If age brought nothing worse than this,
It were enough to mar our bliss,
That he who bides for many years
Sees much to shun and much for tears.
Yes, and perhaps much that gives him pleasure too. Besides, as to
subjects for tears, he often comes upon them in youth as well.
A still more questionable sentiment in the same Caecilius is:
No greater misery can of age be told
Than this: be sure, the young dislike the old.
Delight in them is nearer the mark than dislike. For just as old men, if
they are wise, take pleasure in the society of young men of good parts,
and as old age is rendered less dreary for those who are courted and
liked by the youth, so also do young men find pleasure in the maxims of
the old, by which they are drawn to the pursuit of excellence. Nor do
I perceive that you find my society less pleasant than I do yours. But
this is enough to show you how, so far from being listless and sluggish,
old age is even a busy time, always doing and attempting something, of
course of the same nature as each man's taste had been in the previous
part of his life. Nay, do not some even add to their stock of learning?
We see Solon, for instance, boasting in his poems that he grows old
"daily learning something new." Or again in my own case, it was only
when an old man that I became acquainted with Greek literature, which in
fact I absorbed with such avidity--in my yearning to quench, as it were,
a long-continued thirst--that I became acquainted with the very facts
which you see me now using as precedents. When I heard what Socrates had
done about the lyre I should have liked for my part to have done that
too, for the ancients used to learn the lyre but, at any rate, I worked
hard at literature.
9. Nor, again, do I now MISS THE BODILY STRENGTH OF A YOUNG MAN (for
that was the second point as to the disadvantages of old age) any more
than as a young man I missed the strength of a bull or an elephant. You
should use what you have, and whatever you may chance to be doing, do
it with all your might. What could be weaker than Milo of Croton's
exclamation? When in his old age he was watching some athletes
practising in the course, he is said to have looked at his arms and to
have exclaimed with tears in his eyes: "Ah well! these are now as good
as dead." Not a bit more so than yourself, you trifler! For at no time
were you made famous by your real self, but by chest and biceps. Sext.
Aelius never gave vent to such a remark, nor, many years before him,
Titus Coruncanius, nor, more recently, P. Crassus--all of them learned
juris-consults in active practice, whose knowledge of their profession
was maintained to their last breath. I am afraid an orator does lose
vigour by old age, for his art is not a matter of the intellect alone,
but of lungs and bodily strength. Though as a rule that musical ring
in the voice even gains in brilliance in a certain way as one grows
old--certainly I have not yet lost it, and you see my years. Yet
after all the style of speech suitable to an old man is the quiet and
unemotional, and it often happens that the chastened and calm delivery
of an old man eloquent secures a hearing. If you cannot attain to that
yourself, you might still instruct a Scipio and a Laelius. For what is
more charming than old age surrounded by the enthusiasm of youth? Shall
we not allow old age even the strength to teach the young, to train
and equip them for all the duties of life? And what can be a nobler
employment? For my part, I used to think Publius and Gnaeus Scipio and
your two grandfathers, L. Aemilius and P. Africanus, fortunate men when
I saw them with a company of young nobles about them. Nor should we
think any teachers of the fine arts otherwise than happy, however much
their bodily forces may have decayed and failed. And yet that same
failure of the bodily forces is more often brought about by the vices of
youth than of old age; for a dissolute and intemperate youth hands down
the body to old age in a worn-out state. Xenophon's Cyrus, for instance,
in his discourse delivered on his death-bed and at a very advanced age,
says that he never perceived his old age to have become weaker than his
youth had been. I remember as a boy Lucius Metellus, who having been
created Pontifex Maximus four years after his second consulship, held
that office twenty-two years, enjoying such excellent strength of body
in the very last hours of his life as not to miss his youth. I need not
speak of myself; though that indeed is an old man's way and is generally
allowed to my time of life. Don't you see in Homer how frequently Nestor
talks of his own good qualities? For he was living through a third
generation; nor had he any reason to fear that upon saying what was true
about himself he should appear either over vain or talkative. For, as
Homer says, "from his lips flowed discourse sweeter than honey," for
which sweet breath he wanted no bodily strength. And yet, after all, the
famous leader of the Greeks nowhere wishes to have ten men like Ajax,
but like Nestor: if he could get them, he feels no doubt of Troy shortly
falling.
10. But to return to my own case: I am in my eighty-fourth year. I could
wish that I had been able to make the same boast as Cyrus; but, after
all, I can say this: I am not indeed as vigorous as I was as a private
soldier in the Punic war, or as quaestor in the same war, or as consul
in Spain, and four years later when as a military tribune I took part in
the engagement at Thermopylae under the consul Manius Acilius Glabrio;
but yet, as you see, old age has not entirely destroyed my muscles, has
not quite brought me to the ground. The Senate-house does not find all
my vigour gone, nor the rostra, nor my friends, nor my clients, nor
my foreign guests. For I have never given in to that ancient and
much-praised proverb:
Old when young
Is old for long.
