marvelous fruit when you have lived long and fully: not only because they never abandon you, even in life’s last days—great as that advantage is—but because the consciousness of a life well lived and the memory of many good deeds are supremely sweet.”

### Chapter 4

[10]
“When I was young I loved Quintus Maximus, the man who recovered Tarentum, as though he were my contemporary, though he was old. His gravity was seasoned with courtesy, and age had not altered his character. When I began to cultivate his acquaintance he was not extremely old, but already advanced in years. His first consulship fell the year after my birth; during his fourth, I went as a very young soldier to Capua, and five years later to Tarentum. Four years after that I became quaestor, holding office in the consulship of Tuditanus and Cethegus. By then a very old man, he spoke in favor of the Cincian law on gifts and payments. Though well advanced in years he still waged war like a young man, and by his patience wore down Hannibal in all his youthful exultation. Our friend Ennius said admirably of him:
One man, by waiting, restored our state;
He set no public clamor above its safety;
So now his glory shines ever more brightly.”

[11]
“And with what vigilance and judgment he recovered Tarentum! I heard Salinator, who had lost the town and fled into the citadel, boast to him: ‘Through my efforts, Quintus Fabius, you recovered Tarentum.’ ‘Certainly,’ he answered with a laugh, ‘for if you had not lost it, I should never have recovered it.’ Nor was he more distinguished in war than in civil life. During his second consulship, while his colleague Spurius Carvilius remained inactive, he opposed, as long as he could, the tribune Gaius Flaminius, who was distributing land in Picenum and Gaul to individuals against the Senate’s authority. And though an augur himself, he dared to say that whatever was done for the state’s safety was done under the best auspices, while measures brought against the state were brought against the auspices.”

[12]
“I learned of many splendid qualities in that man, but nothing more admirable than the way he bore the death of his son, a distinguished man and former consul. His funeral oration is still in circulation: when we read it, what philosopher does not seem small beside him? Great as he was in public and before his fellow citizens, he was greater still within his home. What conversation, what counsel! What knowledge of antiquity and of augural law! And, for a Roman, what wide learning! He remembered everything, wars abroad as well as at home. I listened to him then with such eager delight that I seemed already to foresee what came to pass: after his death I should have no one left to teach me.”

### Chapter 5

[13]
“Why, then, have I said so much about Maximus? Because you surely see how wrong it would be to call such an old age miserable. Yet not everyone can be a Scipio or a Maximus and look back upon captured cities, battles fought on land or sea, wars conducted, and triumphs celebrated. There is also the calm and gentle old age of a life passed quietly, purely, and with refinement. Such, we are told, was Plato’s: he died writing in his eighty-first year. Such was that of Isocrates, who says that he wrote the book entitled Panathenaicus in his ninety-fourth year and lived five years longer. His teacher, Gorgias of Leontini, completed a hundred and seven years, never ceasing from his studies and his work. Asked why he wished to remain alive so long, he replied, ‘I have no complaint to make against old age.’”

[14]
“An excellent answer, worthy of a learned man!

“For fools charge their own faults and failings to old age. Not so Ennius, whom I mentioned just now:
Like a gallant horse that often, on the final stretch,
Won at Olympia, now worn with years he rests.
He compares his old age to that of a gallant, victorious horse. You can surely remember him well: the present consuls, Titus Flamininus and Manius Acilius, took office in the nineteenth year after his death. He died during the consulship of Caepio and Philippus, the latter’s second, when I, at sixty-five, supported the Voconian law with a strong voice and sound lungs. At seventy—for that was the age Ennius reached—he bore the two burdens generally thought the greatest, poverty and old age, as though he almost delighted in them.”

### Chapter 6

[15]
“When I survey the matter in my mind, I find four reasons why old age is thought miserable: first, it withdraws us from active affairs; second, it weakens the body; third, it deprives us of nearly every pleasure; fourth, it stands not far from death. Let us consider, if you please, how weighty and how just each of these reasons is.

“Old age removes us from active affairs. Which affairs? Those conducted by youth and strength? Are there, then, no activities proper to old age, directed by mind and thought even when the body is weak? Was Quintus Maximus doing nothing? Was Lucius Paulus, your father and my excellent son’s father-in-law? Were those other old men, the Fabricii, Curii, and Coruncanii, doing nothing when they defended the state with counsel and authority?

“Appius Claudius had blindness to bear as well as old age;”

[16]
“yet when the Senate’s opinion was inclining toward peace and a treaty with Pyrrhus, he did not hesitate to speak the words Ennius put into verse:
Where have your minds, once accustomed to stand firm,
Turned from their former course along the path of madness?
He spoke further with the greatest force—you know the poem—and Appius’s own speech survives as well. He did this seventeen years after his second consulship; ten years had separated his two consulships, and he had been censor before the first. This makes it clear that he was indeed old during the war with Pyrrhus; and this, moreover, is the account handed down by our forefathers.”

[17]
“Those who deny that old age has a part in active affairs therefore have no case. They are like men who say that a helmsman does nothing in sailing a ship because, while some climb the masts, others hurry along the gangways, and others bail out the bilge, he sits quietly at the stern, holding the tiller. He does not do what the young men do, but he does things far greater and better. Great achievements depend not on strength, speed, or bodily agility, but on judgment, authority, and counsel. Of these old age is not usually deprived; rather, it gains in them.”

[18]
“Unless perhaps I seem idle to you now because I no longer wage war, though as soldier, military tribune, legate, and consul I have served in many kinds of war. Yet I prescribe to the Senate what must be done and how. Long in advance I announce war upon Carthage, which has long been plotting evil; I shall not cease to fear her until I know she has been destroyed. May the immortal gods reserve that prize,”

[19]
“Scipio, for you, so that you may finish what your grandfather left undone. This is the thirty-third year since his death, but all the years to come will inherit the memory of that man. He died the year before my censorship, nine years after my consulship, during which he was elected consul for a second time. If he had lived to his hundredth year, would he have regretted his old age? He would not have relied on running or leaping, on spears thrown from afar or swords wielded at close quarters, but on counsel, reason, and judgment. Had old men not possessed these qualities, our ancestors would not have called their highest council the Senate. Among the Spartans, indeed, those”

[20]
“who hold the highest office are called what they actually are: elders. If you care to read or hear about foreign peoples, you will find that the greatest states have been shaken by young men and upheld and restored by old men.
Tell us, how did you lose your mighty state so quickly?
That is the question asked in the poet Naevius’s Wolf. Among the answers, this comes first:
New speakers were coming forward, foolish young men.
Rashness, plainly, belongs to the flowering years; prudence to the years of age.”

### Chapter 7

[21]
“But memory declines. I dare say it does, unless you exercise it, or if you are naturally rather slow. Themistocles had learned the names of all his fellow citizens. Do you suppose, then, that as he grew older he used to greet Aristides as Lysimachus? For my part, I know not only the men now living but their fathers and grandfathers as well. Nor, when I read tombstones, do I fear the loss of memory they are said to cause: reading them brings the dead back to my mind. I have never heard of an old man forgetting where he buried his treasure. They remember everything that matters to them: appointments to appear in court, who owes them money, and whom they owe.”

[22]
“And what of elderly lawyers, pontiffs, augurs, and philosophers? How much they remember! Old men retain their powers of mind, provided their interest and industry endure; and this applies not only to famous and honored men, but to those who lead quiet, private lives. Sophocles wrote tragedies into extreme old age. His sons thought that his devotion to writing made him neglect his property and brought him into court. Just as our custom allows fathers who mismanage their affairs to be forbidden control of their property, they asked the judges to remove him from its management as a man of unsound mind. The old man is said to have recited to the judges the play he had just written and was still working on, Oedipus at Colonus, and asked whether they thought it the work of someone whose mind was failing,”

[23]
“after which the judges acquitted him. Did old age, then, compel him to fall silent in his studies? Did it silence Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, or Stesichorus, or Isocrates and Gorgias, whom I mentioned before? Did it silence those foremost philosophers, Pythagoras and Democritus, or Plato and Xenocrates, or later Zeno and Cleanthes, or Diogenes the Stoic, whom you yourselves saw in Rome? Or did their pursuit of learning last as long as their lives?”

[24]
“But leave aside these exalted studies. I can name Roman farmers in the Sabine countryside, my neighbors and friends, without whose presence scarcely any important work is undertaken on their farms: sowing, harvesting, or storing the crops. In the other tasks this is less remarkable, for no one is so old that he does not think he can live another year. Yet these same men labor over things they know will bring them no benefit at all:
He plants trees to serve another generation,
as our Statius says in The Young Comrades.”

### Chapter 8

[25]
“And however old the farmer may be, he does not hesitate when someone asks for whom he plants: ‘For the immortal gods, who intended me not merely to receive these things from my ancestors but also to hand them on to those who follow.’

“Caecilius speaks better here, of an old man providing for another generation, than in these other lines:
By Pollux, old age, if you brought no other fault
With you when you arrived, this one would be enough:
Living long, a man sees much he would rather not see.
And perhaps much he wishes to see as well! Youth, too, often meets what it would rather not. Still worse is this passage by the same Caecilius:
This, I think, is the greatest misery of age:
To feel that at that age one is hateful to another.
Welcome, rather than hateful!”

[26]
“For just as wise old men delight in young people of good character, and those whom the young honor and love find old age lighter, so the young welcome the counsel of the old that guides them toward the pursuit of virtue. I know that you find my company no less pleasing than I find yours. You see, then, that old age is not merely free of languor and idleness: it is busy, always acting and undertaking something—something, naturally, in keeping with each person’s pursuits in earlier life. And what of those who even learn something new? We see Solon boasting in verse that he grows old learning something every day. So did I: I learned Greek literature in old age, seizing upon it as eagerly as a man seeking to quench a long thirst, so that I might know for myself the very examples you now hear me use. When I heard that Socrates had done the same with the lyre, I wished I could do that too, for the ancients used to learn it. But with literature, at least, I worked hard.”

### Chapter 9

[27]
“Even now I do not miss a young man’s strength—and that was the second charge against old age—any more than, as a young man, I missed the strength of a bull or an elephant. We should use what we possess and, whatever we undertake, act according to our powers. What words could be more contemptible than those of Milo of Croton? When he was already old, he is said to have watched athletes training on the course, looked down at his own arms, and wept: ‘But these are dead now.’ Not so dead as you yourself, you fool! Your distinction never came from yourself, but from your lungs and muscles. Sextus Aelius said nothing of the kind, nor Tiberius Coruncanius many years before him, nor Publius Crassus more recently. These men laid down the law for their fellow citizens, and their wisdom continued to grow until their last breath.”

[28]
“An orator, I fear, may lose vigor with age: his work requires not only talent but lungs and strength. Yet somehow the voice’s resonance retains its brilliance even in old age. I have certainly not lost mine, and you see how old I am. Still, quiet and unhurried speech suits an old man, and the composed, gentle eloquence of an elderly speaker very often wins a hearing by itself. If you cannot practice it yourself, you can at least teach Scipio and Laelius. For what is more delightful than old age surrounded by the eager attention of the young?”

[29]
“Shall we deny old age even the power to teach young men, train them, and equip them for every duty? What work could be more splendid? To me, Gnaeus and Publius Scipio, and your two grandfathers, Lucius Aemilius and Publius Africanus, seemed fortunate in the company of noble young men. All teachers of worthy accomplishments must be considered happy, however their strength may have aged and failed.

“And indeed, that failure of strength itself is more often caused by the faults of youth than by old age. A youth of lust and excess hands an exhausted body on to age.”

[30]
“In Xenophon, Cyrus, speaking on his deathbed when he was very old, says that he never felt his old age had become weaker than his youth. As a boy I remember Lucius Metellus, who became chief pontiff four years after his second consulship and held that priesthood for twenty-two years. At the very end of his life he was so strong that he had no wish for his youth back. There is no need for me to speak of myself, although that is an old man’s habit, and a privilege allowed to our age.”

