Nor even now do I feel the want of the strength of a young man, no
more than when a young man I felt the want of the strength of the bull
or of the elephant. What one has, that one ought to use; and whatever
you do, you should do it with all your strength. For what expression
can be more contemptible than that of Milo[5] of Crotona, who, when he
was now an old man, and was looking at the prize-fighters exercising
themselves on the course, is reported to have looked at his arms,
and, weeping over them, to have said, "But these, indeed, are now
dead." Nay, foolish man, not these arms so much as yourself; for you
never derived your nobility from yourself, but from your chest and
your arms. Nothing of the kind did Sextus AElius ever say, nothing of
the kind many years before did Titus Coruncanius, nothing lately did
Publius Crassus; by whom instructions in jurisprudence were given to
their fellow citizens, and whose wisdom was progressive even to their
latest breath. For the orator, I fear lest he be enfeebled by old age;
for eloquence is a gift not of mind only, but also of lungs and
strength. On the whole, that melodiousness in the voice is graceful, I
know not how, even in old age; which, indeed, I have not lost, and you
see my years.
Yet there is a graceful style of eloquence in an old man,
unimpassioned and subdued, and very often the elegant and gentle
discourse of an eloquent old man wins for itself a hearing; and if you
have not yourself the power to produce this effect, yet you may be
able to teach it to Scipio and Laelius. For what is more delightful
than old age surrounded with the studious attention of youth? Shall we
not leave even such a resource to old age, as to teach young men,
instruct them, train them to every department of duty? an employment,
indeed, than which what can be more noble? But, for my part, I thought
the Cneius and Publius Scipios,[6] and your two grandfathers, L.
AEmilius and P. Africanus, quite happy in the attendance of noble
youths; nor are any preceptors of liberal accomplishments to be deemed
otherwise than happy, tho their strength hath fallen into old age and
failed; altho that very failure of strength is more frequently caused
by the follies of youth than by those of old age; for a lustful and
intemperate youth transmits to old age an exhausted body. Cyrus too,
in Xenophon, in that discourse which he delivered on his deathbed when
he was a very old man, said that he never felt that his old age had
become feebler than his youth had been. I recollect, when a boy, that
Lucius Metellus,[7] who, when four years after his second consulship
he had been made "pontifex maximus," and for twenty-two years held
that sacerdotal office, enjoyed such good strength at the latter
period of his life, that he felt no want of youth. There is no need
for me to speak about myself, and yet that is the privilege of old
age, and conceded to my time of life.
Do you see how, in Homer, Nestor very often proclaims his own virtues?
for he was now living in the third generation of men; nor had he
occasion to fear lest, when stating the truth about himself, he should
appear either too arrogant or too talkative; for, as Homer says, from
his tongue speech flowed sweeter than honey; for which charm he stood
in need of no strength of body; and yet the famous chief of Greece
nowhere wishes to have ten men like Ajax, but like Nestor; and he does
not doubt if that should happen, Troy would in a short time perish.
But I return to myself. I am in my eighty-fourth year. In truth I
should like to be able to make the same boast that Cyrus did; but one
thing I can say, that altho I have not, to be sure, that strength
which I had either as a soldier in the Punic war or as questor in the
same war, or as Consul in Spain, or, four years afterward, when as
military tribune I fought a battle at Thermopylae, in the consulship of
Marcus Acilius Glabrio; yet, as you see, old age has not quite
enfeebled me or broken me down: the senate-house does not miss my
strength, nor the rostra, nor my friends, nor my clients, nor my
guests; for I have never agreed to that old and much-praised proverb
which advises you to become an old man early if you wish to be an old
man long. I for my part would rather be an old man for a shorter
length of time than be an old man before I was one. And, therefore, no
one as yet has wished to have an interview with me to whom I have been
denied as engaged.