For myself, I had rather be an old man a somewhat shorter time than
an old man _before_ my time. Accordingly, no one up to the present has
wished to see me, to whom I have been denied as engaged. But, it may
be said, I have less strength than either of you. Neither have you the
strength of the centurion T. Pontius: is he the more eminent man on that
account? Let there be only a proper husbanding of strength, and let each
man proportion his efforts to his powers. Such an one will assuredly not
be possessed with any great regret for his loss of strength. At Olympia
Milo is said to have stepped into the course carrying a live ox on
his shoulders. Which then of the two would you prefer to have given to
you--bodily strength like that, or intellectual strength like that of
Pythagoras? In fine, enjoy that blessing when you have it; when it is
gone, don't wish it back--unless we are to think that young men should
wish their childhood back, and those somewhat older their youth! The
course of life is fixed, and nature admits of its being run but in one
way, and only once; and to each part of our life there is something
specially seasonable; so that the feebleness of children, as well as
the high spirit of youth, the soberness of maturer years, and the ripe
wisdom of old age--all have a certain natural advantage which should
be secured in its proper season. I think you are informed, Scipio, what
your grandfather's foreign friend Masinissa does to this day, though
ninety years old. When he has once begun a journey on foot he does not
mount his horse at all; when on horseback he never gets off his horse.
By no rain or cold can he be induced to cover his head. His body is
absolutely free from unhealthy humours, and so he still performs all
the duties and functions of a king. Active exercise, therefore, and
temperance can preserve some part of one's former strength even in old
age.
11. Bodily strength is wanting to old age; but neither is bodily
strength demanded from old men. Therefore, both by law and custom,
men of my time of life are exempt from those duties which cannot be
supported without bodily strength. Accordingly not only are we not
forced to do what we cannot do; we are not even obliged to do as much
as we can. But, it will be said, many old men are so feeble that they
cannot perform any duty in life of any sort or kind. That is not a
weakness to be set down as peculiar to old age: it is one shared by ill
health. How feeble was the son of P. Africanus, who adopted you! What
weak health he had, or rather no health at all! If that had not been
the case, we should have had in him a second brilliant light in the
political horizon; for he had added a wider cultivation to his father's
greatness of spirit. What wonder, then, that old men are eventually
feeble, when even young men cannot escape it? My dear Laelius and
Scipio, we must stand up against old age and make up for its drawbacks
by taking pains. We must fight it as we should an illness. We must look
after our health, use moderate exercise, take just enough food and drink
to recruit, but not to overload, our strength. Nor is it the body alone
that must be supported, but the intellect and soul much more. For they
are like lamps: unless you feed them with oil, they too go out from
old age. Again, the body is apt to get gross from exercise; but the
intellect becomes nimbler by exercising itself. For what Caecilius means
by "old dotards of the comic stage" are the credulous, the forgetful,
and the slipshod. These are faults that do not attach to old age as
such, but to a sluggish, spiritless, and sleepy old age. Young men are
more frequently wanton and dissolute than old men; but yet, as it is not
all young men that are so, but the bad set among them, even so senile
folly--usually called imbecility--applies to old men of unsound
character, not to all. Appius governed four sturdy sons, five daughters,
that great establishment, and all those clients, though he was both old
and blind. For he kept his mind at full stretch like a bow, and never
gave in to old age by growing slack. He maintained not merely an
influence, but an absolute command over his family: his slaves feared
him, his sons were in awe of him, all loved him. In that family, indeed,
ancestral custom and discipline were in full vigour. The fact is that
old age is respectable just as long as it asserts itself, maintains its
proper rights, and is not enslaved to any one. For as I admire a young
man who has something of the old man in him, so do I an old one who has
something of a young man. The man who aims at this may possibly become
old in body--in mind he never will. I am now engaged in composing the
seventh book of my _Origins_. I collect all the records of antiquity.
The speeches delivered in all the celebrated cases which I have defended
I am at this particular time getting into shape for publication. I am
writing treatises on augural, pontifical, and civil law. I am, besides,
studying hard at Greek, and after the manner of the Pythagoreans--to
keep my memory in working order--I repeat in the evening whatever I have
said, heard, or done in the course of each day. These are the exercises
of the intellect, these the training grounds of the mind: while I sweat
and labour on these I don't much feel the loss of bodily strength. I
appear in court for my friends; I frequently attend the Senate and bring
motions before it on my own responsibility, prepared after deep and
long reflection. And these I support by my intellectual, not my bodily
forces. And if I were not strong enough to do these things, yet I should
enjoy my sofa--imagining the very operations which I was now unable to
perform. But what makes me capable of doing this is my past life. For a
man who is always living in the midst of these studies and labours
does not perceive when old age creeps upon him. Thus, by slow and
imperceptible degrees life draws to its end. There is no sudden
breakage; it just slowly goes out.
12. The third charge against old age is that it LACKS SENSUAL PLEASURES.
What a splendid service does old age render, if it takes from us the
greatest blot of youth! Listen, my dear young friends, to a speech of
Archytas of Tarentum, among the greatest and most illustrious of men,
which was put into my hands when as a young man I was at Tarentum
with Q. Maximus. "No more deadly curse than sensual pleasure has been
inflicted on mankind by nature, to gratify which our wanton appetites
are roused beyond all prudence or restraint. It is a fruitful source of
treasons, revolutions, secret communications with the enemy. In fact,
there is no crime, no evil deed, to which the appetite for sensual
pleasures does not impel us. Fornications and adulteries, and every
abomination of that kind, are brought about by the enticements of
pleasure and by them alone. Intellect is the best gift of nature or
God: to this divine gift and endowment there is nothing so inimical
as pleasure. For when appetite is our master, there is no place for
self-control; nor where pleasure reigns supreme can virtue hold its
ground. To see this more vividly, imagine a man excited to the highest
conceivable pitch of sensual pleasure. It can be doubtful to no one that
such a person, so long as he is under the influence of such excitation
of the senses, will be unable to use to any purpose either intellect,
reason, or thought. Therefore nothing can be so execrable and so fatal
as pleasure; since, when more than ordinarily violent and lasting, it
darkens all the light of the soul."