### Chapter 10

[31]
“Do you see how often Homer’s Nestor proclaims his own achievements? He was living through a third generation of men, and had no reason to fear that a truthful account of himself would make him seem too boastful or too talkative. As Homer says, speech sweeter than honey flowed from his tongue; and for that sweetness he needed no bodily strength. Yet the commander of Greece nowhere wishes for ten men like Ajax, but for ten like Nestor. If he had them, he has no doubt that Troy would soon fall.”

[32]
“But I return to myself. I am in my eighty-fourth year. I wish I could make the same boast as Cyrus, but I can at least say this: though I do not have the strength I had as a soldier in the Punic War, as quaestor in that same war, as consul in Spain, or four years later when I fought at Thermopylae as military tribune under the consul Manius Glabrio, old age has not, as you see, utterly weakened or broken me. The Senate does not find my strength wanting, nor the rostra, nor my friends, clients, or guests. I have never agreed with that old and much-praised proverb which advises you to become old early if you wish to be old for long. I would rather be old for less time than be old before my time. So far, no one who wished to meet me has found me too busy.”

[33]
“But I have less strength than either of you. And neither of you has the strength of the centurion Titus Pontius. Is he therefore the better man? Let a man only husband his strength and exert himself to the extent he can, and he will feel no great longing for more. Milo is said to have walked the length of the stadium at Olympia carrying an ox on his shoulders. Which would you rather be given: his bodily strength or Pythagoras’s strength of mind? In short, enjoy that advantage while it is yours; when it is gone, do not yearn for it. Otherwise young men should yearn for childhood, and those a little further on for youth. Life has a fixed course, and nature one simple path; each part of life has been given its own season. The weakness of children, the impetuousness of youth, the gravity of settled years, and the ripeness of old age each have something natural that should be enjoyed in its own time.”

### Chapter 11

[34]
“I imagine you have heard, Scipio, what Masinissa, your family’s hereditary guest-friend, does today at ninety. Once he sets out on foot he never mounts a horse; once he sets out on horseback he never dismounts. Neither rain nor cold can persuade him to cover his head. His body is remarkably lean and hardy, and he carries out every office and duty of a king. Exercise and moderation, then, can preserve something of our former strength even in old age.

“Suppose old age has no strength: strength is not even demanded of it. Both law and custom exempt men of our years from duties that cannot be sustained without it. We are therefore compelled not merely to do nothing beyond our powers, but not even all that we can.”

[35]
“But many old men are so weak that they cannot perform any duty or any task of life at all. That, however, is a fault not peculiar to old age, but shared by ill health. How weak was the son of Publius Africanus, the man who adopted you! How frail his health—or rather, how nonexistent! Had it not been so, he would have emerged as a second great light of the state: to his father’s greatness of soul he had added a richer learning. Why, then, wonder if old men are sometimes weak, when even the young cannot escape it?

“We must resist old age, Laelius and Scipio, and make up for its failings through diligence. We must fight it as we fight disease, take care of our health,”

[36]
“practice moderate exercise, and take just enough food and drink to renew our strength, not overwhelm it. Nor should we help the body alone, but much more the mind and spirit: these too are extinguished by old age unless you feed them as you feed a lamp with oil. And though bodies grow heavy with the fatigue of exercise, minds are lightened by exercising. When Caecilius speaks of ‘the foolish old men of comedy,’ he means the credulous, forgetful, dissolute ones: faults not of old age, but of an idle, sluggish, drowsy old age. Just as insolence and lust belong more to the young than to the old, yet not to all the young but to the disreputable, so the foolishness commonly called senile dotage belongs to frivolous old men, not to all.”

[37]
“Appius governed four vigorous sons, five daughters, so large a household and so many clients, though he was blind and old. He kept his mind stretched taut like a bow, and did not surrender feebly to age. He retained not only authority but command over his family. The slaves feared him; his children revered him; everyone loved him. Ancestral custom and discipline flourished in that house.”

[38]
“For old age is honorable when it defends itself, maintains its rights, becomes no one’s dependent, and rules its household to the last breath. Just as I approve of a young man who has something of age in him, so I approve of an old man who has something of youth. Whoever follows that principle may be old in body, but never in spirit.

“I am working on the seventh book of my Origins. I collect all the records of antiquity; just now I am preparing the speeches for the notable cases I have defended. I study augural, pontifical, and civil law; I also draw extensively on Greek literature. Following the Pythagoreans, I exercise my memory by recalling each evening what I have said, heard, and done during the day. These are my exercises of talent, my mind’s running courses. Sweating and laboring over them, I feel little need of bodily strength. I stand by my friends; I attend the Senate frequently and bring forward, unasked, matters I have considered long and deeply, defending them by strength of mind, not body. Even if I could not do these things, my couch would still delight me as I thought about the very activities I could no longer perform. But my past life makes their performance possible. For a man who has always lived among such studies and labors does not notice when old age steals upon him. So gradually, imperceptibly, life grows old: it is not suddenly broken, but extinguished by the passage of time.”

### Chapter 12

[39]
“Next comes the third reproach against old age: they say it lacks pleasure. What a splendid gift of years, if it takes from us the very thing most corrupting in youth! Listen, my excellent young friends, to an old discourse of Archytas of Tarentum, a man of the first greatness and distinction. It was passed on to me when I was at Tarentum as a young man with Quintus Maximus. No more deadly scourge, he said, had nature given humanity than bodily pleasure, whose greedy desires rush recklessly and without restraint toward gratification.”

[40]
“From it spring betrayals of country, overthrows of states, secret dealings with the enemy. There is no crime, no evil deed, to which the lust for pleasure does not impel men. Sexual outrages, adulteries, and every such disgrace are roused by no lure but pleasure. Since neither nature nor any god had given humanity anything more excellent than the mind, nothing was so hostile to that divine gift and endowment as pleasure.”

[41]
“For where desire rules there is no place for self-control, and in pleasure’s kingdom virtue cannot stand at all.

“To make this clearer, he asked his hearers to imagine someone stirred by the greatest bodily pleasure it was possible to experience. No one, he thought, would doubt that while enjoying it such a person could neither think anything through nor achieve anything by reasoning or reflection. Nothing, therefore, was so hateful and so destructive as pleasure, since in its greatest and most prolonged form it extinguished all the mind’s light. Nearchus of Tarentum, our guest-friend, who had remained loyal to the Roman people, said that he had learned from his elders that Archytas spoke these words to Gaius Pontius the Samnite, father of the man who defeated the consuls Spurius Postumius and Titus Veturius in the battle at Caudium. Plato of Athens was present at that conversation; I find that he came to Tarentum in the consulship of Lucius Camillus and Appius Claudius.”

[42]
“Why tell you this? To show you that if reason and wisdom could not teach us to disdain pleasure, we should owe great thanks to old age for making us no longer desire what we ought not to desire. Pleasure obstructs judgment, is hostile to reason, dazzles, so to speak, the mind’s eyes, and has nothing in common with virtue.

“It was with reluctance that I expelled Lucius Flamininus, brother of the valiant Titus Flamininus, from the Senate seven years after his consulship; but I thought his lust deserved the censor’s mark. As consul in Gaul, he had been persuaded at a banquet by a prostitute to behead one of the prisoners condemned on a capital charge. He escaped punishment when his brother Titus was censor, immediately before me. But Flaccus and I could never approve such shameful, abandoned lust, which joined the disgrace of public command to private infamy.”

### Chapter 13

[43]
“I have often heard older men, who in turn said they had heard it from old men when they were boys, tell how Gaius Fabricius used to marvel at something he had learned while serving as envoy to King Pyrrhus. Cineas the Thessalian had told him that at Athens there was a man who professed wisdom and declared that everything we do should be directed toward pleasure. On hearing this from Fabricius, Manius Curius and Tiberius Coruncanius used to wish that the Samnites and Pyrrhus himself could be persuaded of it, so that, once surrendered to pleasure, they might be defeated more easily. Manius Curius had lived alongside Publius Decius, who in his fourth consulship, five years before Curius’s, had devoted his life to death for the state. Fabricius and Coruncanius had known him too. From their own lives and from the deed of this Decius, they judged that there was indeed something noble and splendid by nature, something to be sought for its own sake, which the best men pursued in scorn and contempt of pleasure.”

[44]
“Why, then, so much about pleasure? Because it is not a reproach to old age but its highest praise that it has no great longing for pleasures. It lacks feasts, heaped tables, and frequent cups. Then it also lacks drunkenness, indigestion, and sleeplessness. Yet if we must yield something to pleasure, since its blandishments are not easily resisted—Plato divinely calls pleasure ‘the bait of evils,’ evidently because men are caught by it like fish—old age, though it forgoes extravagant feasts, may still delight in modest gatherings. As a boy I often saw Gaius Duilius, son of Marcus, returning from dinner in his old age. He was the first to defeat the Carthaginians at sea, and took pleasure in a waxen torch and a flute player accompanying him: privileges he had assumed, without precedent, as a private citizen. Such license did glory grant him.”

[45]
“But why speak of others? I shall return to myself. First, I have always had companions in a dining fellowship. These fellowships were established during my quaestorship, when the Idaean rites of the Great Mother were received. I used to dine with my companions, then, altogether moderately, though with a certain warmth of youth; as age advances, everything grows gentler day by day. I measured the pleasure of these gatherings not so much by bodily delights as by the company and conversation of friends. Our ancestors rightly called friends’ reclining together at a feast a ‘living together,’ since it involved a sharing of life. That is better than the Greeks, who call the same thing a ‘drinking together’ or an ‘eating together,’ as though what is least important in it were what they valued most.”

### Chapter 14

[46]
“For the pleasure of conversation I delight even in dinners that begin early, not only with men of my own age, of whom very few remain, but with men of your years and with you yourselves. I am deeply grateful to old age for increasing my appetite for conversation while taking away my appetite for food and drink. But if anyone still delights in those things—for I would not seem to have declared outright war on pleasure, which may perhaps have some natural limit—I do not see that old age is insensible even to these pleasures. I enjoy the presidency of the table instituted by our ancestors, the conversation begun over the cup, according to ancestral custom, by the guest at the head of the table, the little cups that sprinkle us like dew, as in Xenophon’s Symposium, coolness in summer, and in winter sunshine or a fire. I keep up these practices on my Sabine estate as well, gathering my neighbors daily for a dinner that we prolong far into the night with as varied a conversation as we can.”

[47]
“But old men do not feel pleasure’s tickling so keenly. Granted; but neither do they feel the longing. What you do not desire cannot trouble you. Sophocles answered well when someone asked him, already well advanced in years, whether he still enjoyed sexual pleasures. ‘May the gods spare me!’ he said. ‘I have escaped from them as from a savage and raging master.’ For those who crave such things, deprivation may be hateful and distressing; for those who have had their fill, it is sweeter to be without them than to enjoy them. Yet a man who feels no desire is not deprived: what I call sweeter, then, is the absence of desire.”

[48]
“And if life’s prime enjoys these pleasures more eagerly, first, as we have said, they are small things to enjoy; and second, old age is not wholly without them, even if it does not possess them in abundance. Just as a spectator in the front rows takes greater delight in Turpio Ambivius, yet the man in the back rows enjoys him too, so youth, viewing pleasures close at hand, may perhaps rejoice in them more, but old age too, watching from a distance, takes as much delight as it needs.”

[49]
“But how precious it is for the mind, having served its time in the campaigns of lust and ambition, rivalry and enmity, and every passion, to be with itself and, as they say, to live with itself! If it has, besides, some nourishment of study and learning, nothing is more delightful than a leisured old age. We used to see Gallus, a friend of your father’s, Scipio, absorbed in the task of measuring, one might say, heaven and earth. How often dawn overtook him at a diagram begun during the night, and night at one begun in the morning! How he delighted in predicting eclipses of the sun and moon long in advance!”

[50]
“And what of lighter studies, which still require a keen mind? How Naevius rejoiced in his Punic War, and Plautus in his Truculentus and Pseudolus! I even saw Livius as an old man. He had produced a play in the consulship of Cento and Tuditanus, six years before I was born, and lived on into my youth.