But I have less strength than either of you two. Neither even do you
possess the strength of Titus Pontius the centurion; is he, therefore,
the more excellent man? Only let there be a moderate degree of
strength, and let every man exert himself as much as he can; and in
truth that man will not be absorbed in regretting the want of
strength. Milo, at Olympia, is said to have gone over the course while
supporting on his shoulders a live ox. Whether, then, would you rather
have this strength of body, or Pythagoras' strength of intellect,
bestowed upon you? In a word, enjoy that blessing while you have it;
when it is gone, do not lament it, unless, indeed, young men ought to
lament the loss of boyhood, and those a little advanced in age the
loss of adolescence. There is a definite career in life, and one way
of nature, and that a simple one; and to every part of life its own
peculiar period has been assigned; so that both the feebleness of
boys, and the high spirit of young men, and the steadiness of now fixt
manhood, and the maturity of old age, have something natural which
ought to be enjoyed in their own time. I suppose that you hear,
Scipio, what your grandfather's host, Masinissa,[8] is doing at this
day, at the age of ninety. When he has commenced a journey on foot, he
never mounts at all; when on horseback, he never dismounts; by no
rain, by no cold, is he prevailed upon to have his head covered; that
there is in him the greatest hardiness of frame; and therefore he
performs all the duties and functions of a king. Exercise, therefore,
and temperance, even in old age, can preserve some remnant of our
pristine vigor.
Is there no strength in old age? neither is strength exacted from old
age. Therefore, by our laws and institutions, our time of life is
relieved from those tasks which can not be supported without strength.
Accordingly, so far are we from being compelled to do what we can not
do that we are not even compelled to do as much as we can. But so
feeble are many old men that they can not execute any task of duty or
any function of life whatever; but that in truth is not the peculiar
fault of old age, but belongs in common to bad health. How feeble was
the son of Publius Africanus, he who adopted you. What feeble health,
or rather no health at all, had he! and had that not been so, he would
have been the second luminary of the state; for to his paternal
greatness of soul a richer store of learning had been added. What
wonder, therefore, in old men if they are sometimes weak when even
young men can not escape that.
We must make a stand, Scipio and Laelius, against old age, and its
faults must be atoned for by activity; we must fight, as it were,
against disease, and in like manner against old age. Regard must be
paid to health; moderate exercises must be adopted; so much of meat
and drink must be taken that the strength may be recruited, not
opprest. Nor, indeed, must the body alone be supported, but the mind
and the soul much more; for these also, unless you drop oil on them as
on a lamp, are extinguished by old age. And our bodies, indeed, by
weariness and exercise, become opprest; but our minds are rendered
buoyant by exercise. For as to those of whom Caecilius speaks, "foolish
old men," fit characters for comedy, by these he denotes the
credulous, the forgetful, the dissolute, which are the faults not of
old age, but of inactive, indolent, drowsy old age. As petulance and
lust belong to the young more than to the old, yet not to all young
men, but to those who are not virtuous; so that senile folly, which is
commonly called dotage, belongs to weak old men, and not to all. Four
stout sons, five daughters, so great a family, and such numerous
dependents, did Appius manage, altho both old and blind; for he kept
his mind intent like a bow, nor did he languidly sink under the weight
of old age. He retained not only authority, but also command, over
his family; the slaves feared him; the children respected him; all
held him dear; there prevailed in that house the manners and good
discipline of our fathers. For on this condition is old age honored if
it maintains itself, if it keeps up its own right, if it is
subservient to no one, if even to its last breath it exercises control
over its dependents. For, as I like a young man in whom there is
something of the old, so I like an old man in whom there is something
of the young; and he who follows this maxim, in body will possibly be
an old man, but he will never be an old man in mind.
I have in hand my seventh book of Antiquities; I am collecting all the
materials of our early history; of all the famous causes which I have
defended; I am now completing the pleadings;[9] I am employed on a law
of augurs, of pontiffs, of citizens. I am much engaged also in Greek
literature, and, after the manner of the Pythagoreans, for the purpose
of exercising my memory, I call to mind in the evening what I have
said, heard, and done on each day. These are the exercises of the
understanding; these are the race-courses of the mind; while I am
perspiring and toiling over these, I do not greatly miss my strength
of body. I attend my friends, I come into the senate very often, and
spontaneously bring forward things much and long thought of, and I
maintain them by strength of mind, not of body; and if I were unable
to perform these duties, yet my couch would afford me amusement, when
reflecting on those matters which I was no longer able to do, but that
I am able is owing to my past life; for, by a person who always lives
in these pursuits and labors, it is not perceived when old age steals
on. Thus gradually and unconsciously life declines into old age; nor
is its thread suddenly broken, but the vital principle is consumed by
length of time.