These were the words addressed by Archytas to the Samnite Caius Pontius,
father of the man by whom the consuls Spurius Postumius and Titus
Veturius were beaten in the battle of Caudium. My friend Nearchus of
Tarentum, who had remained loyal to Rome, told me that he had heard them
repeated by some old men; and that Plato the Athenian was present, who
visited Tarentum, I find, in the consulship of L. Camillus and Appius
Claudius.
What is the point of all this? It is to show you that, if we were unable
to scorn pleasure by the aid of reason and philosophy, we ought to have
been very grateful to old age for depriving us of all inclination for
that which it was wrong to do. For pleasure hinders thought, is a foe to
reason, and, so to speak, blinds the eyes of the mind. It is, moreover,
entirely alien to virtue. I was sorry to have to expel Lucius, brother
of the gallant Titus Flamininus, from the Senate seven years after his
consulship; but I thought it imperative to affix a stigma on an act of
gross sensuality. For when he was in Gaul as consul, he had yielded to
the entreaties of his paramour at a dinner-party to behead a man who
happened to be in prison condemned on a capital charge. When his brother
Titus was Censor, who preceded me, he escaped; but I and Flaccus could
not countenance an act of such criminal and abandoned lust, especially
as, besides the personal dishonour, it brought disgrace on the
Government.
13. I have often been told by men older than myself, who said that they
had heard it as boys from old men, that Gaius Fabricius was in the
habit of expressing astonishment at having heard, when envoy at the
headquarters of king Pyrrhus, from the Thessalian Cineas, that there was
a man of Athens who professed to be a "philosopher," and affirmed that
everything we did was to be referred to pleasure. When he told this to
Manius Curius and Publius Decius, they used to remark that they wished
that the Samnites and Pyrrhus himself would hold the same opinion. It
would be much easier to conquer them, if they had once given themselves
over to sensual indulgences. Manius Curius had been intimate with
P. Decius, who four years before the former's consulship had devoted
himself to death for the Republic. Both Fabricius and Coruncanius knew
him also, and from the experience of their own lives, as well as from
the action of P. Decius, they were of opinion that there did exist
something intrinsically noble and great, which was sought for its own
sake, and at which all the best men aimed, to the contempt and neglect
of pleasure. Why then do I spend so many words on the subject of
pleasure? Why, because, far from being a charge against old age, that it
does not much feel the want of any pleasures, it is its highest praise.
But, you will say, it is deprived of the pleasures of the table, the
heaped up board, the rapid passing of the wine-cup. Well, then, it is
also free from headache, disordered digestion, broken sleep. But if we
must grant pleasure something, since we do not find it easy to resist
its charms,--for Plato, with happy inspiration, calls pleasure "vice's
bait," because of course men are caught by it as fish by a hook,--yet,
although old age has to abstain from extravagant banquets, it is still
capable of enjoying modest festivities. As a boy I often used to see
Gaius Duilius the son of Marcus, then an old man, returning from
a dinner-party. He thoroughly enjoyed the frequent use of torch and
flute-player, distinctions which he had assumed though unprecedented in
the case of a private person. It was the privilege of his glory. But why
mention others? I will come back to my own case. To begin with, I have
always remained a member of a "club"--clubs, you know, were established
in my quaestorship on the reception of the Magna Mater from Ida. So I
used to dine at their feast with the members of my club--on the whole
with moderation, though there was a certain warmth of temperament
natural to my time of life; but as that advances there is a daily
decrease of all excitement. Nor was I, in fact, ever wont to measure
my enjoyment even of these banquets by the physical pleasures they gave
more than by the gathering and conversation of friends. For it was
a good idea of our ancestors to style the presence of guests at a
dinner-table--seeing that it implied a community of enjoyment--a
_convivium_, "a living together." It is a better term than the Greek
words which mean "a drinking together," or, "an eating together." For
they would seem to give the preference to what is really the least
important part of it.
14. For myself, owing to the pleasure I take in conversation, I enjoy
even banquets that begin early in the afternoon, and not only in company
with my contemporaries--of whom very few survive--but also with men
of your age and with yourselves. I am thankful to old age, which has
increased my avidity for conversation, while it has removed that for
eating and drinking. But if anyone does enjoy these--not to seem to have
proclaimed war against all pleasure without exception, which is perhaps
a feeling inspired by nature--I fail to perceive even in these very
pleasures that old age is entirely without the power of appreciation.
For myself, I take delight even in the old-fashioned appointment of
master of the feast; and in the arrangement of the conversation, which
according to ancestral custom is begun from the last place on the
left-hand couch when the wine is brought in; as also in the cups which,
as in Xenophon's banquet, are small and filled by driblets; and in the
contrivance for cooling in summer, and for warming by the winter sun or
winter fire. These things I keep up even among my Sabine countrymen, and
every day have a full dinner-party of neighbours, which we prolong as
far into the night as we can with varied conversation.
