Cicero:  On Old Age

Edited Sophia version based upon translation by E. S. Shuckburgh (1909)

Revised and Edited by Michael S. Russo

 

			M. Cato,  Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (the younger),  Gaius Laelius
TOPIC:  Introduction			2.  Scipio.  Gaius Laelius here expressed my admiration, Marcus Cato, of the eminent, nay perfect, wisdom displayed by you indeed at all points, but above everything because  I have noticed  that old age never seemed a burden to you, while to most old men it is so hateful that they declare themselves under a weight heavier than Aetna.      Cato.  Your admiration is easily excited, it seems, my dear Scipio and Laelius.  Men, of course, who have no resources in themselves for securing a good and happy life find every age burdensome.  But those who look for all happiness from within can never think anything bad which Nature makes inevitable.  In that category before anything else comes old age, to which all wish to attain, and at which all grumble when attained.  Such is Folly's inconsistency and unreasonableness!  They say that it is stealing upon them faster than they expected.  In the first place, who compelled them to hug an illusion?  For in what respect did old age steal upon manhood faster than manhood upon  childhood?  In the next place, in what way would old age have been less disagreeable to them if they were in their eight-hundredth year than in their eightieth?  For their past, however long, when once it was past, would have no consolation for a stupid old age.  Wherefore, if it is your wont to admire my wisdom --and I would that it were worthy of your good opinion and of my own surname of Sapiens --it really consists in the fact that I follow Nature, the best of guides, as I would a god, and am loyal  to her commands.  It is not likely, if she has written the rest of the play well, that she has been careless about the last act like some idle poet.  But after all some "last" was inevitable, just as to the berries of a tree and the fruits of the earth there comes in the fullness of time a period of decay and fall.  A wise man will not make a grievance of this.  To rebel against Nature--is not that to fight like the giants with the gods?       Laelius.  And yet, Cato, you will do us a very great favour (I venture to speak for Scipio as for myself) if--since we all hope, or at least wish, to become old men--you would allow us to learn from you in good time before it arrives, by what methods we may most easily acquire the strength to support the burden of advancing age.      Cato.  I will do so without doubt, Laelius, especially if, as you say, it will be agreeable to you both.      Laelius.  We do wish very much, Cato, if it is no trouble to you, to be allowed to see the nature of the bourne which you have reached after completing a long journey, as it were, upon which we too are bound to embark.
			3.   Cato.  I will do the best I can Laelius.  It has often been my fortune to hear the complaints of my contemporaries--like will to like, you know,  according to the old proverb--complaints to which men like C. Salinator and Sp. Albinus, who were of consular rank and about my time, used to give vent.  They were, first, that they had lost the pleasures of the senses, without which they did not regard life as life at all; and, secondly, that they were neglected by those from whom they had been used  to receive attentions.  Such men appear to me to lay the blame on the wrong thing.  For it it had been the fault of old age, then these same misfortunes would have befallen me and all other men of advanced years.  But I have known many of them who never said a word of complaint against old age; for they  were only too glad to be freed from the bondage of passion, and were not at all looked down upon by their friends.  The fact is that the blame for all complaints of that kind is to be charged to  character, not to a particular time of life.  For old men who are reasonable and neither cross-grained nor churlish find old age tolerable enough: whereas unreason and churlishness cause uneasiness  at every time of life...
			4.  The fact is that when I come to think it over, I find that there are four reasons for old age being thought unhappy:   First, that it withdraws us from active employments; second, that it enfeebles the body;  third, that it deprives us of nearly all physical pleasures; fourth, that it is the next step to death.  Of each of these reasons, if  you will allow me, let us examine the force and justice separately....
TOPIC:  Old Age and Human Affairs                 NOTES:  Carthage: Although Carthage had been decisively defeated by Rome during the third Punic War (150-146 BC), there was still a great deal of animosity directed towards her even during Cicero's time.       Senate:  derived from the Latin "senex."			6.  Old age withdraws us from active employments .  From which of them?  Do you mean from those carried on by youth and bodily strength?  Are there  then no old men's employments to be after all conducted by the intellect, even when bodies are weak?   So then Q. Maximus did nothing; nor L. Aemilius--your father, Scipio, and my excellent son's  father-in-law!  So with other old men--the Fabricii, the Curii and Coruncanii--when they were supporting the State by their advice and influence, they were doing nothing!...      There is, therefore, nothing in the arguments of those who say that old age takes no part in public business.  They are like men who would say that a steersman does nothing in sailing a ship, because, while some of the  crew are climbing the masts, others hurrying up and down the gangways, others pumping out the bilge water, he sits quietly in the stern holding the tiller.  He does not do what young men do; nevertheless he does what is much more important and better.  The great affairs of  life are not performed by physical strength, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but by deliberation, character, expression of opinion.  Of these old age is not only not deprived, but, as a rule, has them in a greater degree. Unless by any  chance I, who as a soldier in the ranks, as military tribune, as legate, and as consul have been employed in various kinds of war, now appear to you to be idle because not actively engaged in war.  But I enjoin upon the Senate what is to be done, and how.  Carthage  has long been harboring evil designs, and  I accordingly proclaim war against her in good time.  I shall never cease to entertain fears about her till I hear of her having been leveled with the ground.  The glory of doing that I pray that the immortal gods may reserve for you, Scipio, so that you may complete  the task begun by your grandfather, now dead more than thirty-two years ago; though all years to come will keep that great man's memory green.  He died in the year before my censorship, nine years after my own consulship.  If then he had lived to his hundredth year, would he have regretted having lived to be old?    For he would of course not have been practicing rapid marches, nor dashing on a foe, nor hurling spears from a distance, nor using swords at close quarters--but only counsel, reason, and senatorial eloquence.   And if those qualities had not resided in us seniors, our ancestors would never have called their supreme council a Senate.  At Sparta, indeed, those who hold the highest magistracies are in accordance with the fact actually called  "elders".  But if you will take the trouble to read or listen to foreign history, you will find that the mightiest States have been  brought  into peril by young men, have been supported and restored by old....
