voice even gains in brilliance in a certain way as one grows
old--certainly I have not yet lost it, and you see my years. Yet
after all the style of speech suitable to an old man is the quiet and
unemotional, and it often happens that the chastened and calm delivery
of an old man eloquent secures a hearing. If you cannot attain to that
yourself, you might still instruct a Scipio and a Laelius. For what is
more charming than old age surrounded by the enthusiasm of youth? Shall
we not allow old age even the strength to teach the young, to train
and equip them for all the duties of life? And what can be a nobler
employment? For my part, I used to think Publius and Gnaeus Scipio and
your two grandfathers, L. Aemilius and P. Africanus, fortunate men when
I saw them with a company of young nobles about them. Nor should we
think any teachers of the fine arts otherwise than happy, however much
their bodily forces may have decayed and failed. And yet that same
failure of the bodily forces is more often brought about by the vices of
youth than of old age; for a dissolute and intemperate youth hands down
the body to old age in a worn-out state. Xenophon's Cyrus, for instance,
in his discourse delivered on his death-bed and at a very advanced age,
says that he never perceived his old age to have become weaker than his
youth had been. I remember as a boy Lucius Metellus, who having been
created Pontifex Maximus four years after his second consulship, held
that office twenty-two years, enjoying such excellent strength of body
in the very last hours of his life as not to miss his youth. I need not
speak of myself; though that indeed is an old man's way and is generally
allowed to my time of life. Don't you see in Homer how frequently Nestor
talks of his own good qualities? For he was living through a third
generation; nor had he any reason to fear that upon saying what was true
about himself he should appear either over vain or talkative. For, as
Homer says, "from his lips flowed discourse sweeter than honey," for
which sweet breath he wanted no bodily strength. And yet, after all, the
famous leader of the Greeks nowhere wishes to have ten men like Ajax,
but like Nestor: if he could get them, he feels no doubt of Troy shortly
falling.

10. But to return to my own case: I am in my eighty-fourth year. I could
wish that I had been able to make the same boast as Cyrus; but, after
all, I can say this: I am not indeed as vigorous as I was as