But you may urge--there is not the same tingling sensation of pleasure
in old men. No doubt; but neither do they miss it so much. For nothing
gives you uneasiness which you do not miss. That was a fine answer of
Sophocles to a man who asked him, when in extreme old age, whether he
was still a lover. "Heaven forbid!" he replied; "I was only too glad to
escape from that, as though from a boorish and insane master." To
men indeed who are keen after such things it may possibly appear
disagreeable and uncomfortable to be without them; but to jaded
appetites it is pleasanter to lack than to enjoy. However, he cannot be
said to lack who does not want: my contention is that not to want is the
pleasanter thing.
But even granting that youth enjoys these pleasures with more zest; in
the first place, they are insignificant things to enjoy, as I have said;
and in the second place, such as age is not entirely without, if it
does not possess them in profusion. Just as a man gets greater pleasure
from Ambivius Turpio if seated in the front row at the theatre than if
he was in the last, yet, after all, the man in the last row does get
pleasure; so youth, because it looks at pleasures at closer quarters,
perhaps enjoys itself more, yet even old age, looking at them from
a distance, does enjoy itself well enough. Why, what blessings are
these--that the soul, having served its time, so to speak, in the
campaigns of desire and ambition, rivalry and hatred, and all the
passions, should live in its own thoughts, and, as the expression goes,
should dwell apart! Indeed, if it has in store any of what I may call
the food of study and philosophy, nothing can be pleasanter than an
old age of leisure. We were witnesses to C. Gallus--a friend of your
father's, Scipio--intent to the day of his death on mapping out the sky
and land. How often did the light surprise him while still working out
a problem begun during the night! How often did night find him busy on
what he had begun at dawn! How he delighted in predicting for us solar
and lunar eclipses long before they occurred! Or again in studies of
a lighter nature, though still requiring keenness of intellect, what
pleasure Naevius took in his _Punic War_! Plautus in his _Truculentus_
and _Pseudolus_! I even saw Livius Andronicus, who, having produced
a play six years before I was born--in the consulship of Cento and
Tuditanus--lived till I had become a young man. Why speak of Publius
Licinius Crassus's devotion to pontifical and civil law, or of the
Publius Scipio of the present time, who within these last few days
has been created Pontifex Maximus? And yet I have seen all whom I have
mentioned ardent in these pursuits when old men. Then there is Marcus
Cethegus, whom Ennius justly called "Persuasion's Marrow"--with what
enthusiasm did we see him exert himself in oratory even when quite old!
What pleasures are there in feasts, games, or mistresses comparable to
pleasures such as these? And they are all tastes, too, connected with
learning, which in men of sense and good education grow with their
growth. It is indeed an honourable sentiment which Solon expresses in a
verse which I have quoted before--that he grew old learning many a fresh
lesson every day. Than that intellectual pleasure none certainly can be
greater.
15. I come now to the pleasures of the farmer, in which I take amazing
delight. These are not hindered by any extent of old age, and seem to
me to approach nearest to the ideal wise man's life. For he has to deal
with the earth, which never refuses its obedience, nor ever returns
what it has received without usury; sometimes, indeed, with less, but
generally with greater interest. For my part, however, it is not merely
the thing produced, but the earth's own force and natural productiveness
that delight me. For received in its bosom the seed scattered broadcast
upon it, softened and broken up, she first keeps it concealed therein
(hence the harrowing which accomplishes this gets its name from a word
meaning "to hide"); next, when it has been warmed by her heat and close
pressure, she splits it open and draws from it the greenery of the
blade. This, supported by the fibres of the root, little by little grows
up, and held upright by its jointed stalk is enclosed in sheaths, as
being still immature. When it has emerged from them it produces an ear
of corn arranged in order, and is defended against the pecking of the
smaller birds by a regular palisade of spikes.
Need I mention the starting, planting, and growth of vines? I can never
have too much of this pleasure--to let you into the secret of what gives
my old age repose and amusement. For I say nothing here of the natural
force which all things propagated from the earth possess--the earth
which from that tiny grain in a fig, or the grape-stone in a grape, or
the most minute seeds of the other cereals and plants, produces such
huge trunks and boughs. Mallet-shoots, slips, cuttings, quicksets,
layers--are they not enough to fill anyone with delight and
astonishment? The vine by nature is apt to fall, and unless supported
drops down to the earth; yet in order to keep itself upright it embraces
whatever it reaches with its tendrils as though they were hands. Then
as it creeps on, spreading itself in intricate and wild profusion, the
dresser's art prunes it with the knife and prevents it growing a forest
of shoots and expanding to excess in every direction. Accordingly at the
beginning of spring in the shoots which have been left there protrudes
at each of the joints what is termed an eye. From this the grape emerges and
shows itself; which, swollen by the juice of the earth and the heat
of the sun, is at first very bitter to the taste, but afterwards grows
sweet as it matures; and being covered with tendrils is never without a
moderate warmth, and yet is able to ward off the fiery heat of the sun.
Can anything be richer in product or more beautiful to contemplate?
