M. Tullius Cicero, Cato the Elder: on old age
William Armistead Falconer, Ed.

[19] Scipio, the glory of completing the work which your grandfather left unfinished! Thirty-three years have passed since that hero's death, but each succeeding [p. 29] year will receive his memory and pass it on. He died in the year before I was censor, nine years after I was consul; and while I was holding the latter office he was elected consul for the second time. If, then, he had lived to his hundredth year, would he be repenting of his old age? No, for he would not be employing his time in running and in leaping, or in long-distance throwing of the spear, or in hand-to-hand sword-play, but he would be engaged in using reflection, reason, and judgement. If these mental qualities were not characteristic of old men our fathers would not have called their highest deliberative body the “senate.”¹ Among the Lacedaemonians, for example,