Page:Cicero - de senectute (on old age) - Peabody 1884.djvu/12

vi as meriting a place in the list. In the De Amicitia, dedicated also to Atticus, he says: "In the Cato Major, the book on Old Age inscribed to you, I introduced the aged Cato as leading in the discussion, because no person seemed better fitted to speak on the subject than one who both had been an old man so long, and in old age had still maintained his preeminence In reading that book of mine, I am sometimes so moved that it seems to me as if, not I, but Cato were talking I then wrote about old age, as an old man to an old man." Again, Laelius, who is the chief speaker in the De Amicitia, is introduced as saying, "Old age is not burdensome, as I remember hearing Cato say in a conversation with me and Scipio, the year before he died." Cicero repeatedly refers to this book in his Letters to Atticus. In the stress of apprehension about Antony's plans and movements he writes: "I ought to read very often the Cato Major which I sent to you; for old age is making me more bitter. Everything puts me out of temper." At a later time he writes, "By saying that O Tite, si quid ego, delights you more and more, you increase my readiness to write." And again, "I rejoice that O Tite is doing you good."

In his philosophical and ethical writings, Cicero lays no claim to originality; nor, indeed, did the