It is not its utility only, as I said before, that charms me, but the
method of its cultivation and the natural process of its growth: the
rows of uprights, the cross-pieces for the tops of the plants, the tying
up of the vines and their propagation by layers, the pruning, to which
I have already referred, of some shoots, the setting of others. I need
hardly mention irrigation, or trenching and digging the soil, which much
increase its fertility. As to the advantages of manuring I have spoken
in my book on agriculture. The learned Hesiod did not say a single word
on this subject, though he was writing on the cultivation of the soil;
yet Homer, who in my opinion was many generations earlier, represents
Laertes as softening his regret for his son by cultivating and manuring
his farm. Nor is it only in cornfields and meadows and vineyards and
plantations that a farmer's life is made cheerful. There are the garden
and the orchard, the feeding of sheep, the swarms of bees, endless
varieties of flowers. Nor is it only planting out that charms: there
is also grafting--surely the most ingenious invention ever made by
husbandmen.
16. I might continue my list of the delights of country life; but even
what I have said I think is somewhat over long. However, you must
pardon me; for farming is a very favourite hobby of mine, and old age is
naturally rather garrulous--for I would not be thought to acquit it of
all faults.
Well, it was in a life of this sort that Manius Curius, after
celebrating triumphs over the Samnites, the Sabines, and Pyrrhus, spent
his last days. When I look at his villa--for it is not far from my
own--I never can enough admire the man's own frugality or the spirit of
the age. As Curius was sitting at his hearth the Samnites, who brought
him a large sum of gold, were repulsed by him; for it was not, he
said, a fine thing in his eyes to possess gold, but to rule those who
possessed it. Could such a high spirit fail to make old age pleasant?
But to return to farmers--not to wander from my own metier. In those
days there were senators, _i. e_. old men, on their farms. For L.
Quinctius Cincinnatus was actually at the plough when word was brought
him that he had been named Dictator. It was by his order as Dictator,
by the way, that C. Servilius Ahala, the Master of the Horse, seized
and put to death Spurius Maelius when attempting to obtain royal power.
Curius as well as other old men used to receive their summonses to
attend the Senate in their farm-houses, from which circumstance the
summoners were called _viatores_ or "travellers." Was these men's old
age an object of pity who found their pleasure in the cultivation of the
land? In my opinion, scarcely any life can be more blessed, not alone
from its utility (for agriculture is beneficial to the whole human
race), but also as much from the mere pleasure of the thing, to which
I have already alluded, and from the rich abundance and supply of all
things necessary for the food of man and for the worship of the gods
above. So, as these are objects of desire to certain people, let us
make our peace with pleasure. For the good and hard-working farmer's
wine-cellar and oil-store, as well as his larder, are always well
filled, and his whole farm-house is richly furnished. It abounds in
pigs, goats, lambs, fowls, milk, cheese, and honey. Then there is the
garden, which the farmers themselves call their "second flitch." A zest
and flavour is added to all these by hunting and fowling in spare hours.
Need I mention the greenery of meadows, the rows of trees, the beauty
of vineyard and olive-grove? I will put it briefly: nothing can either
furnish necessaries more richly, or present a fairer spectacle, than
well-cultivated land. And to the enjoyment of that, old age does not
merely present no hindrance--it actually invites and allures to it. For
where else can it better warm itself, either by basking in the sun or by
sitting by the fire, or at the proper time cool itself more wholesomely
by the help of shade or water? Let the young keep their arms then to
themselves, their horses, spears, their foils and ball, their swimming
baths and running path. To us old men let them, out of the many forms of
sport, leave dice and counters; but even that as they choose, since old
age can be quite happy without them.
17. Xenophon's books are very useful for many purposes. Pray go on
reading them with attention, as you have ever done. In what ample
terms is agriculture lauded by him in the book about husbanding one's
property, which is called _Oceonomicus_! But to show you that he thought
nothing so worthy of a prince as the taste for cultivating the soil, I
will translate what Socrates says to Critobulus in that book:
"When that most gallant Lacedaemonian Lysander came to visit the Persian
prince Cyrus at Sardis, so eminent for his character and the glory of
his rule, bringing him presents from his allies, he treated Lysander
in all ways with courteous familiarity and kindness, and, among other
things, took him to see a certain park carefully planted. Lysander
expressed admiration of the height of the trees and the exact
arrangement of their rows in the quincunx, the careful cultivation
of the soil, its freedom from weeds, and the sweetness of the odours
exhaled from the flowers, and went on to say that what he admired was
not the industry only, but also the skill of the man by whom this had
been planned and laid out. Cyrus replied: 'Well, it was I who planned
the whole thing these rows are my doing, the laying out is all mine;
many of the trees were even planted by own hand.' Then Lysander, looking
at his purple robe, the brilliance of his person, and his adornment
Persian fashion with gold and many jewels, said: 'People are quite
right, Cyrus, to call you happy, since the advantages of high fortune
have been joined to an excellence like yours.'"
This kind of good fortune, then, it is in the power of old men to enjoy;
nor is age any bar to our maintaining pursuits of every other kind, and
especially of agriculture, to the very extreme verge of old age. For
instance, we have it on record that M. Valerius Corvus kept it up to his
hundredth year, living on his land and cultivating it after his active
career was over, though between his first and sixth consulships there
was an interval of six and forty years. So that he had an official
career lasting the number of years which our ancestors defined as coming
between birth and the beginning of old age. Moreover, that last period
of his old age was more blessed than that of his middle life, inasmuch
as he had greater influence and less labour. For the crowning grace of
old age is influence.
How great was that of L. Caecilius Metellus! How great that of Atilius
Calatinus, over whom the famous epitaph was placed, "Very many classes
agree in deeming this to have been the very first man of the nation"!
