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INTRODUCTION.
After the death of Julius Caesar, and before the conflict with Antony, Cicero spent two years in retirement, principally at his Tusculan villa. It was the most fruitful season of his life, as regards philosophy. To this period (B.C. 45 or 44) the authorship of the De Senectute is commonly assigned. In his De Divinatione, in enumerating his philosophical works, he speaks of this treatise on Old Age as "lately thrown in among them,"[1] and
- ↑ Interjectus est etiam nuper. The chief ground for doubt as to the time of its composition is that Cicero seems to speak of this book as "thrown in among" the six Books of the De Republica, written during his consulate; while he sometimes gives a very broad sense to nuper, as when he writes, nuper, id est paucis ante seculis. But between his mention of the De Republica and that of the De Senectute he names the Consolatio, which was written in B.C. 45, after the death of his daughter. Interjectus, as I suppose, refers, not to the date, but to the brevity of the treatise, and by virtue of the etiam applies equally to the Consolatio. "While I have written, earlier or later, the longer works that I have named, I have thrown in among them these smaller treatises."
