Whether an Aged Man Ought to Meddle in State Affairs. (1-5)

We are not ignorant, O Euphanes, that you, being an extoller of Pindar, have often in your mouth this saying of his, as a thing well and to the purpose spoken by him:

When as the combat’s once agreed,

Who by pretence seeks to be freed

Obscures his virtue quite.

But since sloth and effeminacy towards civil affairs, having many pretences, do for the last, as if it were drawn from the sacred line, tender to us old age, and thinking by this chiefly to abate and cool our honorable desire, allege that there is a certain decent dissolution, not only of the athletical, but also of the political period, or that there is in the revolution of our years a certain set and limited time, after which it is no more proper for us to employ ourselves in the conduct of the state than in the corporeal and robust exercises of youth; I esteem myself obliged to communicate also to you those sentiments of mine concerning old men’s intermeddling with public matters, which I am ever and anon ruminating on by myself; so that neither of us may desert that long course we have to this day held together, nor rejecting the political life, which has been (as it were) an intimate friend of our own years, change it for another to which we are absolute strangers, and with which we have not time to become acquainted and familiar, but that we may persist in what we had chosen and have been inured to from the beginning, putting the same conclusion to our life and our living honorably; unless we would, by the short space of life we have remaining, disgrace that longer time we have already lived, as having been spent idly and in nothing that is commendable. For tyranny is not an honorable sepulchre, as one told Dionysius, whose monarchy, obtained by and administered with injustice, did by its long continuance bring on him but a more perfect calamity; as Diogenes afterwards let his son know, when, seeing him at Corinth, of a tyrant become a private person, he said to him: How unworthy of thyself, Dionysius, thou actest! For thou oughtest not to live here at liberty and fearless with us, but to spend thy life, as thy father did, even to old age, immured within a tyrannical fortress. But the popular and legal government of a man accustomed to show himself no less profitable in obeying than in commanding is an honorable monument, which really adds to death the glory accruing from life. For this thing, as Simonides says, goes last under the ground; unless it be in those in whom humanity and the love of honor die first, and whose zeal for goodness sooner decays than their covetousness after temporal necessaries; as if the soul had its active and divine parts weaker than those that are passive and corporeal; which it were neither honest to say, nor yet to admit from those who affirm that only of gaining we are never weary. But we ought to turn to a better purpose the saying of Thucydides, and believe that it is not the desire of honor only that never grows old,[*] but much more also the inclinations to society and affection to the state, which continue even in ants and bees to the very last. For never did any one know a bee to become by age a drone, as some think it requisite of statesmen, of whom they expect that, when the vigor of their youth is past, they should retire and sit mouldy at home, suffering their active virtue to be consumed by idleness, as iron is by rust. For Cato excellently well said, that we ought not willingly to add the shame proceeding from vice to those many afflictions which old age has of its own. For of the many vices everywhere abounding, there is none which more disgraces an old man than sloth, delicacy, and effeminateness, when, retiring from the court and council, he mews himself up at home like a woman, or getting into the country oversees his reapers and gleaners; for of such a one we may say,

Where’s Oedipus, and all his famous riddles?

But as for him who should in his old age, and not before, begin to meddle with public matters,—as they say of Epimenides, that having fallen asleep while he was a young man, he awakened fifty years after,—and shaking off so long and so close-sticking a repose, should thrust himself, being unaccustomed and unexercised, into difficult and laborious employs, without having been experienced in civil affairs, or inured to the conversations of men, such a man may perhaps give occasion to one that would reprehend him, to say with the prophetess Pythia:

Thou com’st too late,

seeking to govern in the state and rule the people, and at an unfit hour knocking at the palace gate, like an ill-bred guest coming late to a banquet, or a stranger, thou wouldst change, not thy place or region, but thy life for one of which thou hast made no trial. For that saying of Simonides,

The state instructs a man,

is true in those who apply themselves to the business of the commonweal whilst they have yet time to be taught, and to learn a science which is scarce attained with much labor through many strugglings and negotiations, even when it timely meets with a nature that can easily undergo toil and difficulty. These things seem not to be impertinently spoken against him who in his old age begins to act in the management of the state.

Age then hindered not these men from performing such gallant actions; and yet we, forsooth, being at our ease in states which have neither tyranny, war, nor siege to molest them, are afraid of such bloodless debates and emulations, as are for the most part terminated with justice only by law and words; confessing ourselves by this not only worse than those ancient generals and statesmen, but even than poets, sophisters, and players. Since Simonides in his old age gained the victory by his choral songs, as the epigram testifies in these concluding verses:

Fourscore years old was Leoprepes’ son,

Simonides, when he this glory won.

And it is said of Sophocles, that, to avoid being condemned of dotage at the instance of his children, he repeated the entrance song of the Chorus in his tragedy of Oedipus in Colonus, which begins thus:

Welcome, stranger, come in time

To the best place of this clime,

White Colonus, which abounds

With brave horses. In these grounds,

Spread with Nature’s choicest green,

Philomel is often seen.

Here she her hearers charms with sweetest lays,

Whilst with shrill throat

And warbling note

She moans the sad misfortunes of her former days:

[*]

and that, this song appearing admirable, he was dismissed from the court, as from the theatre, with the applause and acclamations of all that were present. And this short verse is acknowledged to be written of him:

When Sophocles framed for Herodotus

This ode, his years were fifty-five.

Philemon also the comedian and Alexis were snatched away by death, whilst they were acting on the stage and crowned with garlands. And as for Polus the tragedian, Eratosthenes and Philochorus related of him that, being seventy years of age, he a little before his death acted in four days eight tragedies.

For though Nature seeks by all means to delight and rejoice herself, yet the bodies of old men are incapacitated for all pleasures, except a few that are absolutely necessary. For not only

Venus to old men is averse,

[*]

as Euripides has it; but their appetite also to their meat and drink is for the most part dull, and as one would say, toothless; so that they have but little gust and relish in them..

They ought therefore to furnish themselves with pleasures of the mind, not ungenerous or illiberal, like those of Simonides, who said to those who reproached him with covetousness, that being by his years deprived of other pleasures, he recreated his old age with the only delight which remained, that of heaping up riches. But political life has in it pleasures exceeding great, and no less honorable, being such as it is probable the very Gods do only or at least chiefly enjoy themselves in; and these are the delights which proceed from doing good and performing what is honest and laudable. For if Nicias the painter took such pleasure in the work of his hands, that he often was fain to ask his servants whether he had washed or dined; and if Archimedes was so intent upon the table in which he drew his geometrical figures, that his attendants were obliged by force to pluck him from it and strip him of his clothes that they might anoint him, whilst he in the mean time drew new schemes on his anointed body; and if Canus the piper, whom you also know, was wont to say that men knew not how much more he delighted himself with his playing than he did others, for that then his hearers would rather demand of him than give him a reward; do we not thence conceive how great pleasures the virtues afford to those who practise them, from their honest actions and public-spirited works tending to the benefit of human society? They do not tickle or weaken, as do such sweet and gentle motions as are made on the flesh; for these indeed have a furious and unconstant itching, mixed with a feverish inflammation; whereas those which accompany

such gallant actions as he who rightly administers the state is worker of, not like the golden plumes of Euripides, but like those celestial wings of Plato, elevate the soul which has received a greatness of courage and wisdom accompanied with joy.