Then follows the third topic of blame against old age, that they say
it has no pleasures. Oh, noble privilege of age! if indeed it takes
from us that which is in youth the greatest defect. For listen, most
excellent young men, to the ancient speech of Archytas[10] of
Tarentum, a man eminently great and illustrious, which was reported to
me when I, a young man, was at Tarentum with Quintus Maximus. He said
that no more deadly plague than the pleasure of the body was inflicted
on men by nature; for the passions, greedy of that pleasure, were in a
rash and unbridled manner incited to possess it; that hence arose
treasons against one's country, hence the ruining of states, hence
clandestine conferences with enemies--in short, that there was no
crime, no wicked act, to the undertaking of which the lust of
pleasure did not impel; but that fornications and adulteries and every
such crime were provoked by no other allurements than those of
pleasure. And whereas either nature or some god had given to man
nothing more excellent than his mind, that to this divine function and
gift, nothing was so hostile as pleasure; since where lust bore sway,
there was no room for self-restraint; and in the realm of pleasure,
virtue could by no possibility exist. And that this might be the
better understood, he begged you to imagine in your mind any one
actuated by the greatest pleasure of the body that could be enjoyed;
he believed no one would doubt but that so long as the person was in
that state of delight, he would be able to consider nothing in his
mind, to attain nothing by reason, nothing by reflection; wherefore
that there was nothing so detestable and so destructive as pleasure,
inasmuch as that when it was excessive and very prolonged, it
extinguished all the light of the soul.
Nearchus of Tarentum, our host, who had remained throughout in
friendship with the Roman people, said he had heard from older men
that Archytas held this conversation with Caius Pontius the Samnite,
the father of him by whom, in the Caudian[11] battle, Spurius
Postumius and Titus Veturius, the consuls, were overcome, on which
occasion Plato the Athenian had been present at that discourse; and I
find that he came to Tarentum in the consulship of Lucius Camillus and
Appius Claudius.[12] Wherefore do I adduce this? that we may
understand that if we could not by reason and wisdom despise pleasure,
great gratitude would be due to old age for bringing it to pass that
that should not be a matter of pleasure which is not a matter of duty.
For pleasure is hostile to reason, hinders deliberation, and, so to
speak, closes the eyes of the mind, nor does it hold any intercourse
with virtue. I indeed acted reluctantly in expelling from the senate
Lucius Flaminius, brother of that very brave man Titus Flaminius,[13]
seven years after he had been Consul; but I thought that his
licentiousness should be stigmatized. For that man, when he was Consul
in Gaul, was prevailed on at a banquet by a courtezan to behead one of
those who were in chains, condemned on a capital charge. He escaped in
the censorship of his brother Titus, who had immediately preceded me;
but so profligate and abandoned an act of lust could by no means be
allowed to pass by me and Flaccus, since with private infamy it
combined the disgrace of the empire.
I have often heard from my elders, who said that, in like manner,
they, when boys, had heard from old men, that Caius Fabricius was wont
to wonder that when he was ambassador to King Pyrrhus, he had heard
from Cineas the Thessalian that there was a certain person at Athens
who profest himself a wise man, and that he was accustomed to say that
all things which we did were to be referred to pleasure; and that
hearing him say so, Manius Curius and Titus Coruncanius were
accustomed to wish that that might be the persuasion of the Samnites
and Pyrrhus[14] himself, that they might the more easily be conquered
when they had given themselves up to pleasure. Manius Curius had lived
with Publius Decius, who, five years before the consulship of the
former, had devoted himself for the commonwealth in his fourth
consulship. Fabricius had been acquainted with him, and Coruncanius
had also known him, who, as well from his own conduct in life, as from
the great action of him whom I mention, Publius Decius, judged that
there was doubtless something in its own nature excellent and
glorious, which should be followed for its own sake, and which,
scorning and despising pleasure, all the worthiest men pursued....