“Why speak of Publius Licinius Crassus’s devotion to pontifical and civil law, or of the same studies in this Publius Scipio, who became chief pontiff only a few days ago? We have seen all the men I have named burning with enthusiasm for their studies in old age. And with what zeal we used to see Marcus Cethegus practicing oratory even when old—he whom Ennius rightly called ‘the marrow of Persuasion’! What pleasures of feasts, games, or prostitutes could compare with these? These are the pursuits of learning, which in prudent and well-educated men grow along with their years. So Solon’s words are honorable when, as I said earlier, he declares in a little verse that he grows old learning much each day. Surely no pleasure of the mind can be greater.”

### Chapter 15

[51]
“I come now to the pleasures of farmers, in which I take an extraordinary delight. Old age never hinders them, and to my mind they come closest to the wise man’s life. For farmers deal with the earth, which never rejects their rule and never returns what it receives without interest, sometimes less, but usually a greater yield. Yet it is not the harvest alone that delights me, but the earth’s own power and nature. When its softened, cultivated lap receives the scattered seed, it first hides and covers it—hence the name ‘harrowing’ for the work that conceals it. Then, warmed by its breath and pressure, the earth opens the seed and draws from it the green growth. Supported by the fibers of its roots, this gradually rises, lifting itself upon a jointed stalk and enclosed in sheaths as though coming to maturity. Emerging from them, it brings forth grain arranged in the order of an ear, protected against the bites of little birds by a palisade of awns.”

[52]
“Why should I describe the origin, planting, and growth of vines? I cannot have my fill of delight in them—so you may understand the solace and pleasure of my old age. I pass over the very power of all that springs from the earth: from so tiny a fig seed, a grape pip, or the smallest seeds of other crops and plants, it produces such mighty trunks and branches. Do not hammer-shaped cuttings, slips, shoots, rooted plants, and layers fill anyone with wonder and delight? The vine, naturally inclined to fall, sinks to the ground unless supported; yet to raise itself it grasps whatever it finds with tendrils like hands. As it creeps through many winding, wandering courses, the farmer’s skill checks it with the pruning knife, lest it run wild with shoots and spread too extravagantly in every direction.”

[53]
“So, at the beginning of spring, what is called the bud appears, as it were, at the joints of the shoots that have been left. From it the young grape emerges, growing with the earth’s sap and the sun’s warmth. At first it is very sharp to the taste; then it ripens and grows sweet. Clothed in vine leaves, it neither lacks a gentle warmth nor suffers the sun’s excessive blaze. What could be more pleasing in its fruit or more beautiful to see?

“As I said before, it is not its usefulness alone that delights me, but its cultivation and its very nature: the rows of props, the joining of their tops by crossbars, the tying and layering of vines, the pruning away of some shoots, as I mentioned, and the letting out of others.

“Why should I bring up irrigation, digging, and trenching the soil afresh, by which the earth becomes so much more fruitful? Why speak of the usefulness of manure? I have discussed it in the book I wrote on farming.”

[54]
“The learned Hesiod, however, did not say a single word about it when he wrote on agriculture. But Homer, who I believe lived many centuries earlier, depicts Laertes easing his longing for his son by cultivating and manuring his land. Nor do crops, meadows, vineyards, and trees trained with vines alone make country life rich: there are gardens and orchards too, pasturing flocks, swarms of bees, and flowers of every kind. Not only planting gives pleasure, but grafting as well; agriculture has discovered nothing more ingenious.”

### Chapter 16

[55]
“I could pursue very many of the pleasures of country life, but I feel that even what I have said has been rather long. You will forgive me: my love of farming carried me away, and old age is naturally somewhat talkative, lest I seem to defend it against every fault. In this way of life Manius Curius passed his last years, after triumphing over the Samnites, the Sabines, and Pyrrhus. When I look upon his villa—it is not far from mine—I can never sufficiently admire either the man’s own restraint or the discipline of those times.”

[56]
“When the Samnites brought Curius a great weight of gold as he sat by his hearth, he rejected them. He said he thought it glorious not to possess gold but to rule those who possessed it. Could such greatness of soul fail to make old age delightful?

“But I return to farmers, so as not to stray from myself. Senators—that is, elders—lived on their farms in those days. Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was plowing when he was told he had been appointed dictator; at this dictator’s command, his master of horse, Gaius Servilius Ahala, forestalled and killed Spurius Maelius as he sought kingship. Curius and the other elders were summoned from their villas to the Senate; hence those who summoned them were called ‘travelers.’ Was the old age of these men, who delighted in tilling the soil, miserable? In my judgment perhaps none could be happier: not only for its service, since agriculture benefits the whole human race, but also for the pleasure I have described, and the fullness and abundance of everything needed to sustain human life and even to worship the gods. Since some people miss these things, let us now be reconciled with pleasure. A good and diligent master’s wine cellar, oil store, and larder are always full. The whole farm is rich, abounding in pork, kid, lamb, poultry, milk, cheese, and honey. Farmers themselves call the garden their second supply of bacon. Fowling and hunting, even in their spare time, add further relish to these things.”

[57]
“Why say more of green meadows, rows of trees, or the beauty of vineyards and olive groves? I shall cut it short. Nothing can surpass a well-tended farm in richness of use or beauty of appearance; and old age, far from hindering its enjoyment, invites and draws us toward it. Where else can people of those years warm themselves better in the sun or by the fire, or find more wholesome coolness in shade or water? Let the young, then, keep their weapons,”

[58]
“their horses, their spears, their club and ball, their swimming and running. Out of all their games let them leave us old men knucklebones and dice; or let them do as they please even about those, since old age can be happy without them.”

### Chapter 17

[59]
“Xenophon’s books are most useful on many subjects. Read them attentively, I beg you, as indeed you do. How richly he praises agriculture in the book on managing an estate entitled Oeconomicus! To show you that he thought nothing so kingly as devotion to cultivating the soil, Socrates in that book tells Critobulus about Cyrus the Younger, king of the Persians, a man outstanding in talent and the glory of his command. When Lysander the Spartan, a man of the highest excellence, came to him at Sardis bringing gifts from the allies, Cyrus treated him with courtesy and kindness in every respect and showed him an enclosed garden carefully planted. Lysander admired the trees’ height, the straight rows arranged in a pattern of fives, the soil, cultivated and clean, and the sweet scents wafting from the flowers. He said he admired not merely the care but the ingenuity of the man who had measured and laid it all out. Cyrus answered, ‘But I measured all this myself. The rows are mine, the plan is mine; many of these trees were planted by my own hand.’ Then Lysander, looking at his purple robe, his splendid appearance, and his Persian adornment of much gold and many jewels, said, ‘They rightly call you happy, Cyrus, since fortune has joined herself to your virtue!’”

[60]
“Old men too may enjoy this good fortune. Age does not prevent us from holding fast to our other interests, and above all to farming, to the very end of our years. We are told that Marcus Valerius Corvinus lived to a hundred, spending his later life on his farms and cultivating them. Forty-six years separated his first and sixth consulships. Thus his career in office lasted as long as the span our ancestors reckoned before old age began. His final years were happier than his middle ones in having more authority and less labor.”

[61]
“For authority is the crown of old age. How great it was in Lucius Caecilius Metellus, and in Aulus Atilius Calatinus! Of the latter the epitaph says:
Many peoples agree that this one man
Was the foremost citizen of his nation.
You know the whole poem engraved on his tomb. Rightly, then, did a man carry weight when everyone’s testimony agreed in his praise. What a man we saw not long ago in Publius Crassus, the chief pontiff, and later in Marcus Lepidus, who held the same priesthood! Why speak of Paulus or Africanus, or, as before, of Maximus? Their authority resided not merely in their opinion, but in their very nod. Old age, especially honored old age, possesses an authority worth more than all the pleasures of youth.”

### Chapter 18

[62]
“But throughout this discourse remember that I praise the old age built upon foundations laid in youth. Hence follows what I once said to great general approval: miserable is the old age that must defend itself by words. Neither gray hair nor wrinkles can suddenly seize authority; an earlier life honorably lived gathers authority as its final fruit.”

[63]
“For those very attentions that seem slight and commonplace are honorable: to be greeted, sought out, given the way, risen for, escorted out and home, and consulted. Among us and in other states, the better their customs, the more scrupulously these observances are maintained. Lysander the Spartan, whom I mentioned just now, is said to have declared that Sparta was the most honorable home for old age: nowhere was so much accorded to years, nowhere was old age more honored. Indeed, it is recorded that when an elderly man entered the theater at Athens during the games, none of his fellow citizens in the great gathering offered him a seat. But when he approached the Spartans, who as envoys sat in a designated place, they are all said to have risen together and invited the old man to sit;”

[64]
“and when the whole assembly gave them prolonged applause, one of them said that the Athenians knew what was right but did not wish to do it.

“Our college has many excellent customs, but foremost for our purpose is this: the eldest takes precedence in giving his opinion. Older augurs rank not only before those who surpass them in honors, but even before men holding supreme command. What bodily pleasures can compare with the rewards of authority? Those who have enjoyed them nobly seem to me to have played the drama of life to its close, not collapsed in its final act like unpracticed actors.”

[65]
“But old men are peevish, anxious, irritable, and difficult. If we look for it, they are greedy too. These, however, are faults of character, not of old age. Still, peevishness and the other faults I named have some excuse—not a just one, certainly, but one that may seem plausible. Old men think themselves slighted, despised, and mocked; besides, every affront is painful to a frail body. Yet good character and cultivation soften all these things. We may see this in life and on the stage in the brothers in The Brothers. How harsh one is, and how kindly the other! So it is: not every nature sours with age, any more than every wine. I approve of sternness in old age, but, as with other things, in moderation; bitterness I cannot approve at all. As for an old man’s greed, I cannot understand what it means.”

### Chapter 19

[66]
“For what could be more absurd than to seek more provisions for a journey as less of the road remains?

“The fourth reason remains: the approach of death, which seems above all to distress and trouble men of our age, and which certainly cannot be far from old age. Miserable indeed is the old man who has not learned in so long a life that death should be held of no account! Either we should disregard it altogether, if it wholly extinguishes the soul, or even desire it, if it leads the soul somewhere it will exist forever. There can certainly be no third possibility.”

[67]
“Why, then, should I fear, if after death I shall either not be unhappy or shall even be happy? Besides, who is so foolish, however young, as to be sure of living until evening? Indeed, the young face many more chances of death than we do. They fall ill more readily, suffer more severely, and undergo harsher treatment. So few reach old age. Were it otherwise, life would be lived better and more wisely. For understanding, reason, and judgment belong to the old; had there been no old men, there would have been no states at all.

“But I return to death’s approach. How can this be a charge against old age when you see it shares that condition with youth?”

[68]
“I learned through the loss of my excellent son, and you, Scipio, through your brothers, from whom the highest distinction was expected, that death is common to every age. But the young man hopes to live long, while the old man cannot hope for the same. It is a foolish hope: what could be more foolish than taking uncertainty for certainty and falsehood for truth? But the old man has nothing even to hope for. Then he is in a better position than the young man, for he has already obtained what the other hopes for. The one wishes to live long; the other has lived long.”

[69]
“And yet, good gods, what is ‘long’ in human life? Grant us the furthest limit: let us expect the lifespan of the king of Tartessus—for I read that there was a certain Arganthonius at Gades who reigned eighty years and lived a hundred and twenty. Still, nothing seems lasting to me that has an end. When that end arrives, all that has passed has flowed away; only what you have gained through virtue and right conduct remains. Hours give way to days, months, and years; time past never returns, and what will follow cannot be known. Each should be content with whatever time is given him to live.”

[70]
“An actor need not play the whole drama to win approval, provided he pleases in whatever act he appears; nor need the wise reach the final ‘Applaud!’ A brief span of years is long enough to live well and honorably. If it extends further, we should no more grieve than farmers grieve when spring’s sweetness has passed and summer and autumn arrive. For spring, like youth, promises and reveals the fruit to come; the other seasons are suited to reaping and gathering it.”

