both be and seem to be spoken for the dissuading of him who shall, when
he is now grown gray with age, begin to play the youth; and for the
restraining an old man who, rising from a long administration of his
domestic affairs, as from a lingering disease, shall set himself to
lead an army to the field, or perform the office of secretary of state.
But altogether senseless, and nothing like to this, is he who will not
suffer one that has spent his whole time in political administrations,
and been thoroughly beaten to them, to go on to his funeral torch and
the conclusion of his life, but shall call him back, and command him
(as it were) to turn out of the long road he has been travelling in. He
who, to draw off from his design an old fellow who is crowned and is
perfuming himself to go a wooing, should say to him, as was heretofore
said to Philoctetes,
What virgin will her blooming maidenhead
Bestow on such a wretch? Why would’st thou wed?
would not be at all absurd, since even old men break many such jests
upon themselves, and say,
I, old fool, know, I for my neighbors wed;
but he who should think, that a man which has long co-habited and
lived irreprehensibly with his wife ought, because he is grown old,
to dismiss her and live alone, or take a concubine in her place,
would have attained the utmost excess of perverseness. So he would
not act altogether unreasonably, that should admonish an old man
who is making his first approaches to the people, whether he be
such a one as Chlidon the farmer, or Lampon the mariner, or some old
dreaming philosopher of the garden, and advise him to continue in
his accustomed unconcernedness for the public; but he who, taking
hold of Phocion, Cato, or Pericles, should say to him, My Athenian or
Roman friend, who art come to thy withered old age, make a divorce,
and henceforth quit the state; and dismissing all conversations and
cares about either council or camp, retire into the country, there
with an old maid-servant looking after thy husbandry, or spending the
remainder of thy time in managing thy domestic affairs and taking thy
accounts,—would persuade a statesman to do things misbeseeming him and
unacceptable.
10. What then! may some one say; do we not hear the soldier in the
comedy affirming,
Henceforth my gray hairs exempt me from wars?
Yes indeed, my friend, it is altogether so; for it becomes the servants
of Mars to be young and vigorous, as managing