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

[35] Yet, it may be urged, many old men are so feeble that they can perform no function that duty or indeed any position in life demands. True, but [p. 45] that is not peculiar to old age; generally it is a characteristic of ill-health. Note how weak, Scipio, was your adoptive father, the son of Publius Africanus! What feeble health he had, or rather no health at all! But for this he would have shone forth as the second luminary ¹ of the state; for to his father's greatness of intellect he had added a more abundant learning. What wonder, then, that the aged are sometimes weak, when even the young cannot escape the same fate?

But it is our duty, my young friends, to resist old age; to compensate for its defects by a watchful care; to fight against it as we would fight against disease; to adopt a regimen of health;