How to Grow Old by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero [Cicero, Marcus Tullius]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2016-03-14T23:00:00+00:00

The Active Life

Let’s consider first the claim that old age denies us an active life. What kind of activities are we talking about? Don’t we mean the sort we engage in when young and strong? But surely there are activities suitable for older minds even when the body is weakened. Wasn’t there important work for Quintus Maximus, whom I mentioned earlier, and for Lucius Paullus, your own father, Scipio, and also the father-in-law of that best of men, my son?20 And what about other old men, such as Fabricius, Curius, and Coruncanius?21 Were they doing nothing when they were using their wisdom and influence to protect their country?

16. Appius Claudius was not only old but also blind when he spoke before the Senate, which was favoring a peace treaty with King Pyrrhus.22 Yet he did not hesitate to utter the words Ennius later put into verse:

What madness has turned your minds, once firm

and strong, from their course?

And so on, in the most impressive style. But you know the poem, and indeed the actual speech of Appius survives. He delivered it seventeen years after his second consulship—though there were ten years between his consulships and he had been censor before first being consul—so you can see that he was a very old man by the time of the war with Pyrrhus. Yet this is the story recorded by our ancestors.

17. People who say there are no useful activities for old age don’t know what they’re talking about. They are like those who say a pilot does nothing useful for sailing a ship because others climb the masts, run along the gangways, and work the pumps while he sits quietly in the stern holding the rudder. He may not be doing what the younger crewmen are doing, but what he does is much more important and valuable. It’s not by strength or speed or swiftness of body that great deeds are done, but by wisdom, character, and sober judgment. These qualities are not lacking in old age but in fact grow richer as time passes.

18. In my life I have served as a soldier in the ranks, then a junior officer, then a general, and finally, when consul, as a commander-in-chief. Since I am no longer fighting in wars, perhaps you think I am doing nothing. But the Senate listens to me when I speak about which wars to fight and how to fight them. Even now, I am looking into the future and planning war on Carthage. I will never stop fearing that city until I know it has been totally destroyed.23

19. And I pray that the immortal gods will reserve for you, Scipio, the honor of completing the work your grandfather left unfinished. It has been thirty-three years since that greatest of men died, but each passing year will increase the memory of his fame. He died the year before I became censor, nine years after my consulship, during which time he himself was elected consul a second time.

If your grandfather had lived to be a hundred, would he have regretted his old age? Certainly not.

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