But why do I refer to others? Let me now return to myself. First of
all, I always had associates in clubs; and clubs were established when
I was questor, on the Idaean worship of the great mother being adopted.
Therefore I feasted with my associates altogether in a moderate way,
but there was a kind of fervor peculiar to that time of life, and as
that advances, all things will become every day more subdued. For I
did not calculate the gratification of those banquets by the pleasures
of the body so much as by the meetings of friends and conversations.
For well did our ancestors style the reclining of friends at an
entertainment, because it carried with it a union of life, by the name
"convivium" better than the Greeks do, who call this same thing as
well by the name of "compotatio" as "concoenatio"; so that what in
that kind (of pleasures) is of the least value that they appear most
to approve of.
For my part, on account of the pleasure of conversation, I am
delighted also with seasonable entertainments, not only with those of
my own age, of whom very few survive, but with those of your age, and
with you; and I give great thanks to old age, which has increased my
desire for conversation, and taken away that of eating and drinking.
But even if such things delight any person (that I may not appear
altogether to have declared war against pleasure, of which perhaps a
certain limited degree is even natural), I am not aware that even in
these pleasures themselves old age is without enjoyment. For my part,
the presidencies established by our ancestors delight me; and that
conversation, which after the manner of our ancestors, is kept up over
our cups from the top of the table; and the cups, as in the Symposium
of Xenophon, small and dewy, and the cooling of the wine in summer,
and in turn either the sun, or the fire in winter--practises which I
am accustomed to follow among the Sabines also--and I daily join a
party of neighbors, which we prolong with various conversation till
late at night, as far as we can. But there is not, as it were, so
ticklish a sensibility of pleasures in old men. I believe it; but then
neither is there the desire. However, nothing is irksome unless you
long for it. Well did Sophocles, when a certain man inquired of him
advanced in age whether he enjoyed venereal pleasures, reply, "The
gods give me something better; nay, I have run away from them with
gladness, as from a wild and furious tyrant." For to men fond of such
things, it is perhaps disagreeable and irksome to be without them; but
to the contented and satisfied it is more delightful to want them than
to enjoy them; and yet he does not want who feels no desire; therefore
I say that this freedom from desire is more delightful than enjoyment.
But if the prime of life has more cheerful enjoyment of those very
pleasures, in the first place they are but petty objects which it
enjoys, as I have said before; then they are those of which old age,
if it does not abundantly possess them, is not altogether destitute.
As he is more delighted with Turpio Ambivius, who is spectator on the
foremost bench, yet he also is delighted who is in the hindmost; so
youth having a close view of pleasures is perhaps more gratified; but
old age is as much delighted as is necessary in viewing them at a
distance. However, of what high value are the following circumstances,
that the soul, after it has served out, as it were, its time under
lust, ambition, contention, enmities, and all the passions, shall
retire within itself, and, as the phrase is, live with itself? But if
it has, as it were, food for study and learning, nothing is more
delightful than an old age of leisure. I saw Caius Gallus, the
intimate friend of your father, Scipio, almost expiring in the
employment of calculating the sky and the earth. How often did
daylight overtake him when he had begun to draw some figure by night,
how often did night, when he had begun in the morning! How it did
delight him to predict to us the eclipses of the sun and the moon,
long before their occurrence! What shall we say in the case of
pursuits less dignified, yet, notwithstanding, requiring acuteness!
How Naevius did delight in his Punic war! how Plautus in his
Truculentus! how in his Pseudolus! I saw also the old man Livy,[15]
who, tho he had brought a play upon the stage six years before I was
born, in the consulship of Cento and Tuditanus, yet advanced in age
even to the time of my youth. Why should I speak of Publius Licinius
Crassus' study both of pontifical and civil law? or of the present
Publius Scipio, who within these few days was created chief pontiff?
Yet we have seen all these persons whom I have mentioned, ardent in
these pursuits when old men. But as to Marcus Cethegus, whom Ennius
rightly called the "marrow of persuasion," with what great zeal did we
see him engage in the practise of oratory, even when an old man! What
pleasures, therefore, arising from banquets, or plays, or harlots, are
to be compared with these pleasures? And these, indeed, are the
pursuits of learning, which too, with the sensible and well educated,
increase along with their age; so that is a noble saying of Solon,
when he says in a certain verse, as I observed before, that he grew
old learning many things every day--than which pleasure of the mind,
certainly, none can be greater.