NOTE:  Reading Tombstones:  It was a Latin superstition that reading the inscriptions on tombstones would weaken one's memory (Edmonds, 10-11, fn 3)			7.  But, it is said, memory dwindles.  No doubt , unless you keep it in practice, or if you happen to be somewhat dull by nature.  Themistocles  had the names of all his fellow-citizens by heart.  Do  you  imagine that in his old age he used to address Aristides as Lysimachus?  For my part, I know not only the present generation, but their fathers also, and their grandfathers.  Nor have I any fear of losing my memory by reading tombstones, according  to the  vulgar superstition.  On the contrary, by reading them I renew my memory  of those who are dead and gone.  Nor, in point of fact, have  I ever heard of any old man forgetting where he had hidden his money.  They remember everything that interests them:  when to answer  to their bail, business appointments, who owes them money, and to whom  they owe it.  What about  lawyers, pontiffs, augurs, philosophers,  when old?  What  a multitude of things they remember!  Old men retain their intellects well enough, if only they keep their minds active and fully employed.  Nor is that the case only with men of high position and great office:  it applies equally to private life and peaceful pursuits.  Sophocles composed tragedies to extreme old age; and being believed to neglect the care of his property owing to his devotion to his art, his sons brought him into court  to get a judicial decision depriving him of the management of his property on  the ground of weak intellect--just as in our law it is customary  to deprive a paterfamilias of the management of his property if he is squandering it.  Thereupon the old poet is said to have read to the  judges the play he had on hand and had just composed--the Oedipus  Coloneus--and to have asked them whether they thought that the  work of a man of weak intellect.  After the reading he was acquitted by the jury.  Did old age then compel this man to become silent in his particular art, or Homer, Hesiod, Simonides , or Isocrates and  Gorgias, whom I mentioned before,  or the founders of schools of philosophy, Pythagoras, Democritus,  Plato, Xenocrates, or later Zeno and Cleanthus, or Diogenes the Stoic, whom you too saw at Rome?  Is it not rather the case with all these that the active pursuit of study only ended with life?...
TOPIC:  Old Age and Bodily Strength       NOTE:  Milo:  "A famous athlete of Crotona in Italy.  He was said  to have carried on his shoulders a young ox.  He was seven times crowned at the Pythian games, and six times at the Olypian."  (Edmonds, 229, fn 1)			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 practicing 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 Corluncanius, nor,  more recently, P Crassus--all of them learned jurisconsults 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's  eloquence secures a hearing....
NOTE:  Masinissa:  "son of Gala, king of a small part of Northern Africa:  he assisted the Carthaginians in their wars against Rome.  He afterwards became a firm ally of the Romans. He died after a reign of sixty years, about B.C. 149."  (Edmonds, 232, fn1)			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 a 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 vigor 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 a 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 humors, and so he still performs all the duties and functions of a kind.  Active exercise therefore, and temperance can preserve some part of one's former strength even in old age.
NOTE:  Speeches: Cato was considered one of the great orators of the Roman Republic, and was frequently referred to by his contemporaries as the "Roman Demosthenes."			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 labor 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 labors 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.
TOPIC:  Old Age and Pleasure			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." ...
NOTE:  Gaius Duilius: achieved a naval victor over the Carthaginians in 260 BC.			13.  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 implies 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 any one 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 land 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 neighbors, 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....
NOTE:  Adelphi:  "A play of Terence:  Demea and Micio are the names of the two old men alluded to here." (Edmonds, 246, fn. 1)			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 honorable 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 l  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, nowhere 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  not  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 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  Adelphi.  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?
TOPIC:  Old Age and Death			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 be 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 heavens!  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 earlier 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.
NOTE:  Pisistratus:  tyrant of Athens, who reigned for 33 years, and died around 527 B.C.                 NOTE:  Pythagoras:  Although suicide was a commonly accepted practice among Romans, it was rejected by many notable philosopher--Socrates and Pythagors in particular-- as being contrary to the will of God.  Cicero also strongly disapproved of the practice of suicide.			20.  Again, there is no fixed border-line 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?.....
NOTE:  Pythagoreans:  "The Pythagoreans represented the souls of men as light particles of the universal soul diffused through the whole world (Cic. De Nat. Deor. I.11)."  (Edmonds, 155, fn 2)			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 should 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 have souls drafted from the universal Divine intelligence.  I used, besides, to have pointed out to me the discourse delivered by 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 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, not 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.
NOTE:  Cyrus:  The character of this Cyrus is drawn by Xenophon in his Cyropaedia.  He was king of Persia,...detroned Astyages, and transferred the Persian empire to the Medes.  The Cyropaedia is not to be looked on as an authentic history, but as showing what a good and virtuous prince ought to be."  (Edmonds, 257, fn. 1)			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 honors 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 let 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 soul 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."      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 remembered 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 labors 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, even 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 he 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 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.

Source:    Cicero.  On Old Age.  Trans.  E.S. Shuckburg.  New York:  P.F. Collier and Son, 1909.   Notes:  Edmonds, Cyrus R. Trans and Notes.  Cicero: The Three Books of the Offices [And Other Works].  New York:  Harper and Brothers, 1872.

Thanks to Margaret Meyer  and Anne Cochrane for their help in preparing this text.

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