For the infirmity of the body does not so much incommode the
administrations of those who, almost spent with age, go to the tribune
or to the council of war, as they are advantageous by the caution
and prudence which attend their years, and keep them from thrusting
themselves precipitately into affairs, abused partly by want of
experience and partly by vain-glory, and hurrying the people along with
them by violence, like a sea agitated by the winds; causing them mildly
and moderately to manage those with whom they have to do.
Whence cities, when they are in adversity and fear, desire the
government of grave and ancient personages; and often having drawn out
of his field some old man who had not so much as the least thought of
it, have compelled him, though unwilling, to put his hand to the helm,
and conduct the ship of the state into the haven of security, rejecting
generals and orators, who not only knew how to speak loud and make long
harangues without drawing their breath, but were able also valiantly
to march forth and fight their enemies. So when the orators one day
at Athens, before Timotheus and Iphicrates uncovering Chares the son
of Theochares, a vigorous and stout-bodied young man, said they were
of opinion that the general of the Athenians ought to be such a one;
Not so, by all the Gods, answered Timotheus, but such a one he should
be that is to carry the general’s bedding; but the general himself
ought to be such a one as can at the same time see both forwards and
backwards, and will suffer not his reasonings about things convenient
to be disturbed by any passion.
Sophocles indeed said, he was glad that he was got free from the
tyranny of wanton love, as being a furious and raging master; but in
the administrations of state, we are not to avoid this one only master,
the love of women or boys, but many who are madder than he, such as
obstinacy in contending ambition, and a desire of being always the
first and greatest, which is a disease most fruitful in bringing forth
envy, jealousy, and conspiracies; some of which vices old age abates
and dulls, while it wholly extinguishes and cools the others, not so
much detracting from the practical impulse of the mind, as repressing
its impetuous and over-hot passions, that it may apply a sober and
settled reasoning to its considerations about the management of affairs.