I come now to the pleasures of husbandmen, with which I am excessively
delighted, which are not checked by any old age, and appear in my
mind to make the nearest approach to the life of a wise man. For they
have relation to the earth, which never refuses command, and never
returns without interest that which it hath received; but sometimes
with less, generally with very great interest. And yet for my part it
is not only the product, but the virtue and nature of the earth itself
that delight me, which, when in its softened and subdued bosom it has
received the scattered seed, first of all confines what is hidden
within it, from which harrowing, which produces that effect, derives
its name (_occatio_); then, when it is warmed by heat and its own
compression, it spreads it out, and elicits from it the verdant blade,
which, supported by the fibers of the roots, gradually grows up, and,
rising on a jointed stalk, is now enclosed in a sheath, as if it were
of tender age, out of which, when it hath shot up, it then pours forth
the fruit of the ear, piled in due order, and is guarded by a rampart
of beards against the pecking of the smaller birds. Why should I, in
the case of vines, tell of the plantings, the risings, the stages of
growth? That you may know the repose and amusement of my old age, I
assure you that I can never have enough of that gratification. For I
pass over the peculiar nature of all things which are produced from
the earth; which generates such great trunks and branches from so
small a grain of the fig or from the grape-stone, or from the minutest
seeds of other fruits and roots; shoots, plants, twigs, quicksets,
layers, do not these produce the effect of delighting any one even to
admiration? The vine, indeed, which by nature is prone to fall, and is
borne down to the ground, unless it be propt, in order to raise
itself up, embraces with its tendrils, as it were with hands, whatever
it meets with, which, as it creeps with manifold and wandering course,
the skill of the husbandmen pruning with the knife, restrains from
running into a forest of twigs, and spreading too far in all
directions.
Accordingly, in the beginning of spring, in those twigs which are
left, there rises up as it were at the joints of the branches that
which is called a bud, from which the nascent grape shows itself,
which, increasing in size by the moisture of the earth and the heat of
the sun, is at first very acid to the taste, and then as it ripens
grows sweet, and being clothed with its large leaves does not want
moderate warmth, and yet keeps off the excessive heat of the sun; than
which what can be in fruit on the one hand more rich, or on the other
hand more beautiful in appearance? Of which not only the advantage, as
I said before, but also the cultivation and the nature itself delight
me; the rows of props, the joining of the heads, the tying up and
propagation of vines, and the pruning of some twigs, and the grafting
of others, which I have mentioned. Why should I allude to irrigations,
why to the diggings of the ground, why to the trenching by which the
ground is made much more productive? Why should I speak of the
advantage of manuring? I have treated of it in that book which I wrote
respecting rural affairs, concerning which the learned Hesiod has not
said a single word, tho he has written about the cultivation of the
land. But Homer, who, as appears to me, lived many ages before,
introduces Laertes soothing the regret which he felt for his son by
tilling the land and manuring it. Nor indeed is rural life delightful
by reason of corn-fields only and meadows and vineyards and groves,
but also for its gardens and orchards; also for the feeding of cattle,
the swarms of bees, and the variety of all kinds of flowers. Nor do
plantings only give me delight, but also graftings, than which
agriculture has invented nothing more ingenious....