[71]
“The fruit of old age, as I have often said, is the memory and possession of good things won before. Everything that happens according to nature must be counted a good; and what is more according to nature than that the old should die? When the same befalls the young, nature resists and rebels. So young people seem to me to die as a flame is overwhelmed by a flood of water; old people, as a fire goes out of itself, with no force applied, when its fuel is spent. And just as unripe fruit is scarcely torn from the tree, while ripe and mellow fruit falls, so force takes life from the young, ripeness from the old. That ripeness is so sweet to me that the nearer I draw to death, the more I seem to sight land, and at last to be approaching harbor after a long voyage.”

### Chapter 20

[72]
“Old age has no fixed boundary. We live rightly in it so long as we can perform and uphold our duties and hold death of no account. This makes old age even more spirited and courageous than youth. Such was the meaning of Solon’s answer to the tyrant Pisistratus. Asked what gave him the confidence to oppose him so boldly, he is said to have answered, ‘My old age.’ But the best end of life comes when, with mind intact and senses clear, nature herself dissolves the work she put together. Just as the builder most readily dismantles a ship or a house, so the nature that joined a human being together most fittingly takes him apart. A new bond is always hard to break, an old one easy.

“It follows that the old should neither clutch greedily at the brief remainder of life nor abandon it without cause;”

[73]
“and Pythagoras forbids us to leave life’s guard post and station without orders from our commander, that is, from God. There is an elegy of Solon the wise in which he says he does not wish his death to pass without his friends’ grief and lamentation. He wishes, I suppose, to be dear to his own people. Yet perhaps Ennius speaks better:
Let no one honor me with tears, or mourn my funeral with weeping.
He thinks a death followed by immortality should not be mourned.”

[74]
“The act of dying may involve some sensation, but only for a little while, especially for an old man. After death sensation is either desirable or nonexistent. But from youth onward we should have reflected on this, so that death does not concern us. Without that reflection no one can have a tranquil mind. For die we certainly must, perhaps this very day. How can anyone stand firm in spirit while fearing death, which hangs over him every hour?”

[75]
“There seems little need for a long discussion of it when I remember—not Lucius Brutus, killed while freeing his country; not the two Decii, who spurred their horses toward a death freely chosen; not Marcus Atilius, who went to torture to keep the pledge he had given an enemy; not the two Scipios, who wished to block the Carthaginians’ path even with their own bodies; not your grandfather Lucius Paulus, who paid with his death for his colleague’s rashness in the disgrace at Cannae; not Marcus Marcellus, whose death even the cruelest enemy would not allow to go without the honor of burial—but our legions, which, as I wrote in my Origins, often went eagerly and proudly into places from which they thought they would never return. Shall learned old men dread what young men, not merely uneducated but country-bred, hold in contempt?”

[76]
“Altogether, as I see it, satiety with every pursuit brings satiety with life. Childhood has its own interests: do young men miss them? Early youth has its interests: does the settled age we call middle life long for them? That age too has interests, and even these are not sought in old age. There are certain final interests of old age itself. Just as the interests of earlier years die away, so those of old age die away as well. When that happens, life’s fullness brings the ripe time for death.”

### Chapter 21

[77]
“I see no reason not to venture to tell you what I myself think about death, since I seem to understand it better the nearer I stand to it. I believe that your fathers, Publius Scipio and Gaius Laelius, those most distinguished men and my dearest friends, are alive—and living the only life worthy of the name. While we are enclosed in this framework of the body, we perform a compulsory service and a heavy labor. The soul is heavenly, cast down from its highest dwelling and, as it were, submerged in the earth, a place alien to its divine nature and eternity. But I believe the immortal gods scattered souls into human bodies so that there might be guardians of the earth who, contemplating the order of the heavens, would imitate it in the measured constancy of their lives. Not reason and argument alone moved me to this belief, but also the eminence and authority of the greatest philosophers.”

[78]
“I used to hear that Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, almost our neighbors, once called the philosophers of Italy, never doubted that our souls were drawn from the universal divine mind. I was also taught what Socrates, whom Apollo’s oracle judged the wisest of all, said on his last day about the immortality of souls. Why say more? This is my conviction and belief: since souls have such swiftness, such memory of the past and foresight of the future, so many arts, such learning, and so many discoveries, the nature that contains all these cannot be mortal. Since the soul is always in motion and its motion has no beginning, because it moves itself, neither will its motion have an end, because it will never desert itself. And since the soul’s nature is simple, with no mixture unlike and different from itself, it cannot be divided; if it cannot be divided, it cannot perish. A strong argument that people know much before their birth is that even as children, when learning difficult arts, they grasp countless things so quickly that they seem not to be receiving them for the first time, but remembering and recalling them. These, in substance, are Plato’s arguments.”

### Chapter 22

[79]
“In Xenophon, Cyrus the Elder says on his deathbed: ‘Do not suppose, my dearest sons, that when I leave you I shall be nowhere, or shall cease to exist. Even while I was with you, you did not see my soul, but understood from my actions that it was in this body. Believe, then, that it still exists, even though you see nothing of it.’”

[80]
“‘Nor would the honors paid to famous men endure after their deaths if their souls did nothing to make us retain their memory longer. I could never be persuaded that souls live while they are within mortal bodies, but die when they leave them; nor that the soul becomes unwise when it escapes an unwise body. Rather, when freed from all mixture with the body it begins to exist pure and whole, then it becomes wise. Moreover, when a human being’s nature is dissolved by death, it is plain where each of the other elements goes, for all return to their source. The soul alone is invisible both when present and when departed. And you see that nothing resembles death so closely as sleep.’”

### Chapter 23

[81]
“‘Yet the souls of sleepers reveal their divinity most clearly: when relaxed and free, they foresee much of the future. This shows what they will be like when they have wholly released themselves from the body’s bonds. So if these things are true,’ he said, ‘honor me as a god. But if the soul is to perish along with the body, you will nevertheless, in reverence for the gods who guard and govern all this beauty, keep my memory devoutly and inviolate.’ Such were Cyrus’s words as he died. Let us now, if you please, consider our own case.”

[82]
“No one will ever persuade me, Scipio, that your father Paulus, or your two grandfathers Paulus and Africanus, or Africanus’s father or uncle, or the many outstanding men whom there is no need to list, would have attempted such great deeds to live in posterity’s memory unless they saw in their minds that posterity concerned them too. Do you imagine—to boast of myself a little, as old men do—that I should have undertaken such labors by day and night, at home and in war, if my glory were to end within the same bounds as my life? Would it not have been far better to pass my years in leisure and peace, without labor or struggle? Yet somehow my soul, rising up, always looked toward posterity as though only when it had left this life would it truly begin to live. Were it not true that souls are immortal, the soul of every excellent man would not strive above all for immortal glory. Again, the wisest man dies with the most tranquil mind,”

[83]
“and the most foolish with the most troubled. Does it not seem to you that the soul whose sight is clearer and longer sees that it is setting out for something better, while the soul of duller vision does not?

“For my part, I am carried away by eagerness to see your fathers, whom I honored and loved. Nor do I long to meet only those I knew, but also those of whom I heard and read and wrote myself. Once I set out for that place, nothing would readily draw me back, or boil me young again like Pelias. And if some god offered to turn me from my present age into a child again, wailing in a cradle, I would firmly refuse. Having run the course, I should not wish to be called back from the finish to the starting gates.”

[84]
“For what advantage does life offer? What labor does it not offer instead? Yet grant its advantages: it certainly has either satiety or a limit. I have no wish to lament life, as many, and learned men too, have often done. Nor do I regret having lived, since I have lived in such a way that I do not think I was born in vain. I leave life as I would leave a lodging, not a home: nature has given us an inn to stay in, not a dwelling to inhabit.

“What a glorious day, when I shall set out for that divine assembly and company of souls, and leave this crowd and confusion behind! I shall go not only to the men of whom I spoke before, but to my Cato, than whom no better man was ever born, none more eminent in devotion to duty. I cremated his body, though it should have been his part to cremate mine; but his soul, not abandoning me but looking back toward me, surely departed to the place where it saw that I too must come. I seemed to bear that loss bravely, not because I bore it calmly, but because I consoled myself with the thought that our parting and separation would not be long.”

[85]
“These things, Scipio, make old age light for me—the very thing you said you and Laelius so often wondered at. It is not merely untroublesome, but delightful. And if I am mistaken in believing that human souls are immortal, I am gladly mistaken; I do not wish, while I live, to have this delightful error torn from me. If, on the other hand, after death I feel nothing, as some petty philosophers maintain, I need not fear that dead philosophers will laugh at my mistake. Even if we are not destined for immortality, it is still desirable for a person to be extinguished at the proper time. Nature sets a limit to living, as to everything else. Old age is the completion of life’s drama; we should escape its weariness, especially when fullness has joined it.

“This is what I had to say about old age. May you reach it, and through your own experience confirm what you have heard from me!”

## Translation — Mouseia

> Complete machine-assisted Plain English translation made independently and directly from the Latin in separate source-only production passes, not from Musean or a historical English translation. Latin-source editorial review recorded.

### Chapter 1

[1]
“Titus, if I give some help or ease the worry  
that now torments and troubles you, lodged in your heart,  
will there be any reward?”
I can address you, Atticus, in the same lines used to address Flamininus by  
“that man with little wealth, but full of loyalty,”  
although I know for certain that, unlike Flamininus, you are not  
“troubled like this, Titus, both night and day.”  
For I know your self-control and steady temper. I understand that you brought back from Athens not just your nickname, but also culture and good judgment. Still, I suspect that the same things that deeply trouble me sometimes trouble you too. Offering comfort for those troubles is a bigger task and must wait for another time.

For now, though, I have decided to write something to you about old age,

[2]
because I want to relieve both you and myself of this burden we share: old age, which is either already pressing on us or certainly approaching. Of course, I know for certain that you bear it, and will bear it, calmly and wisely, as you do everything. But when I wanted to write something about old age, you came to mind as someone worthy of a gift that we could both enjoy. Writing this book was so pleasant for me that it not only wiped away all the troubles of old age but even made old age easy and enjoyable. We can never praise philosophy enough. Anyone who follows its guidance can pass every stage of life without distress.

[3]
But I have said much about other subjects and will often speak about them again. This book I send you is about old age. I have given the whole discussion not to Tithonus, as Aristo of Ceos did—a mythical story would carry too little authority—but to Marcus Cato in his old age, to give the argument greater weight. I present Laelius and Scipio with him, expressing surprise that he bears old age so easily, and Cato answering them. If his discussion seems more learned than his own books usually are, put that down to Greek literature. We know that he studied it very eagerly in his old age. But why say more? Cato’s own discussion will now explain my whole view of old age.

### Chapter 2

[4]
Scipio: “Along with Gaius Laelius here, I often admire your outstanding and complete wisdom in everything, Marcus Cato. Most of all, I admire the fact that I have never noticed old age being a burden to you. Most old people find it so hateful that they say they carry a load heavier than Etna.”

Cato: “What surprises you, Scipio and Laelius, does not seem very difficult to me. For someone with no inner resources to live a good and happy life, every age is hard. But those who look within themselves for everything good cannot regard anything that nature inevitably brings as an evil. Old age is a leading example. Everyone hopes to reach it, yet complains about it once they have. That is how inconsistent and unreasonable foolishness is. They say it creeps up on them sooner than they expected. First, who forced them to expect something untrue? How does old age creep up on adulthood any faster than adulthood creeps up on childhood? And then, how would old age be less of a burden if they were in their eight-hundredth year instead of their eightieth? However long their past life had been, once it was gone it could offer no comfort to a foolish old age.”

[5]
“So if you regularly admire my wisdom—and I wish it deserved your opinion of it and the name I bear—I am wise in this respect: I follow nature, the best guide, and obey her as I would a god. Since she has arranged the other stages of life well, it is unlikely that she has neglected the last act like a careless playwright. Still, there had to be some final stage. Like the berries on trees and the crops of the earth, something had to ripen at the proper time and then, so to speak, shrivel and become ready to fall. A wise person must accept this calmly. What else is fighting against nature but fighting against the gods, as the Giants did?”

[6]
Laelius: “Cato, you would do us a great kindness—I can promise this for Scipio too—if we could learn from you well in advance how we can most easily bear the growing weight of age. After all, we hope to become old, and we certainly want to.”