The line cut on his tomb is well known. It is natural, then, that a man
should have had influence, in whose praise the verdict of history is
unanimous. Again, in recent times, what a great man was Publius Crassus,
Pontifex Maximus, and his successor in the same office, M. Lepidus! I
need scarcely mention Paulus or Africanus, or, as I did before, Maximus.
It was not only their senatorial utterances that had weight: their least
gesture had it also. In fact, old age, especially when it has enjoyed
honours, has an influence worth all the pleasures of youth put together.
18. But throughout my discourse remember that my panegyric applies to
an old age that has been established on foundations laid by youth. From
which may be deduced what I once said with universal applause, that
it was a wretched old age that had to defend itself by speech. Neither
white hairs nor wrinkles can at once claim influence in themselves: it
is the honourable conduct of earlier days that is rewarded by possessing
influence at the last. Even things generally regarded as trifling and
matters of course--being saluted, being courted, having way made for
one, people rising when one approaches, being escorted to and from the
forum, being referred to for advice--all these are marks of respect,
observed among us and in other States--always most sedulously where the
moral tone is highest. They say that Lysander the Spartan, whom I have
mentioned before, used to remark that Sparta was the most dignified home
for old age; for that nowhere was more respect paid to years, no-where
was old age held in higher honour. Nay, the story is told of how when
a man of advanced years came into the theatre at Athens when the games
were going on, no place was given him anywhere in that large assembly
by his own countrymen; but when he came near the Lacedaemonians, who as
ambassadors had a fixed place assigned to them, they rose as one man out
of respect for him, and gave the veteran a seat. When they were greeted
with rounds of applause from the whole audience, one of them remarked:
"The Athenians know what is right, but will not do it." There are many
excellent rules in our augural college, but among the best is one which
affects our subject--that precedence in speech goes by seniority; and
augurs who are older are preferred only to those who have held higher
office, but even to those who are actually in possession of imperium.
What then are the physical pleasures to be compared with the reward of
influence? Those who have employed it with distinction appear to me to
have played the drama of life to its end, and not to have broken down in
the last act like unpractised players.
But, it will be said, old men are fretful, fidgety, ill-tempered, and
disagreeable. If you come to that, they are also avaricious. But these
are faults of character, not of the time of life. And, after all,
fretfulness and the other faults I mentioned admit of some excuse--not,
indeed, a complete one, but one that may possibly pass muster: they
think themselves neglected, looked down upon, mocked, Besides with
bodily weakness every rub is a source of pain. Yet all these faults are
softened both by good character and good education. Illustrations of
this may be found in real life, as also on the stage in the case of
the brothers in the _Adeiphi_. What harshness in the one, what gracious
manners in the other The fact is that, just as it is not every wine, so
it is not every life, that turns sour from keeping, Serious gravity I
approve of in old age, but, as in other things, it must be within due
limits: bitterness I can in no case approve. What the object of senile
avarice may be I cannot conceive. For can there be anything more absurd
than to seek more journey money, the less there remains of the journey?
19. There remains the fourth reason, which more than anything else
appears to torment men of my age and keep them in a flutter--THE
NEARNESS OF DEATH, which, it must be allowed, cannot be far from an old
man. But what a poor dotard must he be who has not learnt in the course
of so long a life that death is not a thing to be feared? Death, that is
either to be totally disregarded, if it entirely extinguishes the soul,
or is even to be desired, if it brings him where he is to exist forever.
A third alternative, at any rate, cannot possibly be discovered. Why
then should I be afraid if I am destined either not to be miserable
after death or even to be happy? After all, who is such a fool as to
feel certain--however young he may be--that he will be alive in the
evening? Nay, that time of life has many more chances of death than
ours, Young men more easily contract diseases; their illnesses are more
serious; their treatment has to be more severe. Accordingly, only a few
arrive at old age. If that were not so, life would be conducted better
and more wisely; for it is in old men that thought, reason, and prudence
are to be found; and if there had been no old men, States would never
have existed at all. But I return to the subject of the imminence of
death. What sort of charge is this against old age, when you see that it
is shared by youth? I had reason in the case of my excellent son--as you
had, Scipio, in that of your brothers, who were expected to attain the
highest honours--to realise that death is common to every time of life.
Yes, you will say; but a young man expects to live long; an old man
cannot expect to do so. Well, he is a fool to expect it. For what can be
more foolish than to regard the uncertain as certain, the false as true?
"An old man has nothing even to hope." Ah, but it is just there that
he is in a better position than a young man, since what the latter only
hopes he has obtained. The one wishes to live long; the other has lived
long.
And yet, good heaven! what is "long" in a man's life? For grant
the utmost limit: let us expect an age like that of the King of the
Tartessi. For there was, as I find recorded, a certain Agathonius at
Gades who reigned eighty years and lived a hundred and twenty. But to my
mind nothing seems even long in which there is any "last," for when that
arrives, then all the past has slipped away--only that remains to which
you have attained by virtue and righteous actions. Hours indeed, and
days and months and years depart, nor does past time ever return, nor
can the future be known. Whatever time each is granted for life, with
that he is bound to be content. An actor, in order to earn approval,
is not bound to perform the play from beginning to end; let him only
satisfy the audience in whatever act he appears. Nor need a wise man go
on to the concluding "plaudite." For a short term of life is long enough
for living well and honourably. But if you go farther, you have no more
right to grumble than farmers do because the charm of the spring season
is past and the summer and autumn have come. For the word "spring" in a
way suggests youth, and points to the harvest to be: the other seasons
are suited for the reaping and storing of the crops. Now the harvest of
old age is, as I have often said, the memory and rich store of blessings
laid up in easier life. Again, all things that accord with nature are to
be counted as good. But what can be more in accordance with nature
than for old men to die? A thing, indeed, which also befalls young men,
though nature revolts and fights against it. Accordingly, the death of
young men seems to me like putting out a great fire with a deluge of
water; but old men die like a fire going out because it has burnt down
of its own nature without artificial means. Again, just as apples when
unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it
is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This
ripeness is so delightful to me, that, as I approach nearer to death,
I seem as it were to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last
after a long voyage.