Was then their old age to be pitied who amused themselves in the
cultivation of land? In my opinion, indeed, I know not whether any
other can be more happy; and not only in the discharge of duty,
because to the whole race of mankind the cultivation of the land is
beneficial; but also from the amusement, which I have mentioned, and
that fulness and abundance of all things which are connected with the
food of men, and also with the worship of the gods; so that, since
some have a desire for these things, we may again put ourselves on
good terms with pleasure. For the wine-cellar of a good and diligent
master is always well stored; the oil-casks, the pantry also, the
whole farmhouse is richly supplied; it abounds in pigs, kids, lambs,
hens, milk, cheese, honey. Then, too, the countrymen themselves call
the garden a second dessert. And then what gives a greater relish to
these things is that kind of leisure labor, fowling and hunting. Why
should I speak of the greenness of meadows, or the rows of trees, or
the handsome appearance of vineyards and olive grounds? Let me cut the
matter short. Nothing can be either more rich in use or more elegant
in appearance than ground well tilled, to the enjoyment of which old
age is so far from being an obstacle that it is even an invitation and
allurement. For where can that age be better warmed either by basking
in the sun or by the fire, or again be more healthfully refreshed by
shades or waters? Let the young, therefore, keep to themselves their
arms, horses, spears, clubs, tennis-ball, swimmings, and races; to us
old men let them leave out of many amusements the _tali_ and
_tesserae_; and even in that matter it may be as they please, since old
age can be happy without these amusements....
What, therefore, should I fear if after death I am sure either not to
be miserable or to be happy? Altho who is so foolish, even if young,
as to be assured that he will live even till the evening? Nay, that
period of life has many more probabilities of death that ours has;
young men more readily fall into diseases, suffer more severely, are
cured with more difficulty, and therefore few arrive at old age. Did
not this happen so we should live better and more wisely, for
intelligence, and reflection, and judgment reside in old men, and if
there had been none of them, no states could exist at all. But I
return to the imminence of death. What charge is that against old age,
since you see it to be common to youth also? I experienced not only in
the case of my own excellent son, but also in that of your brothers,
Scipio, men plainly marked out for the highest distinction, that death
was common to every period of life. Yet a young man hopes that he will
live a long time, which expectation an old man can not entertain. His
hope is but a foolish one; for what can be more foolish than to regard
uncertainties as certainties, delusions as truths? An old man indeed
has nothing to hope for; yet he is in so much the happier state than
a young one; since he has already attained what the other is only
hoping for. The one is wishing to live long, the other has lived long.
And yet, good gods! what is there in man's life that can be called
long? For allow the latest period; let us anticipate the age of the
kings of Tartessii. For there dwelt, as I find it recorded, a man
named Arganthonius at Gades;[16] who reigned for eighty years, and
lived 120. But to my mind, nothing whatever seems of long duration to
which there is any end. For when that arrives, then the time which has
passed has flown away; that only remains which you have secured by
virtue and right conduct. Hours indeed depart from us, and days and
months and years; nor does past time ever return, nor can it be
discovered what is to follow. Whatever time is assigned to each to
live, with that he ought to be content; for neither need the drama be
performed entire by the actor in order to give satisfaction, provided
he be approved in whatever act he may be; nor need the wise man live
till the _plaudite_. For the short period of life is long enough for
living well and honorably, and if you should advance further, you need
no more grieve than farmers do when the loveliness of spring-time hath
passed, that summer and autumn have come. For spring represents the
time of youth, and gives promise of the future fruits; the remaining
seasons are intended for plucking and gathering in those fruits. Now
the harvest of old age, as I have often said, is the recollection and
abundance of blessings previously secured. In truth everything that
happens agreeably to nature is to be reckoned among blessings. What,
however, is so agreeable to nature as for an old man to die which even
is the lot of the young, tho nature opposes and resists. And thus it
is that young men seem to me to die just as when the violence of flame
is extinguished by a flood of water; whereas old men die, as the
exhausted fire goes out, spontaneously, without the exertion of any
force; and as fruits when they are green are plucked by force from the
trees, but when ripe and mellow drop off, so violence takes away their
lives from youths, maturity from old men--a state which to me indeed
is so delightful that the nearer I approach to death, I seem, as it
were, to be getting sight of land, and at length, after a long voyage,
to be just coming into harbor.
Of all the periods of life there is a definite limit; but of old age
there is no limit fixt; and life goes on very well in it, so long as
you are able to follow up and attend to the duty of your situation,
and, at the same time, to care nothing about death; whence it happens
that old age is even of higher spirit and bolder than youth. Agreeable
to this was the answer given to Pisistratus,[17] the tyrant, by Solon,
when on the former inquiring, "in reliance on what hope he so boldly
withstood him," the latter is said to have answered, "on old age." The
happiest end of life is this--when the mind and the other senses
being unimpaired, the same nature which put it together takes asunder
her own work. As in the case of a ship or a house, he who built them
takes them down most easily; so the same nature which has compacted
man most easily breaks him up. Besides, every fastening of glue, when
fresh, is with difficulty torn asunder, but easily when tried by time.