Cato: “Certainly, Laelius. It is all the more worthwhile if both of you will enjoy it, as you say.”

Laelius: “We certainly want it, Cato, if it is no trouble. It is as though you have completed a long journey that we too must begin. We would like to know what it is like at your end of that road.”

### Chapter 3

[7]
Cato: “I will do what I can, Laelius. I have often been present when people my own age complained. As the old proverb says, people of the same age most readily gather together. Two former consuls, Gaius Salinator and Spurius Albinus, were roughly as old as I was. They used to complain that they had lost the pleasures without which they thought life was no life at all. They also complained that people who once honored them now looked down on them. I thought their complaints had the wrong target. If age caused these problems, the same things would happen to me and to everyone else who is getting older. Yet I have known many people whose old age was free from complaint. They were not unhappy to be freed from the chains of desire, and their own people did not look down on them. The fault behind all complaints of this kind lies in character, not age. Old people who are self-controlled, easy to get along with, and considerate find old age bearable. But bad temper and unkindness make life difficult at any age.”

[8]
Laelius: “That is true, Cato. But someone might say that your influence, wealth, and standing make old age seem more bearable to you, and that many people cannot have those advantages.”

Cato: “You have a point, Laelius, but that does not explain everything. They tell a story about Themistocles arguing with someone from Seriphus. The man had said that Themistocles owed his distinction to his country’s glory, not his own. Themistocles replied, ‘By Hercules, if I had been from Seriphus, I would never have become famous. But neither would you, if you had been from Athens.’ We can say the same about old age. In extreme poverty, old age cannot be easy even for a wise person. But for a foolish person, even great wealth cannot keep it from being a burden.”

[9]
“The best weapons for old age, Scipio and Laelius, are the study and practice of good conduct. Cultivated at every stage of life, they produce wonderful results once you have lived a long and full life. This is not only because they never abandon you, even at the very end of life—though that is certainly a great advantage—but also because knowing that you have lived well and remembering your many good actions brings the greatest pleasure.”

### Chapter 4

[10]
“When I was young, I loved Quintus Fabius Maximus, who recaptured Tarentum, as though we were the same age, although he was old. His seriousness was softened by friendliness, and old age had not changed his character. When I first became close to him, he was not extremely old, but he was already well along in years. His first consulship came the year after I was born. During his fourth consulship, I went to Capua as a very young soldier under his command, and five years later I went to Tarentum. Four years after that, I became quaestor. I held that office when Tuditanus and Cethegus were consuls. By then he was very old, but he spoke in support of the Cincian law on gifts and presents. Even at an advanced age, he fought wars like a young man. His patience wore down Hannibal, who was bursting with youthful confidence. Our friend Ennius wrote these fine lines about him:  
‘One man saved our state by delaying;  
He did not put public gossip ahead of our safety;  
So now his glory shines brighter and brighter.’”

[11]
“And what watchfulness and planning he showed in recapturing Tarentum! Salinator had lost the town and escaped into the citadel. I was there when he boasted to him, ‘It was through my efforts, Quintus Fabius, that you recaptured Tarentum.’ He laughed and replied, ‘Certainly. If you had not lost it, I could never have recaptured it.’ He was just as outstanding in civilian life as in war. During his second consulship, while his colleague Spurius Carvilius did nothing, he resisted Gaius Flaminius as far as he could. Flaminius, a tribune of the people, was dividing the Picentine and Gallic territory into individual allotments against the Senate’s wishes. And as an augur, he dared to say that whatever was done to keep the state safe was done under the best omens. Anything directed against the state went against the omens.”

[12]
“I saw many outstanding qualities in that man. The most remarkable was his response to losing his son, a man of distinction who had himself held the consulship. His funeral speech is still available. Reading it makes us look down on every philosopher. He was great not only in public, before the eyes of his fellow citizens. He was even more remarkable in the privacy of his home. What conversation! What advice! How much he knew about the past and the rules governing augury! For a Roman, he was also very well read. He remembered everything, not just wars at home but foreign wars too. I listened eagerly to his conversation, as though I already foresaw what did happen: once he died, no one would be left for me to learn from.”

### Chapter 5

[13]
“Why have I said so much about Fabius Maximus? Because you surely see that it would be outrageous to call an old age like his miserable. Still, not everyone can be a Scipio or a Fabius Maximus, able to look back on captured cities, battles on land or sea, wars they commanded, and triumphs. A life lived quietly, honestly, and with good taste can also lead to a peaceful, gentle old age. We are told that Plato had that kind of old age. He died while writing, in his eighty-first year. Isocrates also had a peaceful old age. He says he wrote the book called Panathenaicus in his ninety-fourth year, and he lived another five years after that. His teacher, Gorgias of Leontini, lived to be a hundred and seven. He never stopped studying and working. When someone asked why he wanted to stay alive so long, he said, ‘I have no complaint to make against old age.’”

[14]
“An excellent answer, worthy of an educated man!

“Foolish people blame old age for their own faults and failings. Ennius, whom I mentioned just now, did not do that:  
‘Like a strong horse that often won at Olympia in the final stretch,  
Now worn out by age, he rests.’  
He compares his own old age to that of a strong, winning horse. You can certainly remember him well. Titus Flamininus and Manius Acilius, the consuls this year, entered office in the nineteenth year following his death. He died when Caepio and Philippus were consuls, Philippus for the second time. I had just spoken in support of the Voconian law, at the age of sixty-five, with a loud voice and strong lungs. At seventy—that was how long Ennius lived—he bore the two burdens people think heaviest, poverty and old age, so well that he almost seemed to enjoy them.”

### Chapter 6

[15]
“When I think the matter over, I find four reasons why old age seems miserable. First, it takes us away from active work. Second, it weakens the body. Third, it takes away almost every pleasure. Fourth, it is close to death. If you agree, let us examine each reason and see how much weight it carries and how fair it is.

“Old age takes us away from active work. What work? The kind that needs youth and physical strength? Are there no tasks suited to older people, tasks managed by thought and intelligence even when the body is weak? Was Quintus Fabius Maximus doing nothing, then? Was Lucius Paulus, your father and the father-in-law of my excellent son, doing nothing? And what about other old men, men like Fabricius, Curius, and Coruncanius? Were they doing nothing when they defended the state through their advice and authority?

“Besides being old, Appius Claudius was blind;”

[16]
“yet when the Senate began favoring a peace agreement and treaty with Pyrrhus, he readily spoke the words Ennius put into verse:  
‘Where have your minds, once steady and straight,  
Turned aside onto a path of madness?’  
The rest was just as forceful. You know the poem, and Appius’s own speech also survives. He did this seventeen years after his second consulship. Ten years had passed between his two consulships, and he had been censor before his first. This shows that he must have been very old during the war with Pyrrhus. Still, that is the account handed down to us by our fathers.”

[17]
“So people who say that old age takes no part in active work have no case. They are like someone who says that a ship’s pilot does nothing during a voyage because others climb the masts, run along the decks, or pump out the bilge, while he sits quietly at the stern holding the tiller. The pilot’s job is different from the young men’s work. It is much more important and valuable. Great achievements do not depend on strength, speed, or quick movements of the body. They depend on planning, authority, and judgment. Old age usually does not lose these qualities. It gains more of them.”

[18]
“Unless, perhaps, you think I am doing nothing now because I no longer fight wars, although I have served in all kinds of wars as a soldier, military tribune, senior officer, and consul. But I tell the Senate what needs to be done and how to do it. I give Carthage plenty of advance warning of war. It has been plotting harm for a long time, and I will not stop fearing it until I know it has been destroyed. May the immortal gods reserve that victory,”

[19]
“Scipio, for you, so that you can finish the work your grandfather left unfinished. This is the thirty-third year since his death, but every year to come will preserve his memory. He died the year before I became censor, nine years after my consulship. He had been elected to his second consulship while I was consul. Suppose he had reached a hundred. Would being old have made him unhappy? His work would not have depended on running, jumping, hurling spears, or using swords in close combat. He would have relied on planning, reasoning, and judgment. These qualities in old men explain why our ancestors named their supreme council the Senate. In Sparta, those”

[20]
“who hold the highest office are called old men, which is what they are. If you choose to read or hear about foreign nations, you will find that young men have undermined the greatest states, while old men have supported and restored them.  
‘Tell me, how did you lose your great state so quickly?’  
That is the question asked in the poet Naevius’s The Wolf. Among the answers, this one stands out:  
‘New speakers were coming forward, foolish young men.’  
Clearly, recklessness belongs to youth, and sound judgment to old age.”

### Chapter 7

[21]
“‘But memory gets weaker.’ I agree, if you do not exercise it, or if your mind is naturally slow. Themistocles knew the names of all his fellow citizens. Do you think that when he grew older, he used to greet Aristides as Lysimachus? I know not only the people alive today but their fathers and grandfathers too. When I read gravestone inscriptions, I am not afraid of losing my memory, as people say you will. Reading those very inscriptions brings the dead back to my mind. No old person I have ever heard of forgot the hiding place of buried treasure. People remember everything they care about: their court dates, money due to them, and debts they must pay.”

[22]
“What about elderly legal experts, priests, augurs, and philosophers? How much they remember! Older people keep their mental abilities, provided they keep their interest and work at them. This applies not only to famous and respected men but also to ordinary people living quietly, out of public life. Even at a very great age, Sophocles kept writing tragedies. His sons believed his devotion to writing was making him neglect the family property, so they took him to court. Under our custom, fathers who mismanage their property can be barred from controlling it. In the same way, his sons wanted the judges to remove him from managing the family property as mentally unfit. The old man is said to have read the judges the play he was working on and had recently written, Oedipus at Colonus, and asked whether they thought that poem was the work of someone who had lost his mind,”

[23]
“and after he had read it, the judges voted to clear him. Did old age force him to stop his work? Did it silence Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, or Stesichorus? What about Isocrates and Gorgias, whom I mentioned earlier? Or those leading philosophers, Pythagoras and Democritus? Or Plato and Xenocrates, or later Zeno and Cleanthes? And did age silence Diogenes, the Stoic you yourselves once saw in Rome? Or did all of them keep working at their studies for as long as they lived?”

[24]
“But let us leave these godlike pursuits aside. I can name Roman farmers in the Sabine countryside, neighbors and friends of mine, without whose presence hardly any major work on the land is done, whether planting, gathering, or storing crops. This is less surprising with other kinds of work. However old they are, everyone thinks they might live for one more year. But these same men also work hard at things they know will do them no good at all:  
‘He plants trees to benefit another generation,’  
as our Statius says in his Synephebi.”

### Chapter 8

[25]
“And however old a farmer is, he has no hesitation when someone asks whom he is planting for. He answers, ‘For the immortal gods. The gods wanted me to take these things from earlier generations and then pass them on to later ones.’

“Caecilius writes better about the old man who looks ahead to another generation than he does in these lines:  
‘By Pollux, old age, even if you bring no other trouble  
with you when you arrive, this one thing is enough:  
a long life makes you see many things you do not want to see.’  
And perhaps many things you do want to see. Young people, too, often encounter things they do not want. The same Caecilius is still more mistaken here:  
‘But I think the saddest part of old age is this:  
to feel at that age that someone else dislikes you.’  
Liked, rather than disliked!”

[26]
“Wise old men enjoy young people of good character. Old age becomes easier for those whom the young respect and love. In the same way, young people welcome advice from older men that guides them toward virtue. I can see that you enjoy my company no less than I enjoy yours. But you see that old age is not weak and idle. It is hardworking, always doing something and making plans. These activities naturally follow the interests each person had earlier in life. What about those who even keep learning something new? We see Solon proudly saying in his verses that he is growing old while learning something every day. I did that too: I learned Greek in my old age. I took it up as eagerly as someone trying to satisfy a long thirst, so that I could become familiar with the very examples you now see me using. When I heard that Socrates had done this with the lyre, I would certainly have liked to do that too. People in earlier times did learn to play the lyre. But at least I worked hard at literature.”

