the purpose of such a long disquisition on Maximus? It
is because you now see that an old age like his cannot conscientiously
be called unhappy. Yet it is after all true that everybody cannot be a
Scipio or a Maximus, with stormings of cities, with battles by land and
sea, with wars in which they themselves commanded, and with triumphs to
recall. Besides this there is a quiet, pure, and cultivated life which
produces a calm and gentle old age, such as we have been told Plato's
was, who died at his writing-desk in his eighty-first year; or like that
of Isocrates, who says that he wrote the book called The Panegyric in
his ninety-fourth year, and who lived for five years afterwards; while
his master Gorgias of Leontini completed a hundred and seven years
without ever relaxing his diligence or giving up work. When some one
asked him why he consented to remain so long alive--"I have no fault,"
said he, "to find with old age." That was a noble answer, and worthy of
a scholar. For fools impute their own frailties and guilt to old age,
contrary to the practice of Ennui, whom I mentioned just now. In the
lines--

Like some brave steed that oft before
The Olympic wreath of victory bore,
Now by the weight of years oppressed,
Forgets the race, and takes his rest--

he compares his own old age to that of a high-spirited and successful
race-horse. And him indeed you may very well remember. For the present
consuls Titus Flamininus and Manius Acilius were elected in the
nineteenth year after his death; and his death occurred in the
consulship of Caepio and Philippus, the latter consul for the second
time: in which year I, then sixty-six years old, spoke in favour of
the Voconian law in a voice that was still strong and with lungs
still sound; while be, though seventy years old, supported two burdens
considered the heaviest of all--poverty and old age--in such a way as to
be all but fond of them.

The fact is that when I come to think it over, I find that there are
four reasons for old age being thought unhappy: First, that it withdraws
us from active employments; second, that it enfeebles the body; third,
that it deprives us of nearly all physical pleasures; fourth, that it is
the next step to death. Of each of these reasons, if you will allow me,
let us examine the force and justice separately.

6. OLD AGE WITHDRAWS US FROM ACTIVE EMPLOYMENTS. From which of them? Do
you mean from those carried on by youth an