Page:Cicero - de senectute (on old age) - Peabody 1884.djvu/44

6 taken a long journey which we must begin, that you will show us the goal which you have reached. III. I will do so, Laelius, to the best of my ability. I have, indeed, often been a listener to complaints of men of my own age,—for, as the old proverb says, "Like best mates with like," —such complaints, for instance, as those which Caius Salinator and Spurius Albinus, men of consular dignity, nearly my coevals, used to make, because they were deprived of the sensual gratifications without which life appeared to them a blank, and because they were neglected by those by whom they were wont to be held in reverence. They seemed to me to lay the blame where it did not belong. For if old age had been at fault, I and all other persons of advanced years would have the same experience; while I have known many old men who have made no complaint, who did not regret their release from the slavery of sensual appetite, and were not despised by their fellow-citizens. But all complaints of this kind are chargeable to character, not to age. Old men who are moderate in their desires, and are neither testy nor morose, find old age endurable; but rudeness and incivility are offensive at any age.

You are right, Cato; yet some one may perhaps say that old age seems to you less