II
ACTIVITIES FOR THE OLD

‘Old age takes us away from active work.’ From what sort of work? Presumably from the sort which needs youth and strength. But surely there are also occupations fitted for old men’s minds and brains even when their bodies are infirm. There were occupations enough for Fabius, as well as for your father,2 Scipio – Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus, whose son-in-law was my beloved son. And then there were those others who used the experience and authority of their advancing years for the protection of their country: Gaius Fabricius Luscinus, Manius Curius Dentatus,1 Titus Coruncanius. Surely they could not be described as doing nothing!

Old age made Appius Claudius² blind. All the same, when our Senate was inclining towards a peace pact with king Pyrrhus, Appius did not hesitate to utter the words that Ennius later put into verse: ‘What is this madness that has turned your minds, until now firm and strong, from their course?’ And so on, in the most impressive terms, for you know the poem – and indeed Appius’s speech itself has come down to us. He delivered it seventeen years after his second tenure of the consulship, and since ten years had elapsed between his two consulships and he had been censor before the first of them, you can see that by the time of the war with Pyrrhus he was a very old man. Nevertheless, that was his vigorous intervention, as our fathers recorded it for us.

So people who declare that there are no activities for old age are speaking beside the point. It is like saying that the pilot has nothing to do with sailing a ship because he leaves others to climb the masts and run along the gangways and work the pumps, while he himself sits quietly in the stern holding the rudder. He may not be doing what the younger men are doing, but his contribution is much more significant and valuable than theirs. Great deeds are not done by strength or speed or physique: they are the products of thought, and character, and judgement. And far from diminishing, such qualities actually increase with age.

Now I have fought all kinds of wars in my time. First I was a private soldier, then a junior officer, then a commander, and finally consul. Well, I am not fighting wars any longer, so perhaps I seem to you to be taking my ease. Yet mine is the advice the Senate listens to about which wars to fight, and how to fight them. At present I am looking well ahead and planning for war against Carthage³ my suspicions of that city will never come to an end until I am certain it has been totally destroyed. And may the gods save for you, Scipio, the honour of completing your grandfather’s achievement! He died in the year before I became censor, nine years after my consulship (during which he was elected to his second tenure of the same office). Nearly thirty-three years have gone by since then, but his heroic memory will remain in the minds of men for time everlasting.

If he had lived to be a hundred, would he regret his age? Surely not. True, he would not spend his time running and jumping, or throwing spears or swords. But he would still be employing his wisdom and logical powers and judgement. If old men did not possess those qualities, our ancestors would not have named their highest council the ’senate’ – which means the assembly of old men. The Spartans, too, call the holders of their chief state offices the ‘elders’, which is just what they are. And if you choose to read, or have read to you, the histories of foreign countries, you will find that the greatest states were overturned by young people and restored by the old. ‘Tell me, how did you lose your great nation so speedily?’ they ask in Naevius’s play The Game.1 And the most significant answer is this: ‘Because new public speakers came forward – silly young men.’ Early adulthood is naturally rash; sound sense only comes with advancing years.

Another objection to age is that this weakens the memory. Certainly, if you fail to give it exercise, or if you are not particularly intelligent. Themistocles had learnt by heart the names of all his fellow-citizens: do you suppose then when he had become old he would be likely to mistake the son Aristides for the father Lysimachus? My own acquaintance is by no means limited to those who are living today, since I remember their fathers and their grandfathers. I often read their epitaphs, and the act of reading about the dead brings them back to my mind, so I am not at all afraid of losing my memory, as they say happens. Besides, I never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money! Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors.

And what about elderly lawyers, priests, augurs, and philosophers? They remember a great many things. Provided the old retain their concentration and application, they stay sound of mind. And that not only applies to well-known public figures, but is equally true of people living quietly in retirement. Sophocles went on writing tragedies until he reached a very great age. His preoccupation with this literary work created the impression that he was neglecting his family’s finances. So his sons took him to court, urging that he was weak-minded and should have the family property taken out of his control (like us they had laws-empowering such action in cases of mismanagement). The story goes on, however, that the aged Sophocles read aloud to the magistrates from the play that he had just written and was still working on, the Oedipus at Colonus. Then he asked them if they would describe its author as weak-minded. After listening to his recitation they voted his acquittal. Clearly, then, his activities were not silenced by old age! The same is true of Homer, Hesiod, Simonides,1 and Stesichorus, and the two I mentioned earlier, Isocrates and Gorgias, not to speak of outstanding philosophers such as Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, and Xenocrates, or their successors Zeno and Cleanthes, or Diogenes the Stoic whom you have both seen at Rome. Every one of them remained actively at work until his dying day.

But, leaving aside superhuman pursuits such as these, I can name you elderly Roman farmers in the Sabine country, my own friends and neighbours, who are practically never out of the fields during the major farming operations such as sowing and reaping and storing the crops. True, their work on the annual harvests deserves less comment than the rest, since no one is too old to think he has another year to live. Yet these men are also working at things which they know they will not live to see. ‘He plants trees for the use of another age’, as our poet Caecilius Statius says in his play Comrades in Youth. If you ask a farmer for whose benefit he is planting, however advanced his age he will unhesitatingly reply: ‘For the immortal gods, who have ordained that I should receive these things from my ancestors, and hand them on to my descendants.’

Now, in making that observation about an old man providing for ages to come, Caecilius wrote to better purpose than when he made a character say: ‘By heaven, Old Age, it would be enough if you brought with you no evil but this: that a person by living long sees many things he does not want.1 But perhaps the same man also sees much that he likes! And, after all, even youth has to look at some things it does not care for.

An even worse sentiment, again expressed by Caecilius, was this: ‘The unhappiest thing, in my belief, about being old is feeling that other men find you wearisome.’ On the contrary: they are much more likely to enjoy your company. An old man is well advised to favour the society of promising young people. If the young cultivate and like him, he will find age more tolerable – and youths welcome an old man’s advice, which helps them to work at living good lives. I like to think you enjoy my company as much as I enjoy yours!

So old age, you see, far from being sluggish and feeble, is really very lively, and perpetually active, and still busy with the pursuits of earlier years. Some people never stop learning, however old they are. You can see Solon,² for example, boasting in his poems that while he grows old he continues to learn something new every day. That is what I have been doing, too! In my later years I have learnt to read Greek. I have fastened upon this study with the greed of a man trying to satisfy a long-endured thirst. And that, incidentally, is how I know the Greek passages you have heard me quoting. Socrates learnt to play that favorites instrument of the ancients, the lyre, and when I hear of the progress he made I wish I could do the same; but at any rate I have worked hard at literature.