The Best of the Worlds Classics, Restricted to prose | Page 5

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 Lælius, 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 Cæcilius 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