Page:Cicero - de senectute (on old age) - Peabody 1884.djvu/49

Rh that one has no right to pronounce an old age like his wretched. Yet it is not every one that can be a Scipio or a Maximus, so that he can recall the memory of cities taken, of battles by land and sea, of wars conducted, of triumphs won. There is, however, a calm and serene old age, which belongs to a life passed peacefully, purely, and gracefully, such as we learn was the old age of Plato, who died while writing in his eighty-first year; or that of Isocrates, who says that he wrote the book entitled Panathenaicus in his ninety-fourth year, and who lived five years afterwards, and whose preceptor, Leontinus Gorgias, filled out one hundred and seven years without suspending his study and his labor. When he was asked why he was willing to live so long, he replied, "I have no fault to find with old age,"—a noble answer, worthy of a learned man. Unwise men, indeed, charge their vices and their faults upon old age. So did not Ennius, of whom I have just spoken, who writes,

comparing his own age to that of the brave horse that had been wont to win the race. You can distinctly remember him. The present Consuls, Titus Flamininus and Manius Acilius, were chosen nineteen years after his death, which took place in the