Whether an Aged Man Ought to Meddle in State Affairs. (8-10)

And to this bears witness that saying of the great Epaminondas to the Thebans, when in the winter the Arcadians requested them to come into their city and dwell in their houses,—which he would not permit, but said to them: Now the Arcadians admire you, seeing you exercise yourselves, and wrestle in your armor; but if they shall behold you sitting by the fire and pounding of beans, they will think you to differ nothing from themselves. So an old man speaking to the people, acting in the state, and honored, is a venerable spectacle; but he who wastes away his days in his bed, or sits discoursing of trivial matters and wiping his nose in the corner of a gallery, easily renders himself an object of contempt. And this indeed Homer himself teaches those who hear him aright. For Nestor, who fought before Troy, was highly venerated and esteemed; whilst Peleus and Laertes, who stayed at home, were slighted and despised. For the habit of prudence does not continue the same in those who give themselves to their ease; but by little and little diminishes and is dissolved by sloth, as always requiring some exercise of the thought to rouse up and purify the rational, active faculty of the soul. For,

Like glittering brass, by being used it shines.

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For the infirmity of the body does not so much incommode the administrations of those who, almost spent with age, go to the tribune or to the council of war, as they are advantageous by the caution and prudence which attend their years, and keep them from thrusting themselves precipitately into affairs, abused partly by want of experience and partly by vain-glory, and hurrying the people along with them by violence, like a sea agitated by the winds; causing them mildly and moderately to manage those with whom they have to do.

Whence cities, when they are in adversity and fear, desire the government of grave and ancient personages; and often having drawn out of his field some old man who had not so much as the least thought of it, have compelled him, though unwilling, to put his hand to the helm, and conduct the ship of the state into the haven of security, rejecting generals and orators, who not only knew how to speak loud and make long harangues without drawing their breath, but were able also valiantly to march forth and fight their enemies. So when the orators one day at Athens, before Timotheus and Iphicrates uncovering Chares the son of Theochares, a vigorous and stout-bodied young man, said they were of opinion that the general of the Athenians ought to be such a one; Not so, by all the Gods, answered Timotheus, but such a one he should be that is to carry the general’s bedding; but the general himself ought to be such a one as can at the same time see both forwards and backwards, and will suffer not his reasonings about things convenient to be disturbed by any passion.

Sophocles indeed said, he was glad that he was got free from the tyranny of wanton love, as being a furious and raging master; but in the administrations of state, we are not to avoid this one only master, the love of women or boys, but many who are madder than he, such as obstinacy in contending ambition, and a desire of being always the first and greatest, which is a disease most fruitful in bringing forth envy, jealousy, and conspiracies; some of which vices old age abates and dulls, while it wholly extinguishes and cools the others, not so much detracting from the practical impulse of the mind, as repressing its impetuous and over-hot passions, that it may apply a sober and settled reasoning to its considerations about the management of affairs.

Nevertheless let this speech of the poet,

Lie still at ease, poor wretch, in thy own bed,

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both be and seem to be spoken for the dissuading of him who shall, when he is now grown gray with age, begin to play the youth; and for the restraining an old man who, rising from a long administration of his domestic affairs, as from a lingering disease, shall set himself to lead an army to the field, or perform the office of secretary of state.

But altogether senseless, and nothing like to this, is he who will not suffer one that has spent his whole time in political administrations, and been thoroughly beaten to them, to go on to his funeral torch and the conclusion of his life, but shall call him back, and command him (as it were) to turn out of the long road he has been travelling in. He who, to draw off from his design an old fellow who is crowned and is perfuming himself to go a wooing, should say to him, as was heretofore said to Philoctetes,

What virgin will her blooming maidenhead

Bestow on such a wretch? Why would’st thou wed?

would not be at all absurd, since even old men break many such jests upon themselves, and say,

I, old fool, know, I for my neighbors wed;

but he who should think, that a man which has long cohabited and lived irreprehensibly with his wife ought, because he is grown old, to dismiss her and live alone, or take a concubine in her place, would have attained the utmost excess of perverseness. So he would not act altogether unreasonably, that should admonish an old man who is making his first approaches to the people, whether he be such a one as Chlidon the farmer, or Lampon the mariner, or some old dreaming philosopher of the garden, and advise him to continue in his accustomed unconcernedness for the public; but he who, taking hold of Phocion, Cato, or Pericles, should say to him, My Athenian or Roman friend, who art come to thy withered old age, make a divorce, and henceforth quit the state; and dismissing all conversations and cares about either council or camp, retire into the country, there with an old maid-servant looking after thy husbandry, or spending the remainder of thy time in managing thy domestic affairs and taking thy accounts,—would persuade a statesman to do things misbeseeming him and unacceptable.

What then! may some one say; do we not hear the soldier in the comedy affirming,

Henceforth my gray hairs exempt me from wars?

Yes indeed, my friend, it is altogether so; for it becomes the servants of Mars to be young and vigorous, as managing

War, and war’s toilsome works;

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in which, though an helmet may also hide the old man’s gray hairs,

Yet inwardly his limbs are all decayed,

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and his strength falls short of his good-will. But from the ministers of Jupiter, the counsellor, orator, and patron of cities, we expect not the works of feet and hands, but those of counsel, providence, and reason,—not such as raises a noise and shouting amongst the people, but such as has it in understanding, prudent solicitousness, and safety; by which the derided hoariness and wrinkles appear as witnesses of his experience, and add to him the help of persuasion, and the glory of ingenuity. For youth is made to follow and be persuaded, age to guide and direct; and that city is most secure, where the counsels of the old and the prowess of the young bear sway. And this of Homer,[*]

A council first of valiant old men

He called in Nestor’s ship,

is wonderfully commended. Wherefore the Pythian Apollo called the aristocracy or council of noblemen in Lacedaemon, joined as assistants to their kings, Πρεσβυγενεῖς (or the ancients), and Lycurgus named it plainly Γέροντες (or the council of old men); and even to this day the council of the Romans is called the senate (from seniunm, signifying old age). And as the law places the diadem and crown, so does Nature the hoariness of the head, as an honorable sign of princely dignity. And I am of opinion, that γέρας (signifying an honorable reward) and γεραίρειν (signifying to honor) continue still in use amongst the Greeks, being made venerable from the respect paid to old men, not because they wash in warm water and sleep on softer beds than others, but because they have as it were a king-like esteem in states for their prudence, from which, as from a late-bearing tree, Nature scarcely in old age brings forth its proper and perfect good. Therefore none of those martial and magnanimous Achaeans blamed that king of kings, Agamemnon, for praying thus to the Gods,

O that among the Greeks I had but ten

Such counsellors as Nestor;

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but they all granted, that not in policy only, but in war also, old age has great influence;

For one discreet advice is much more worth

Than many hands,

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and one rational and persuasive sentence effects the bravest and greatest of public exploits.