Page:Cicero - de senectute (on old age) - Peabody 1884.djvu/51

Rh your father, Scipio, the father-in-law of that excellent man, my son, do nothing? Did other old men that I might name—the Fabricii, the Curii, the Coruncanii—do nothing, when they defended the republic by their counsel and influence? Blindness came upon Appius Claudius in his old age; yet he, when the sentiment of the Senate leaned toward the conclusion of peace and a treaty with Pyrrhus, did not hesitate to say to them what Ennius has fully expressed in verse,—

and more, most forcibly, to the same purpose. You know the poem, and the speech that Appius actually made is still extant. This took place seventeen years after his second consulship, ten years having