Page:Cicero - de senectute (on old age) - Peabody 1884.djvu/85

Rh you happy, Cyrus, since your fortune corresponds to your merit." This fortune, then, old men can enjoy, nor does age preclude our interest in other things indeed, but least of all in agriculture, to the very last moment of life. We have heard that Marcus Valerius Corvus lived to his hundredth year, passing the close of his life in the country, and engaged to the last in labors of the field. There were forty-six years between his first and his sixth consulship. Thus his term of public life lasted the full number of years which our ancestors accounted as the beginning of old age, and his old age was happier than middle life, having more authority with less labor. Indeed, the crowning glory of old age is authority. How great was this in Lucius Caecilius Metellus! How great in Atilius Calatinus! whose eulogy is,—

This, you know, is the inscription on his tomb. He was rightly held, then, in the highest esteem, since all were unanimous in his praise. How great a man did we see in Publius Crassus, the chief priest, of whom I have just spoken, and afterward in Marcus Lepidus, invested with the same priesthood! What shall I say of Paullus or of Africanus? Or of Maximus, if I may name him again?