20. Again, there is no fixed borderline for old age, and you are making
a good and proper use of it as long as you can satisfy the call of duty
and disregard death. The result of this is, that old age is even more
confident and courageous than youth. That is the meaning of Solon's
answer to the tyrant Pisistratus. When the latter asked him what he
relied upon in opposing him with such boldness, he is said to have
replied, "On my old age." But that end of life is the best, when,
without the intellect or senses being impaired, Nature herself takes
to pieces her own handiwork which she also put together. Just as the
builder of a ship or a house can break them up more easily than any one
else, so the nature that knit together the human frame can also
best unfasten it. Moreover, a thing freshly glued together is always
difficult to pull asunder; if old, this is easily done.
The result is that the short time of life left to them is not to be
grasped at by old men with greedy eagerness, or abandoned without cause.
Pythagoras forbids us, without an order from our commander, that is God,
to desert life's fortress and outpost. Solon's epitaph, indeed, is that
of a wise man, in which he says that he does not wish his death to be
unaccompanied by the sorrow and lamentations of his friends. He wants, I
suppose, to be beloved by them. But I rather think Ennius says better:
None grace me with their tears, nor weeping loud Make sad my funeral
rites!
He holds that a death is not a subject for mourning when it is followed
by immortality.
Again, there may possibly be some sensation of dying and that only for
a short time, especially in the case of an old man: after death, indeed,
sensation is either what one would desire, or it disappears altogether.
But to disregard death is a lesson which must be studied from our youth
up; for unless that is learnt, no one can have a quiet mind. For die we
certainly must, and that too without being certain whether it may not be
this very day. As death, therefore, is hanging over our head every hour,
how can a man ever be unshaken in soul if he fears it?
But on this theme I don't think I need much enlarge: when I remember
what Lucius Brutus did, who was killed while defending his country; or
the two Decii, who spurred their horses to a gallop and met a voluntary
death; or M. Atilius Regulus, who left his home to confront a death of
torture, rather than break the word which he had pledged to the enemy;
or the two Scipios, who determined to block the Carthaginian advance
even with their own bodies; or your grandfather Lucius Paulus, who
paid with his life for the rashness of his colleague in the disgrace at
Cannae; or M. Marcellus, whose death not even the most bloodthirsty of
enemies would allow to go without the honour of burial. It is enough to
recall that our legions (as I have recorded in my _Origins_) have
often marched with cheerful and lofty spirit to ground from which they
believed that they would never return. That, therefore, which young
men--not only uninstructed, but absolutely ignorant--treat as of no
account, shall men who are neither young nor ignorant shrink from in
terror? As a general truth, as it seems to me, it is weariness of all
pursuits that creates weariness of life. There are certain pursuits
adapted to childhood: do young men miss them? There are others suited
to early manhood: does that settled time of life called "middle age" ask
for them? There are others, again, suited to that age, but not looked
for in old age. There are, finally, some which belong to Old age.
Therefore, as the pursuits of the earlier ages have their time for
disappearing, so also have those of old age. And when that takes place,
a satiety of life brings on the ripe time for death.
21. For I do not see why I should not venture to tell you my personal
opinion as to death, of which I seem to myself to have a clearer vision
in proportion as I am nearer to it. I believe, Scipio and Laelius, that
your fathers--those illustrious men and my dearest friends--are still
alive, and that too with a life which alone deserves the name. For as
long as we are imprisoned in this framework of the body, we perform a
certain function and laborious work assigned us by fate. The soul, in
fact, is of heavenly origin, forced down from its home in the highest,
and, so to speak, buried in earth, a place quite opposed to its divine
nature and its immortality. But I suppose the immortal gods to have sown
souls broadcast in human bodies, that there might be some to survey
the world, and while contemplating the order of the heavenly bodies to
imitate it in the unvarying regularity of their life. Nor is it only
reason and arguments that have brought me to this belief, but the great
fame and authority of the most distinguished philosophers. I used to
be told that Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans--almost natives of
our country, who in old times had been called the Italian school of
philosophers--never doubted that we had souls drafted from the universal
Divine intelligence. I used besides to have pointed out to me the
discourse delivered by Socrates on the last day of his life upon the
immortality of the soul--Socrates who was pronounced by the oracle at
Delphi to be the wisest of men. I need say no more. I have convinced
myself, and I hold--in view of the rapid movement of the soul, its vivid
memory of the past and its prophetic knowledge of the future, its many
accomplishments, its vast range of knowledge, its numerous discoveries
--that a nature embracing such varied gifts cannot itself be mortal.