### Chapter 9

[27]
“Even now, I do not miss a young man’s strength—this was the second complaint about old age—any more than I missed the strength of a bull or an elephant when I was young. The right thing is to use whatever strength you have, and to do everything within your powers. What remark could deserve more contempt than the one made by Milo of Croton? When he was already old and saw athletes training on the track, he is said to have looked at his arms and said through his tears, ‘But these are dead now.’ It is not so much those arms that are dead as you yourself, you fool! Your fame never came from your own worth, but from your chest and arms. Sextus Aelius never said anything like that. Neither did Tiberius Coruncanius many years before him, nor Publius Crassus just recently. They gave their fellow citizens legal advice, and their expert knowledge lasted right up to their final breath.”

[28]
“I do worry that old age may weaken a public speaker. His work calls not only for mental ability but also for strong lungs and physical strength. Yet somehow the ringing quality of the voice actually stands out in old age. I certainly have not lost it yet, and you can see how old I am. Still, a quiet, relaxed style of speaking suits an old man. The calm and gentle speech of an articulate older man often wins an attentive audience by itself. Even if you can no longer deliver such a speech yourself, you can still teach Scipio and Laelius how to do it. What could be more enjoyable than old age surrounded by devoted young people?”

[29]
“Are we denying old age even the strength to teach young people, train them, and prepare them for every duty? What work could be finer than that? I thought Gnaeus and Publius Scipio were fortunate to have groups of distinguished young men around them. So were your two grandfathers, Lucius Aemilius and Publius Africanus. We should consider all teachers of worthwhile skills happy, even if their strength has declined with age and failed them.

“Yet this loss of strength is more often caused by the bad habits of youth than by old age. A youth spent in uncontrolled pleasure and excess hands old age an exhausted body.”

[30]
“In Xenophon, Cyrus says in the speech he made as he was dying, when he was very old, that he had never felt himself weaker in old age than he had been in youth. I remember Lucius Metellus from my boyhood. He became chief priest four years after his second consulship and held that priesthood for twenty-two years. His strength was so good at the very end of his life that he felt no need for youth. There is no need for me to say anything about myself, though that is an old man’s habit and is allowed at our age.”

### Chapter 10

[31]
“Notice how often Nestor talks about his own brave deeds in Homer. He was seeing his third generation of people. When he told the truth about himself, he had no need to worry that he might sound too proud or talk too much. Homer says that words sweeter than honey flowed from his tongue. That sweetness needed no physical power. Yet the Greek commander never asks to have ten men like Ajax. He asks for ten like Nestor. If he gets them, he is sure Troy will soon be destroyed.”

[32]
“But let me speak about myself again. I am now in my eighty-fourth year. I wish I could claim what Cyrus did. I can at least say this, though. I am not as strong as when I served in the Punic War, first as a soldier and then as quaestor, or when I was consul in Spain. Nor am I as strong as four years after that, when I fought at Thermopylae as a military tribune during Manius Glabrio’s consulship. Even so, you can see that getting old has not drained all my energy or knocked me down. I have enough strength for the Senate and the speakers’ platform, for my friends, my clients, and my guests. I have never accepted that familiar, much-admired proverb: become old early if you want a long old age. I would prefer fewer years of old age to becoming old before my time. So far, nobody wanting to see me has found that I was too busy for them.”

[33]
“Still, either of you is stronger than I am. Well, neither of you is as strong as Titus Pontius the centurion. Does that make him a better man? We only need to manage our energy and exert ourselves within our abilities. Then we will not greatly miss having more strength. People say Milo took an ox onto his shoulders and walked the length of the stadium at Olympia. Would you rather have that bodily power or the mental power of Pythagoras? In short, make use of strength while you have it. Once it is gone, do not wish it back. Otherwise young people should wish to be children again, and people a little older should wish to be young. Life follows a definite course. Nature has a single, straightforward road, and each stage has its proper season. Children’s weakness, young people’s boldness, the seriousness of settled adulthood, and the maturity of old age all have a natural quality we should enjoy at the right time.”

### Chapter 11

[34]
“Scipio, I suppose you hear about what Masinissa does today, at ninety. The friendship between your families goes back to your grandfather. If he starts a journey on foot, he does not get on a horse at any point. If he starts on horseback, he does not get off. No rain or cold can make him cover his head. His body is exceptionally lean and tough. This lets him carry out all a king’s responsibilities and tasks. So exercise and self-control can keep some of our earlier strength even when we are old.

“Suppose there is no strength in old age. Strength is not even required of it. Our laws and customs release people our age from jobs that cannot be done without physical strength. We are not forced to do what is beyond us. We are not even forced to do everything still within our powers.”

[35]
“But plenty of old people are so weak that they cannot fulfill any duty or do any of life’s tasks at all. That problem is not specific to age. It comes with poor health at any age. Think how weak the son of Publius Africanus was—the man who adopted you. His health was so frail that he almost had none. Without that weakness, he would have become another great light for our country. Besides his father’s greatness of spirit, he had a fuller education. Why be surprised, then, if older people are sometimes weak, when even young people cannot avoid it?

“Laelius and Scipio, we have to stand up to old age and work carefully to offset its disadvantages. We should fight it as we fight an illness. We must look after our health,”

[36]
“exercise in moderation, and eat and drink enough to restore our energy without weighing ourselves down. But care for the body is not enough. Our mind and spirit need much more care. They too die out as we age unless we keep feeding them, like adding oil to a lamp. Bodies grow sluggish when exercise tires them, but exercising makes minds more alert. The people Caecilius calls the foolish old men of comedy are the gullible, forgetful, irresponsible ones. Those are not the faults of age itself. They belong to an idle, lazy, sleepy old age. Rudeness and uncontrolled desire occur more in youth than in old age, but not in all young people, only those with bad characters. In the same way, the foolishness people commonly call dotage belongs to old men who lack good judgment, not to every old man.”

[37]
“Appius was old and blind, but he managed four strong sons, five daughters, an enormous household, and a large body of clients. He kept his mind taut, like a bowstring. He did not lose heart and give in to age. He kept not just his family’s respect but his power to direct them. The slaves were afraid of him. His children treated him with reverence. They all loved him. The old family customs and discipline were strong in that home.”

[38]
“Old age earns honor by defending itself and keeping its rights. It must not place itself under someone else’s control, and it must remain in charge of its household until its last breath. I like a young person who has some qualities of age, and an old person who has some qualities of youth. Someone who follows that rule may grow old physically, but will never grow old in spirit.

“The seventh book of my Origins is on my desk. I gather every record of the past. Right now I am writing up my speeches in all the important cases I have defended. I work on the law of augury, priestly law, and civil law. I also make extensive use of Greek literature. To train my memory, I follow the Pythagorean practice of going over each evening what I said, heard, and did that day. That is how I train my abilities and put my mind through its paces. Working hard at these things, I do not much miss physical strength. I help my friends and attend Senate meetings regularly. Without waiting to be asked, I raise matters I have thought about at length and defend my views with mental rather than physical energy. Even if I could not do these things, I would enjoy lying on my couch and thinking about the activities I could no longer carry out. But it is my earlier life that allows me to keep doing them. Someone who has always lived with these interests and tasks does not notice when age starts to creep in. Life grows old so slowly that we do not feel it. It does not break suddenly, but goes out over time.”

### Chapter 12

[39]
“Now comes the third criticism: people say that old age has no pleasures. What a wonderful gift from our years, if they remove the worst fault of youth! My excellent young friends, listen to a speech from long ago by Archytas of Tarentum, one of the greatest and most remarkable men. I heard it passed down when I was a young man at Tarentum with Quintus Fabius Maximus. He said that nature had given human beings no more deadly danger than bodily pleasure. The greedy cravings for it drive people recklessly, without any restraint, toward getting it.”

[40]
“He said it gave rise to betraying one’s country, overthrowing states, and secretly dealing with enemies. In short, the desire for pleasure could push people into any crime or evil action. Sexual misconduct, adultery, and every disgrace of that kind had no other attraction behind them but pleasure. Whether it was nature or some god that gave us our minds, nothing better had been given to human beings. And nothing was more hostile to this divine gift than pleasure.”

[41]
“When desire is in control, there is no room for restraint. Where pleasure rules, good character cannot survive at all.

“To make his point clearer, he asked people to imagine someone experiencing the most intense bodily pleasure possible. He thought nobody would doubt that while enjoying it the person could not think anything through or reach any result by reasoning or reflection. Nothing, then, was more hateful or destructive than pleasure. In a strong and prolonged form, it put out every light in the mind. Nearchus of Tarentum, our family friend who had stayed loyal to the Roman people, said he had heard the following account from older men. Archytas had said this to Gaius Pontius the Samnite. It was Pontius’s son who won at Caudium against Spurius Postumius and Titus Veturius, the two consuls. Plato of Athens was also present for the conversation. My research shows that he came to Tarentum when Lucius Camillus and Appius Claudius were consuls.”

[42]
“Why am I telling you this? So you understand how grateful we should be to old age if our own reason and wisdom cannot make us reject pleasure. It stops us wanting what we ought not want. Pleasure gets in the way of good decisions. It works against reason and, so to speak, blinds the mind’s eyes. It has nothing to do with virtue.

“I was unwilling to expel Lucius Flamininus, the brother of the very brave Titus Flamininus, from the Senate seven years after he had been consul. But I decided that his uncontrolled desire deserved an official mark of disgrace. When he was consul in Gaul, a prostitute persuaded him at a dinner to have one of the prisoners beheaded. The prisoner was under sentence of death for a capital crime. He went unpunished in the censorship of his brother Titus, the censor just before me. Flaccus and I, however, could not possibly accept such shameful, ruinous desire. It brought disgrace on his command as well as shame on his private life.”

### Chapter 13

[43]
“I have often heard older men tell a story they themselves had heard from old men when they were boys. Gaius Fabricius used to express his amazement at something he had heard while serving as an envoy to King Pyrrhus. Cineas of Thessaly had told him that there was a man in Athens who called himself a philosopher and said that everything we did should be judged by the pleasure it brought. When Manius Curius and Tiberius Coruncanius heard this from Fabricius, they hoped that Pyrrhus himself and the Samnites would come to accept the idea. They would be easier to defeat once they gave themselves over to pleasure. Manius Curius had lived at the same time as Publius Decius, who had sacrificed his life for his country during his fourth term as consul, five years before Curius became consul. Fabricius and Coruncanius had known Decius too. Their own lives, as well as the deed of this Decius I am speaking of, convinced them that something truly noble and splendid exists by nature. It deserves to be sought for its own sake, and the best people pursue it while rejecting pleasure and treating it as unimportant.”

[44]
“Why, then, have I said so much about pleasure? Because old age deserves not blame but the highest praise for having no strong desire for pleasures. It goes without feasts, heavily loaded tables, and cup after cup of wine. So it also goes without drunkenness, indigestion, and sleepless nights. Still, perhaps we must make some allowance for pleasure, since its charms are hard to resist. Plato was wonderfully right to call pleasure the bait of evil: people are caught by it just as fish are caught by bait. Although old age goes without excessive feasting, it can still enjoy modest dinner parties. When I was a boy, I repeatedly watched the elderly Gaius Duilius on his way home from dinner. He was Marcus’s son and the first to beat a Carthaginian fleet. He enjoyed having a wax torch and a flute player accompany him. Although he held no public office at the time, he had adopted this practice without any precedent. His glory gave him that much freedom.”

[45]
“But why am I talking about other people? Let me return to myself. To begin with, I have always had companions to dine with. These dining societies were founded when I was quaestor, after we adopted the rites of the Great Mother from Mount Ida. So I used to dine with my companions, quite moderately, though there was still some of the warmth of youth about it. As we grow older, everything becomes gentler day by day. Even then, I measured my enjoyment of these dinners less by bodily pleasures than by the gathering of friends and their conversation. Our ancestors gave a good name to friends gathering around a dinner table. Because it brought people together in a shared life, they called it a ‘living together.’ That is better than the Greek names for the same thing, ‘drinking together’ or ‘eating together.’ Those names make the Greeks seem to value most what matters least on such occasions.”