Hence it is that that short remnant of life should be neither greedily
coveted nor without reason given up; and Pythagoras forbids us to
abandon the station or post of life without the orders of our
commander, that is, of God.[18] There is indeed a saying of the wise
Solon in which he declares that he does not wish his own death to be
unattended by the grief and lamentation of friends. He wishes, I
suppose, that he should be dear to his friends. But I know not whether
Ennius does not say with more propriety,
"Let no one pay me honor with tears, nor
celebrate my funeral with mourning."
He conceives that a death ought not to be lamented when immortality
follows. Besides, a dying man may have some degree of consciousness,
but that for a short time, especially in the case of an old man; after
death, indeed, consciousness either does not exist or it is a thing to
be desired. But this ought to be a subject of study from our youth to
be indifferent about death, without which study no one can be of
tranquil mind. For die we certainly must, and it is uncertain whether
or not on this very day. He, therefore, who at all hours dreads
impending death, how can he be at peace in his mind? concerning which
there seems to be no need of such long discussion, when I call to mind
not only Lucius Brutus, who was slain in liberating his country; nor
the two Decii, who spurred on their steeds to a voluntary death; nor
Marcus Atilius,[19] who set out to execution that he might keep a
promise pledged to the enemy; nor the two Scipios, who even with their
very bodies sought to obstruct the march of the Carthaginians; nor
your grandfather Lucius Paulus,[20] who by his death atoned for the
temerity of his colleague in the disgraceful defeat at Cannae; nor
Marcus Marcellus,[21] whose corpse not even the most merciless foe
suffered to go without the honor of sepulture; but that our legions,
as I have remarked in my Antiquities, have often gone with cheerful
and undaunted mind to that place from which they believed that they
should never return. Shall, then, well-instructed old men be afraid of
that which young men, and they not only ignorant, but mere peasants,
despise? On the whole, as it seems to me indeed, a satiety of all
pursuits causes a satiety of life. There are pursuits peculiar to
boyhood; do therefore young men regret the loss of them? There are
also some of early youth; does settled age, which is called middle
life, seek after these? There are also some of this period; neither
are they looked for by old age. There are some final pursuits of old
age; accordingly, as the pursuits of the earlier parts of life fall
into disuse, so also do those of old age; and when this has taken
place, satiety of life brings on the seasonable period of death.
Indeed, I do not see why I should not venture to tell you what I
myself think concerning death; because I fancy I see it so much the
more clearly in proportion as I am less distant from it. I am
persuaded that your fathers, Publius Scipio and Caius Laelius, men of
the greatest eminence and very dear friends of mine, are living, and
that life too which alone deserves the name of life. For while we are
shut up in this prison of the body, we are fulfilling, as it were, the
function and painful task of destiny; for the heaven-born soul has
been degraded from its dwelling-place above, and, as it were, buried
in the earth, a situation uncongenial to its divine and immortal
nature. But I believe that the immortal gods have shed souls into
human bodies, that beings might exist who might tend the earth, and by
contemplating the order of the heavenly bodies might imitate it in the
manner and regularity of their lives. Nor have reason and argument
alone influenced me thus to believe, but likewise the high name and
authority of the greatest philosophers. I used to hear that Pythagoras
and the Pythagoreans, who were all but our neighbors, who were
formerly called the Italian philosophers, had no doubt that we
possess souls derived from the universal divine mind. Moreover, the
arguments were conclusive to me which Socrates delivered on the last
day of his life concerning the immortality of the soul--he who was
pronounced by the oracle of Apollo the wisest of all men. But why say
more? I have thus persuaded myself, such is my belief; that since such
is the activity of our souls, so tenacious their memory of things past
and their sagacity regarding things future, so many arts, so many
sciences, so many discoveries, that the nature which comprizes these
qualities can not be mortal; and since the mind is ever in action and
has no source of motion, because it moves itself, I believe that it
never will find any end of motion, because it never will part from
itself; and that since the nature of the soul is uncompounded, and has
not in itself any admixture heterogeneous and dissimilar to itself, I
maintain that it can not undergo dissolution; and if this be not
possible, it can not perish; and it is a strong argument that men know
very many things before they are born, since when mere boys, while
they are learning difficult subjects, they so quickly catch up
numberless ideas, that they seem not to be learning them then for the
first time, but to remember them, and to be calling them to
recollection. Thus did our Plato argue....
