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[22]
And how is it with aged lawyers, pontiffs, augurs,
and philosophers? What a multitude of things
they remember! Old men retain their mental
faculties, provided their interest and application
continue; and this is true, not only of men in exalted
public station, but likewise of those in the quiet
of private life. Sophocles composed tragedies to
extreme old age; and when, because of his absorption in literary work, he was thought to be neglecting
his business affairs, his sons haled him into court
in order to secure a verdict removing him from the
control of his property on the ground of imbecility,
under a law similar to ours, whereby it is customary
to restrain heads of families from wasting their
estates. Thereupon, it is said, the old man read
to the jury his play, Oedipus at Colonus, which he
had just written and was revising, and inquired:
“Does that poem seem to you to be the work of an
imbecile?”
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
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