### Chapter 14

[46]
“For my part, I enjoy even dinners that begin early, because I enjoy the conversation. My dinner companions include you and other people of your generation, as well as the few survivors of my own. Getting old has given me much to be grateful for. It has increased my appetite for conversation and taken away my appetite for food and drink. Still, suppose someone continues to enjoy those things. I do not want to seem to have declared total war on pleasure, which may have a natural limit of its own. I see no reason to think old age has lost all feeling even for these pleasures. I myself enjoy the custom our ancestors established of choosing someone to direct the drinking. I enjoy the conversation that, following their custom, begins with the person in the highest place as the cup goes around. I also enjoy small cups that sprinkle us with a little wine, as Xenophon describes in his Symposium, and coolness in summer, and, in their turn, sunshine or a fire in winter. I regularly seek these pleasures even in the Sabine country. Every day I fill out a dinner party with my neighbors, and we keep it going far into the night with as much varied conversation as we can.”

[47]
“‘But pleasures do not give old people the same sort of tingle.’ I agree. But neither do old people feel the same longing for them. And nothing you do not miss can trouble you by its absence. Sophocles gave a good answer when someone asked him, in his advanced old age, whether he still enjoyed sex. ‘The gods spare me that!’ was his reply. ‘I got away from it as one gets free of a harsh and furious master.’ People who crave such things may find it hateful and distressing to go without them. But for people who have had their fill, going without is more pleasant than taking part. Strictly speaking, someone who does not want something is not deprived of it. So my point is that not wanting it is more pleasant.”

[48]
“Even if people in their prime enjoy these very pleasures more eagerly, first, as I have said, the things they enjoy are of little importance. Second, they are pleasures that old age does not entirely lack, even if it does not have them in abundance. Someone watching Ambivius Turpio from the front rows of the theater enjoys him more, but someone in the back rows enjoys him too. In the same way, youth may take greater delight in pleasures because it sees them close up. But old age, watching them from a distance, also enjoys them—as much as it needs.”

[49]
“And how valuable these other things are! The mind has, so to speak, finished its military service under sexual desire, ambition, rivalries, feuds, and every kind of craving. It can be with itself and, as the saying goes, live with itself. If it also has study and learning to feed on, nothing is more pleasant than an old age free from public duties. Scipio, we used to see Gallus, your father’s friend, absorbed in his efforts to measure almost the whole of heaven and earth. How often daylight caught him still working on a diagram he had begun at night! How often night overtook him at work he had started in the morning! How he enjoyed telling us about eclipses of the sun and moon long before they happened!”

[50]
“And what about studies that are less serious but still call for a sharp mind? How Naevius enjoyed his Punic War! How Plautus enjoyed his Truculentus and his Pseudolus! I also saw Livius in his later years. A play of his had been staged six years before my birth, when Cento and Tuditanus were consuls, and he lived on into my youth.

“Why should I speak of Publius Licinius Crassus and his devotion to religious and civil law? Or of this Publius Scipio, who became chief priest just a few days ago? We saw all the men I have mentioned still burning with enthusiasm for these studies in their old age. And Marcus Cethegus, whom Ennius rightly called ‘the heart of Persuasion’—how eagerly we saw him practice public speaking even when he was old! What pleasures from feasts, public shows, or prostitutes can compare with these pleasures? These are the pleasures of learning. In sensible, well-educated people, they grow along with age. So there is something noble in that little verse of Solon’s which I mentioned earlier. He says that he grows old learning many new things every day. Surely no pleasure of the mind can be greater than that.”

### Chapter 15

[51]
“I turn now to the pleasures of farming, which give me an incredible amount of enjoyment. No degree of old age prevents them, and they seem to me to come very close to the life of a wise person. Farmers deal with the earth, which never refuses their commands and never returns what it has received without interest. Sometimes the interest is smaller, but usually it is larger. Yet it is not just the harvest that delights me. I also enjoy the power and nature of the earth itself. When its lap has been softened and worked, it receives the scattered seed. First it holds the seed hidden out of sight. This hiding gives the Latin word for harrowing its name, since harrowing does this work. Then the earth warms the seed with its heat and pressure, opens it up, and draws green growth out of it. Supported by its root fibers, this growth gradually develops. It rises on a jointed stalk and is enclosed in sheaths, as if it were coming into its youth. Once it emerges from them, it produces grain arranged in the orderly rows of an ear. A fence of bristles protects it against the pecking of smaller birds.”

[52]
“Why should I describe how vines start, how they are planted, and how they grow? I can never get enough of this pleasure, and I want you to understand what gives my old age rest and enjoyment. I pass over the sheer power of everything that grows from the earth. From a tiny fig seed, a grape seed, or the very small seeds of other crops and plants, it produces such great trunks and branches. Cuttings with a piece of old wood attached, young plants, vine shoots, rooted cuttings, and layered shoots—surely these can fill anyone with wonder and delight? A vine naturally tends to fall and sinks to the ground unless it has support. Yet to raise itself, it wraps its tendrils like hands around whatever it finds. As it creeps along, twisting and wandering in many directions, the farmer’s skill checks it by cutting it back with a knife. This keeps it from growing wild with shoots and spreading too far in every direction.”

[53]
“So, at the beginning of spring, something called a bud appears on the shoots that have been left, at what we might call their joints. From this bud the developing grape cluster shows itself. Fed by moisture from the earth and warmth from the sun, it grows. At first it tastes very sour; then, as it ripens, it becomes sweet. Covered by vine leaves, it receives enough warmth while being protected from the sun’s excessive heat. What could be more delightful to eat or more beautiful to look at?

“As I said before, it is not just the vine’s usefulness that delights me. I also enjoy its cultivation and its very nature: the rows of supports, the crossbars joining their tops, the tying up and layering of the vines, and the pruning I mentioned, in which some shoots are cut away and others are allowed to grow.

“Why should I describe irrigation, digging the soil, and digging it over again, which make the earth much more productive? Why speak of the value of spreading manure? I discussed it in the book I wrote about farming.”

[54]
“Learned Hesiod did not say a single word about this when he wrote about cultivating the land. But Homer, who I think lived many centuries earlier, presents Laertes easing his longing for his son by working the land and spreading manure on it. And it is not just grainfields, meadows, vineyards, and trees trained with vines that make country life delightful. There are also gardens and orchards, grazing flocks, swarms of bees, and flowers of every kind. Nor is planting the only pleasure. There is also grafting, the cleverest practice farming has discovered.”

### Chapter 16

[55]
“I could describe many more pleasures of country life. But I realize that even what I have already said has gone on too long. You will forgive me. My enthusiasm for farming carried me away, and old age is naturally rather talkative. I would not want to seem to clear it of every fault. It was in this kind of life that Manius Curius spent his final years, after celebrating triumphs over the Samnites, the Sabines, and Pyrrhus. His farmhouse is not far from mine. Whenever I look at it, I cannot admire enough either the man’s own self-restraint or the standards of his time.”

[56]
“The Samnites once brought Curius a large amount of gold while he was sitting by his fireplace. He turned them away. He said that what he considered glorious was not owning gold, but ruling over people who owned it. Could a spirit as great as his have failed to make old age happy?

“But let me return to farmers, so that I do not stray from my own experience. In those days senators—that is, old men—lived on their farms. Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was plowing when he was told that he had been appointed dictator. It was on this dictator’s orders that Gaius Servilius Ahala, his cavalry commander, caught Spurius Maelius before he could act and killed him for trying to make himself king. Curius and the other old men were summoned from their farms to the Senate. That is why the messengers who summoned them were called ‘travelers.’ Was old age miserable, then, for these men who enjoyed farming? In my opinion, there may be no happier kind of old age. There is the duty it fulfills, since farming benefits the whole human race. There is also the pleasure I have described, and the plentiful supply of everything needed to feed people and for religious worship too. Some people miss such comforts, so let us make peace with pleasure now. A good, attentive landowner always has his wine cellar, oil store, and pantry full. His whole farm is well stocked. There are pigs, young goats, lambs, chickens, milk, cheese, and honey in abundance. Farmers even call their garden a second supply of meat. Bird-catching and hunting in their spare time add further flavor to all this.”

[57]
“Why keep describing the meadows’ green color, the lines of trees, and how fine the vineyards and olive plantations look? I will cut it short. Nothing can be more productive or more beautiful than a well-farmed estate. Far from keeping us from enjoying it, old age actually invites and draws us to it. Where else can people of that age warm themselves better, either in the sun or by a fire? Or where can they cool themselves more healthfully in the shade or beside water? So let others keep their weapons,”

[58]
“their horses, their spears, their clubs and balls, their swimming and running. Out of all the games, let them leave us old men the knucklebones and dice. Even that can be as they please, since old age can be happy without them.”

### Chapter 17

[59]
“Xenophon’s books are very useful for many purposes. Please keep reading them carefully, as you already do. How fully he praises farming in his book about managing a household, called Oeconomicus! To show you that he thought nothing was more suitable for a king than an interest in farming, consider a story Socrates tells Critobulus in that book. Cyrus the Younger, king of the Persians, was a man of outstanding intelligence and famous for his rule. Lysander of Sparta, a man of exceptional ability, came to visit him at Sardis and brought him gifts from the allies. Cyrus treated Lysander in a friendly and courteous way in every respect. He also showed him an enclosed piece of land that had been carefully planted. Lysander admired the tall trees, the straight rows arranged in a five-point pattern, the well-worked, weed-free soil, and the sweet scents drifting from the flowers. He said he admired not only the care but also the skill of the person who had measured and laid out the grounds. Cyrus answered, ‘But I measured all this myself. I arranged the rows and planned the layout. I even planted many of those trees with my own hand.’ Lysander looked at his purple robe, his well-groomed body, and his Persian ornaments with their plentiful gold and jewels. Then he said, ‘People are certainly right to call you happy, Cyrus, since good fortune has joined your excellence!’”

[60]
“Old men can enjoy this good fortune too. Age does not stop us from keeping up our interests, especially farming, to the very end of old age. We are told that Marcus Valerius Corvinus lived to be a hundred. In his later years he lived on his land and farmed it. Forty-six years passed between his first and sixth terms as consul. So his career in public office lasted the full span of years that our ancestors thought came before a person entered old age. Compared with his middle years, his last years brought greater happiness in one way: more respect and less toil.”

[61]
“The crowning reward of old age is the respect it earns. How much respect Lucius Caecilius Metellus enjoyed! And how much Aulus Atilius Calatinus enjoyed! His epitaph says:
‘Many different peoples agree: this man  
was his nation’s leading citizen.’
The whole poem carved on his tomb is well known. He rightly carried weight, since everyone agreed in praising him. Think of the impressive Publius Crassus we saw recently as chief priest! Later, Marcus Lepidus was just as impressive in that priestly office. Need I mention Paulus and Africanus, or return once more to Fabius Maximus? Their authority showed itself not just in their opinions but even in a nod. Old age, especially when honored, carries so much authority that it is worth more than all the pleasures of youth.”

### Chapter 18

[62]
“But throughout this discussion, remember that I am praising an old age built on foundations laid in youth. This leads to something I once said with everyone’s strong approval: an old age that has to defend itself with words is a miserable one. Gray hair and wrinkles cannot suddenly win respect. Rather, an earlier life lived honorably earns respect as its final reward.”

[63]
“The very things that seem minor and ordinary are marks of honor: being greeted, having people seek your company, being given the right of way, having others stand up for you, being escorted when you leave and when you return, and being asked for advice. These customs are observed both among us and in other states. The better a community’s standards, the more carefully it observes them. Lysander of Sparta, whom I just mentioned, is said to have often remarked that Sparta was the most honorable home for old age. Nowhere is so much importance given to age, and nowhere is old age more respected. There is even a story that an elderly man came into the theater during the games at Athens. Among the large audience, none of his fellow citizens gave him a seat. But he approached the Spartans, who were there as ambassadors and were sitting in a reserved area. They all stood up, we are told, and made room for the old man to sit down;”

[64]
“and the whole audience responded with loud, repeated clapping. At that, one of the Spartans remarked, ‘The Athenians understand right conduct, but will not act on it.’

