Now we must consider the fourth objection to being old: one which might be thought well calculated to worry and distress a man of my years. I refer to the nearness of death. When a man is old, there can obviously be no doubt that it is near. Yet if, during his long life, he has failed to grasp that death is of no account he is unfortunate indeed. There are two alternatives: either death completely destroys human souls, in which case it is negligible; or it removes the soul to some place of eternal life – in which case its coming is greatly to be desired. There can be no third possibility. If, then, after death I shall either lack unhappiness or even be positively happy, I have nothing whatever to fear.
Besides, even the youngest of men would be rash to feel any confidence that he will still be alive this evening! Indeed, young people are actually more liable to accidental deaths than old: they fall ill more easily, their illnesses are more severe, and their convalescences are more painful. That is why few of them reach old age. If so many people did not the young, there would be more examples of decent and sensible living. For the people who have sense and prudence and judgement are the old. Had it not been for old men, no state would ever have existed!
But to return to the imminence of death. This is not a fault to blame on age, since you can see that youth may suffer from the same disability. The loss of my dear son,1 and of your two brothers, Scipio -both destined for brilliant careers – has underlined for both of us that death comes to all ages alike. Certainly you can argue that young men are entitled to hope for long lives, whereas old men are not. But such hopes are misguided, since it is unintelligent to mistake certainty for uncertainty, and untruth for truth.
The objector may go on to say that an old man has nothing even to hope for. Still, he is better off than his juniors, since what they are hoping for he has actually achieved: they want long lives, and he has had one.
And yet, for goodness’ sake, what in the whole human condition lasts for any length of time? Think of the longest of all possible lives; let us imagine we shall attain the age of that king of Tartessus – I have been reading about Arganthonius of Gades who reigned for eighty years and lived for a hundred and twenty. Even so, I suggest that nothing can be called long if it has an end. For when that end comes, then all that is gone before has vanished. Only one thing remains -the credit you have gained by your good and right actions. Hours, days, months, and years go by: once they have passed they never come again. And what is to come in the future we cannot tell. So whatever life is allotted to us, we ought to be content.
An actor need not remain on the stage until the very end of the play: if he wins applause in those acts in which he appears, he will have done well enough. In life, too, a man can perform his part wisely without staying on the stage until the play is finished. However short your life may be, it will still be long enough to live honestly and decently. If, on the other hand, its duration is extended, there need be no more sorrow than a farmer feels when the pleasant springtime has passed, and summer and autumn have arrived. For spring, the season of youth, gives promise of fruits to come, but the later seasons are those that reap the harvests and gather them in. And the particular harvest of old age, I repeat, is its abundant recollection of blessings acquired in earlier years.
All things in keeping with nature must be classified as good; and nothing is so completely in keeping with nature than that the old should die. When the same fate sometimes attacks the young, nature rebels and resists: the death of a young person reminds me of a name extinguished by a deluge. But the death of the old is like a fire sinking and going out of its own accord, without external impulsion. In the same way as apples, while green, can only be picked by force, but after ripening to maturity fall off by themselves, so death comes to the young with violence but to old people when the time is ripe. And the thought of this ripeness so greatly attracts me that as I approach death I feel like a man nearing harbour after a long voyage: I seem to be catching sight of land.
Yet old age has no fixed limit: as long as a man remains able to live up to his obligations and fulfil them, reckoning death of no account, he is entitled to live on. That gives age an actual advantage over youth in courage and toughness – a conclusion which is illustrated by the answer Solon once gave Pisistratus. When the king asked what support Solon relied upon in maintaining such stubborn opposition to his rule, Solon replied: ‘Old age.’
The best end to life is with mind unclouded and faculties unimpaired, when nature herself dissolves what she has put together. The right person to take a ship or house to pieces is its builder; and by that analogy nature, which constructs human beings so skilfully, is also best at their demolition. But a new structure is always hard to destroy, whereas old buildings come down easily.
So the aged ought neither to cling too greedily to their small remnants of life nor, conversely, to abandon them before they need. Pythagoras forbids us desert life’s sentry-post till God, our commander, has given the word. Wise Solon wrote a couplet expressing the hope that when he was dead his friends would grieve and mourn. His purpose, no doubt, was to show how much he valued their affection. But I am inclined to prefer Ennius’s version: ‘Let no one weep in my honour, or utter lamentations at my last rites.’ Ennius finds death no cause for grief, seeing that what comes thereafter is immortality.
The act of dying, it is true, may be accompanied by certain sensations, but if so these only last a very short time, especially when one is old. After death, feelings are either non-existent or agreeable. From our youth upwards we should bear that in mind, since the thought will encourage us to regard death as of no account, and without such a conviction we can have no peace of mind. For we cannot avoid dying: perhaps this very day. Since, therefore, death is an imminent possibility from hour to hour, you must not let the prospect frighten you, or you will be in a state of perpetual anxiety.
There is no need to argue this point at any length. It is enough to remember Lucius Junius Brutus, who fell in the struggle for his country’s freedom, and the two Decii, who rode full speed deliberately to their deaths.1 Or we may recall Marcus Atilius Regulus, who for the sake of keeping his faith with the enemy went back to be the victim of their tortures – and the two Scipios, Publius and Gnaeus Calvus, who blocked the advancing Carthaginians with their own dead bodies. And then, Scipio, there was your grandfather Lucius Aemilius Paullus, who amid Cannae’s shameful rout gave his life to atone for his colleague’s unwisdom; and Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who was conceded funeral honours even by a merciless foe. But let us pass these by, and rather consider our own Roman legionaries. I have written of them in my Origins: marching again and again, with indomitable enthusiasm, to destinations from which they never expected to return. So what those uneducated, rustic young soldiers think nothing of should surely not terrify men of advanced education and years.
One has had enough of life, in my opinion, when one has had enough of all its occupations. Boys have their characteristic pursuits, but adolescents do not hanker after them, since they have their own activities. Then these too, in their turn, cease to attract the grown-up and middle-aged, seeing that they also have their special interests – for which, however, when their time comes, old people feel no desire, since they again, finally, have interests peculiar to themselves. Then, like earlier occupations before them, these activities fall away; and when that happens a man has had enough of life and it is time for him to die.