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

[20] those who fill their chief magistracies are called “elders,” as they are in fact. And indeed, if you care to read or hear foreign history, you will find that the greatest states have been overthrown by the young and sustained and restored by the old.

How lost you, pray, your mighty state so soon?

for such is the question put in a play entitled the Wolf, by the poet Naevius. Several answers are given, but the one chiefly in point is this:

Through swarms of green, declaiming, silly lads.

True enough, for rashness is the product of the budding-time of youth, prudence of the harvest-time of age.