“Our college of augurs has many excellent customs. One of the best concerns the very matter we are discussing: the oldest member has the first right to give his opinion. Older augurs take precedence not only over those above them in official rank, but even over those who hold the power of command. How could any physical pleasure match the benefits that come with such authority? Men who have enjoyed these rewards with distinction seem to me to have played life’s drama through to the end, rather than collapsing in the final act like untrained actors.”

[65]
“‘But old men are cranky, anxious, quick-tempered, and difficult.’ If we look into it, they are greedy too. But these are faults of character, not of old age. Still, irritability and the other faults I mentioned have some excuse—not a fair excuse, but one that may seem plausible. Old people think they are treated with contempt, looked down on, and made fun of. Besides, when the body is frail, every hurt is hard to bear. Yet good habits and education soften all these things. We can see this both in life and on the stage, in the brothers in Adelphi. How harsh one is, and how friendly the other! This is how things stand: just as not every wine turns sour with age, neither does every character. I approve of strictness in old age, but, as with other things, it should be moderate. I do not approve of bitterness at all. As for greed in old age, I cannot understand what purpose it serves.”

### Chapter 19

[66]
“Could anything be sillier than wanting more supplies for a journey when there is less road left to travel?

“One reason remains, the fourth. It seems to cause people our age the most anxiety: death is coming closer. It certainly cannot be far away when we are old. How unfortunate is an old man who has not learned in all those years that death is nothing to fear! If it destroys the soul completely, we should give it no thought at all. If it takes the soul somewhere it will live forever, we should actually want it. There is certainly no third option.”

[67]
“So what should I be afraid of? After death I will either not suffer or will even be happy. Besides, who is foolish enough, however young, to be sure of surviving until tonight? In fact, young people face far more ways of dying than we do. They get sick more easily, are more seriously ill, and need more painful treatment. That is why few people become old. If things were different, people would live better and more wisely. Old people have intelligence, reasoning, and judgment. Without them, there would never have been any organized states at all.

“But back to the threat of death. Why blame old age for something you can see is just as true of youth?”

[68]
“Scipio, my very fine son taught me through his death that people of any age can die. Your brothers, who were expected to reach the highest positions, taught you the same thing. But a young person hopes to have many years ahead, and an old person cannot have that hope. It is a foolish hope. What could make less sense than treating doubtful things as certain, or false things as true? But an old person has nothing left even to hope for. Then he is better off than a young person. He has already achieved what the young person hopes for. One wants a long life. The other has had one.”

[69]
“And yet, good gods, what does a long time mean for a human being? Give us the longest possible life. Let us look forward to the age reached by the king of Tartessus. I read that a man called Arganthonius at Gades ruled for eighty years and lived for a hundred and twenty. But to me, nothing that comes to an end seems long-lasting. Once the end arrives, everything before it has slipped away. All that remains is what you gained by being good and doing right. Hours, days, months, and years go by. Lost time never comes back, and we cannot know what is next. We should each be satisfied with the amount of living time we are given.”

[70]
“An actor does not have to finish the whole play to please the audience. It is enough to be good in whatever act he appears in. Wise people likewise do not need to reach the final call for applause. Even a short life gives enough time to live well and decently. If life goes on longer, we should feel no more sadness than farmers feel when the pleasant spring ends and summer and fall arrive. Spring is like youth: it points to and shows the crops that are going to come. The later seasons are for cutting and gathering them.”

[71]
“As I have said often, old age’s harvest is remembering and enjoying good things gained earlier. We should count everything that happens in line with nature as good. And what could be more natural than for old people to die? When young people die, nature fights against it. To me, their dying is like a blaze being smothered by a great rush of water. Old people die like a fire that burns itself out, without any force being used. Unripe fruit is hard to pull off a tree. When it is ripe and ready, it falls. In the same way, violence takes the young out of life, while ripeness takes the old. I enjoy this ripeness so much that, as I get closer to death, I feel as though I can see land and will at last reach port after a long sea journey.”

### Chapter 20

[72]
“There is no set limit to old age. We can live it well for as long as we can carry out our duties, stand by them, and face death without concern. This can make older people even bolder and braver than the young. That is the point of Solon’s answer to the tyrant Pisistratus. The tyrant asked what he was relying on when he opposed him so fearlessly. Solon is said to have replied, ‘My old age.’ But the best end comes when our minds are sound and our senses clear, and nature takes apart the work she put together. The person who built a ship or a house can most easily take it down. Similarly, the nature that put a human being together can best take that person apart. Anything freshly joined is hard to separate; an old join comes apart easily.

“So older people should neither grasp greedily at the little time left nor give it up for no reason;”

[73]
“and Pythagoras tells us not to leave our guard duty and our post in life without an order from our commander, meaning God. Solon the wise wrote a verse saying that he did not want his death to pass without his friends’ grief and mourning. I suppose he wanted to be loved by the people close to him. But perhaps Ennius put it better:
Let nobody honor me with tears or weep at my funeral.
He does not think we should mourn a death that is followed by immortality.”

[74]
“We may feel something as we die, but only briefly, especially if we are old. After death, either our experience will be something to wish for or we will have no experience at all. But we should have practiced thinking about this since youth, so that death does not worry us. Without that preparation, nobody can feel at peace. We are certain to die, and for all we know it could be today. How can anyone stay calm while fearing a death that could come at any hour?”

[75]
“I do not think we need a long argument about this when I remember certain examples. I do not mean Lucius Brutus, killed while freeing his country; the two Decii, who rode their horses straight toward a death they had chosen; Marcus Atilius, who went to be tortured rather than break his promise to an enemy; the two Scipios, who tried to stop the Carthaginians’ advance even with their own bodies; your grandfather Lucius Paulus, whose death paid for his colleague’s recklessness in the disgrace at Cannae; or Marcus Marcellus, whom even a supremely cruel enemy would not allow to die without an honorable burial. I mean our legions. As I wrote in the Origins, they often went willingly and proudly into positions they never expected to come back from. If young men—not just without education but also brought up in the country—think death is nothing to fear, should educated old men be frightened by it?”

[76]
“In my view, getting our fill of every interest makes us get our fill of life. Children have particular interests. Do young people miss them? Early youth has its own interests. Do people of settled, middle age want those back? Middle age also has its interests, but people do not keep looking for those in old age. Finally, old age has interests of its own. Just as the interests of earlier years fade away, the interests of old age fade too. When that happens, having had enough of life brings the right time to die.”

### Chapter 21

[77]
“I see no reason to hold back from telling you my own thoughts about death. I seem to see it more clearly as I get nearer to it. Publius Scipio, and you, Gaius Laelius, I believe your fathers are still alive. They were outstanding men and very dear friends of mine. Now they live the only life that really deserves the name. Here, shut inside the body’s structure, we carry out a necessary service and a hard task. The soul comes from heaven. It has been pushed down from its home high above and, as it were, buried in the earth, a place opposed to its divine, everlasting nature. But I believe the immortal gods placed souls in human bodies so there would be beings to care for the earth. By studying the order of the heavens, they could copy it in the measure and steadiness of their own lives. Reason and argument are not the only things that brought me to this belief. The standing and authority of the greatest philosophers helped too.”

[78]
“I used to hear about Pythagoras and his followers. They lived almost next door to us and were once known as the Italian philosophers. They never doubted that our souls are portions drawn from the divine mind of the universe. I was also shown what Socrates said on his last day about souls never dying. He was the man Apollo’s oracle called wisest of all. Why go on at length? This is what I believe, and I am convinced of it. The mind works so quickly, remembers so much of the past, and understands so much about what is coming. It has so many skills, so much knowledge, and so many inventions. A nature that holds all these things cannot be mortal. The soul is always moving. Its movement has no beginning because it moves itself. It will have no end either, because the soul will never abandon itself. Its nature is simple. It has nothing mixed into it that is different or unlike itself. So it cannot be split up, and if it cannot be split up, it cannot die. There is also strong evidence that people know many things before they are born. When children learn difficult skills, they grasp an immense number of things at such speed that it looks as if they are remembering and recalling them rather than learning them for the first time. Those are roughly Plato’s arguments.”

### Chapter 22

[79]
“In Xenophon’s account, Cyrus the Elder says this while dying: ‘My dearest sons, do not think that when I leave you I will be nowhere or will no longer exist. Even when I was with you, you could not see my soul. You knew it was in my body because of the things I did. So believe that it still exists, even when you cannot see it.’”

[80]
“‘The honors given to famous men would not continue after their deaths if their own souls did nothing to make us remember them longer. Nobody has ever been able to convince me that souls are alive when they are inside mortal bodies but die when they get out. Nor do I think the soul loses its understanding when it leaves a body that has no understanding. Instead, it becomes wise when it is free from every bodily mixture and starts to exist pure and complete. Also, when death takes a human being apart, it is obvious where each of the other parts goes. They all go back to where they came from. The soul alone is unseen, both while it is here and after it has left. And you can see that nothing is as much like death as sleep.’”

### Chapter 23

[81]
“‘Yet souls show their divine nature most clearly when people are asleep. Relaxed and free, they foresee many future events. That tells us what they will be like once they have completely shaken off the body’s restraints. So if this is true,’ he said, ‘honor me as a god. But if my soul is going to die with my body, you will still respect the gods who watch over and rule this whole beautiful world. You will keep my memory faithfully, without harming it.’ That was what Cyrus said at his death. Now let us look at our own situation, if you agree.”

[82]
“Scipio, nobody will ever convince me that your father Paulus, your grandfathers Paulus and Africanus, Africanus’s father and uncle, or the many other great men I need not list would have attempted such achievements for later generations to remember unless they believed that those generations would matter to them personally. Let me boast a little about myself, as old men do. Do you think I would have taken on all those tasks, working day and night at home and on military service, if my reputation was going to end when my life ended? Would it not have been much better to spend my years peacefully, without work or struggle? Somehow, though, my spirit kept rising up and looking ahead to future generations, as if it would only really begin living once it had left this life. If souls were not in fact immortal, it would not be the best people’s souls that strove hardest for lasting glory. And consider this: the wisest people die most calmly,”

[83]
“while the most foolish die with the greatest distress. Does it not seem to you that the soul that can see more clearly and further ahead sees that it is going somewhere better? The one with duller sight does not see it.

“I am certainly filled with eagerness to see your fathers, whom I respected and loved. But I am not only keen to meet the people I knew. I also want to meet those I have heard about, read about, and written about myself. Once I am on my way there, nothing will easily bring me back or boil me young again like Pelias. If a god offered to take me from my present age back to being a baby crying in a cradle, I would firmly say no. After running the race, I would not want to be sent from the finish back to the starting gates.”

[84]
“What benefits does life offer? What is not, rather, hard work? Still, let it have its benefits. Even then, either we have enough of it or it reaches its limit. I do not want to complain about life, as many people, including educated ones, have often done. I do not regret having lived. I have lived in a way that makes me think I was not born for nothing. And I am leaving life as one leaves a place to stay, not one’s own home. Nature gave us an inn for a visit, not a permanent residence.

“What a wonderful day it will be when I go to that divine gathering of souls and leave this crowded mess behind! I will go not only to the men I spoke of earlier, but also to my Cato. No better man was ever born, and nobody was more devoted to his duties. I burned his body on the funeral pyre, when it should have been his task to burn mine. But his soul did not abandon me. It looked back toward me and surely went to the place where it saw that I too must come. People thought I bore that loss bravely. It was not because I felt calm about it. I comforted myself by thinking that we would not be parted and separated for long.”

[85]
“That is why, Scipio, old age is easy for me—the very thing you said you and Laelius often found surprising. It is not just free from trouble. It is pleasant too. If I am wrong to believe that human souls cannot die, I am happy to be wrong. While I am alive, I do not want anyone to take away a belief that gives me pleasure. But suppose that after death I feel nothing, as some small-minded philosophers think. Then I need not worry about dead philosophers laughing at my mistake. Even if we are not going to live forever, it is still a good thing for a person to die at the right time. Nature puts a limit on living, just as it does on everything else. Old age brings a life to its end, like the last act of a play. We should avoid becoming worn out by it, especially when we have had enough.

“Those are the things I had to say about old age. I hope you reach it, so that your own experience can show you that what you have heard from me is true!”