Page:Cicero - de senectute (on old age) - Peabody 1884.djvu/58

20 Thus we see Solon, in one of his poems, boasting that, as he grows old, he widens the range of his knowledge every day. I have done the like, having learned Greek in my old age, and have taken hold of the study so eagerly—as if to quench a long thirst—that I have already become familiar with the topics from Greek authors which I have been using, as I have talked with you, by way of illustration. When I read that Socrates in his old age learned to play on the lyre, I could have wished to do the same, had the old custom been still rife; but I certainly have worked hard on my Greek. IX. To pass to the next charge against old age, I do not now desire the bodily strength of youth, any more than when I was a young man I desired the strength of a bull or an elephant. It is becoming to make use of what one has, and whatever you do, to do in proportion to your strength. What language can be more contemptible than that reported of Milon of Crotona, when in his old age he saw athletes taking exercise on the race-ground, and is said to have cast his eyes on his own arms, and to have exclaimed, weeping, "But these are dead now"? Not these, indeed, simpleton, so much as you yourself; for you never gained any fame from your own self, but only from your lungs and arms. You hear nothing like this from Sextus