Whether an Old Man Should Engage in Public Affairs (10-14)

What then? someone may say; do we not hear a soldier say in a comedy

My white hair grants me henceforth full discharge?

war and war’s practices baneful,[*]

Yet are his limbs by unseen weight oppressed,[*]

Where old men’s counsels and the young men’s spears

Hold highest rank[*];

First he established a council of old men lofty in spirit

Hard by the vessel of Nestor[*]

Would that I had ten such advisers among the Achaeans[*]

For one wise counsel over many hands

Is victor,[*]

Certainly the office of king, the most perfect and the greatest of all political offices, has the most cares, labours, and occupations. At any rate Seleucus, they used to tell us, constantly repeated that if people in general knew what a task it was merely to read and write so many letters, they would not even pick up a crown that had been thrown away. And Philip, we are told, when he heard, as he was on the

Aesop’s fox, we recall, would not let the hedgehog, although he offered to do so, remove the ticks from her: For if you remove these, she said, which are full, other hungry ones will come on; and the State which always discards the old men must necessarily be filled up with young men who are thirsty for reputation and power, but do not possess a statesmanlike mind. And where should they acquire it, if they are Rot to be pupils or even spectators of any old man active in public life? Treatises on navigation do not make ship-captains of men who have not often stood upon the stern and been spectators

When yearning for the twin Tyndaridae[*]

Doth strike the sailor driven o’er the sea;[*]

Keeps pace as foal just weaned runs with the mare,[*]

Aeschines the Academic philosopher, when some sophists declared that he pretended to have been a pupil of Carneades although he had not been so, replied, Oh, but I did listen to Carneades at the time when his speech had given up noisy declamation on account of his old age and had reduced itself to what is useful and of common interest. But the public activity of old men is not only in speech but also in actions, free from ostentation and desire for popularity, and, therefore, just as they say that the iris, when it has grown old and has blown off its fetid and foul smell, acquires a more fragrant odour, so no opinion or counsel of old men is turbulent, but they are all weighty and composed. Therefore it is also for the sake of the young, as has been said above, that old men ought to engage in affairs of State, in order that, as Plato said[*] in reference to pure wine mixed with water, that an insane god was made reasonable when chastised by another who was sober, so the discretion of old age, when mixed in the people with boiling youth drunk with reputation and ambition, may remove that which is insane and too violent.

But apart from all this, they are mistaken who

Your sire begets you of great worth to men[*]

Let us ne’er cease from doing mortals good.[*]