And since the soul is always in motion and yet has no external source of
motion, for it is self-moved, I conclude that it will also have no end
to its motion, because it is not likely ever to abandon itself. Again,
since the nature of the soul is not composite, nor has in it any
admixture that is not homogeneous and similar, I conclude that it is
indivisible, and, if indivisible, that it cannot perish. It is again
a strong proof of men knowing most things before birth, that when mere
children they grasp innumerable facts with such speed as to show that
they are not then taking them in for the first time, but remembering and
recalling them. This is roughly Plato's argument.
22. Once more in Xenophon we have the elder Cyrus on his deathbed
speaking as follows:--
"Do not suppose, my dearest sons, that when I have left you I shall be
nowhere and no one. Even when I was with you, you did not see my soul,
but knew that it was in this body of mine from what I did. Believe then
that it is still the same, even though you see it not. The honours paid
to illustrious men had not continued to exist after their death, had
the souls of these very men not done something to make us retain our
recollection of them beyond the ordinary time. For myself, I never could
be persuaded that souls while in mortal bodies were alive, and died
directly they left them; nor, in fact, that the soul only lost all
intelligence when it left the unintelligent body. I believe rather that
when, by being liberated from all corporeal admixture, it has begun to
be pure and undefiled, it is then that it becomes wise. And again,
when man's natural frame is resolved into its elements by death, it is
clearly seen whither each of the other elements departs: for they all go
to the place from which they came: but the soul alone is invisible alike
when present and when departing. Once more, you see that nothing is so
like death as sleep. And yet it is in sleepers that souls most clearly
reveal their divine nature; for they foresee many events when they are
allowed to escape and are left free. This shows what they are likely to
be when they have completely freed themselves from the fetters of the
body. Wherefore, if these things are so, obey me as a god. But if my
soul is to perish with my body, nevertheless do you from awe of the
gods, who guard and govern this fair universe, preserve my memory by the
loyalty and piety of your lives."
23. Such are the words of the dying Cyrus. I will now, with your good
leave, look at home. No one, my dear Scipio, shall ever persuade me that
your father Paulus and your two grandfathers Paulus and Africanus, or
the father of Africanus, or his uncle, or many other illustrious men
not necessary to mention, would have attempted such lofty deeds as to be
remaindered by posterity, had they not seen in their minds that future
ages concerned them. Do you suppose--to take an old man's privilege of
a little self-praise--that I should have been likely to undertake
such heavy labours by day and night, at home and abroad, if I had been
destined to have the same limit to my glory as to my life? Had it not
been much better to pass an age of ease and repose without any labour
or exertion? But my soul, I know not how, refusing to be kept down, ever
fixed its eyes upon future ages, as though from a conviction that it
would begin to live only when it had left the body. But had it not been
the case that souls were immortal, it would not have been the souls of
all the best men that made the greatest efforts after an immortality of
fame.
Again, is there not the fact that the wisest man ever dies with the
greatest cheerfulness, the most unwise with the least? Don't you think
that the soul which has the clearer and longer sight sees that it is
starting for better things, while the soul whose vision is dimmer does
not see it? For my part, I am transported with the desire to see your
fathers, who were the object of my reverence and affection. Nor is it
only those whom I knew that I long to see; it is those also of whom I
have been told and have read, whom I have myself recorded in my history.
When I am setting out for that, there is certainly no one who will find
it easy to draw me back, or boil me up again like second Pelios. Nay, if
some god should grant me to renew my childhood from my present age and
once more to be crying in my cradle, I would firmly refuse; nor should
I in truth be willing, after having, as it were, run the full course, to
be recalled from the winning--crease to the barriers. For what blessing
has life to offer? Should we not rather say what labour? But granting
that it has, at any rate it has after all a limit either to enjoyment
or to existence. I don't wish to depreciate life, as many men and good
philosophers have often done; nor do I regret having lived, for I have
done so in a way that lets me think that I was not born in vain. But I
quit life as I would an inn, not as I would a home. For nature has given
us a place of entertainment, not of residence.
Oh glorious day when I shall set out to join that heavenly conclave and
company of souls, and depart from the turmoil and impurities of
this world! For I shall not go to join only those whom I have before
mentioned, but also my son Cato, than whom no better man was ever born,
nor one more conspicuous for piety. His body was burnt by me, though
mine ought, on the contrary, to have been burnt by him; but his spirit,
not abandoning, but ever looking back upon me, has certainly gone
whither he saw that I too must come. I was thought to bear that loss
heroically, not that I really bore it without distress, but I found my
own consolation in the thought that the parting and separation between
us was not to be for long.
It is by these means, my dear Scipio,--for you said that you and Laelius
were wont to express surprise on this point,--that my old age sits
lightly on me, and is not only not oppressive but even delightful.
But if I am wrong in thinking the human soul immortal, I am glad to be
wrong; nor will I allow the mistake which gives me so much pleasure
to be wrested from me as long as I live. But if when dead, as some
insignificant philosophers think, I am to be without sensation, I am not
afraid of dead philosophers deriding my errors. Again, if we are not to
be immortal, it is nevertheless what a man must wish--to have his
life end at its proper time. For nature puts a limit to living as to
everything else. Now, old age is as it were the playing out of the
drama, the full fatigue of which we should shun, especially when we also
feel that we have had more than enough of it.
This is all I had to say on old age. I pray that you may arrive at it,
that you may put my words to a practical test.