Let me, if you please, revert to my own views. No one will ever
persuade me that either your father, Paulus, or two grandfathers,
Paulus and Africanus, or the father of Africanus, or his uncle, or the
many distinguished men whom it is unnecessary to recount, aimed at
such great exploits as might reach to the recollection of posterity
had they not perceived in their mind that posterity belonged to them.
Do you suppose, to boast a little of myself, after the manner of old
men, that I should have undergone such great toils, by day and night,
at home and in service, had I thought to limit my glory by the same
bounds as my life? Would it not have been far better to pass an easy
and quiet life without any toil or struggle? But I know not how my
soul, stretching upward, has ever looked forward to posterity, as if,
when it had departed from life, then at last it would begin to live.
And, indeed, unless this were the case, that souls were immortal, the
souls of the noblest of men would not aspire above all things to an
immortality of glory.
Why need I adduce that the wisest man ever dies with the greatest
equanimity, the most foolish with the least? Does it not seem to you
that the soul, which sees more and further, sees that it is passing to
a better state, while that body whose vision is duller, does not see
it? I, indeed, am transported with eagerness to see your fathers, whom
I have respected and loved; nor in truth is it those only I desire to
meet whom I myself have known; but those also of whom I have heard or
read, and have myself written. Whither, indeed, as I proceed, no one
assuredly should easily force me back, nor, as they did with Pelias,
cook me again to youth. For if any god should grant me that from this
period of life I should become a child again and cry in the cradle, I
should earnestly refuse it; nor in truth should I like, after having
run, as it were, my course, to be called back to the starting-place
from the goal. For what comfort has life? What trouble has it not,
rather? But grant that it has; yet it assuredly has either satiety or
limitation (of its pleasures). For I am not disposed to lament the
loss of life, which many men, and those learned men too, have often
done; neither do I regret that I have lived, since I have lived in
such a way that I conceive I was not born in vain; and from this life
I depart as from a temporary lodging, not as from a home.
For nature has assigned it to us as an inn to sojourn in, not a place
of habitation. Oh, glorious day! when I shall depart to that divine
company and assemblage of spirits, and quit this troubled and polluted
scene. For I shall go not only to those great men of whom I have
spoken before, but also to my son Cato, than whom never was better man
born, nor more distinguished for pious affection, whose body was
burned by me, whereas, on the contrary, it was fitting that mine
should be burned by him. But his soul not deserting me, but oft
looking back, no doubt departed to those regions whither it saw that I
myself was destined to come. This, tho a distress to me, I seemed
patiently to endure; not that I bore it with indifference, but I
comforted myself with the recollection that the separation and
distance between us would not continue long. For these reasons, O
Scipio (since you said that you with Laelius were accustomed to wonder
at this), old age is tolerable to me, and not only not irksome, but
even delightful. And if I am wrong in this, that I believe the souls
of men to be immortal, I willingly delude myself; nor do I desire that
this mistake, in which I take pleasure, should be wrested from me as
long as I live; but if I, when dead, shall have no consciousness, as
some narrow-minded philosophers imagine, I do not fear lest dead
philosophers should ridicule this my delusion. But if we are not
destined to be immortal, yet it is a desirable thing for a man to
expire at his fit time. For, as nature prescribes a boundary to all
other things, so does she also to life. Now old age is the
consummation of life, just as of a play, from the fatigue of which we
ought to escape, especially when satiety is super-added. This is what
I had to say on the subject of old age, to which may you arrive! that,
after having experienced the truth of those statements which you have
heard from me, you may be enabled to give them your approbation.