burdensome on account of your wealth, your large resources, your high rank, but that these advantages fall to the lot of very few.
Cato. There is, indeed, Laelius, something in this; but it by no means gives the full explanation. It is somewhat as in the case of Themistocles in an altercation with a certain native of Seriphos,[1] who told him that he owed his illustrious fame, not to his own greatness, but to that of his country; and Themistocles is said to have answered, "If I had been born in Seriphos, I should not have been renowned, nor, by Hercules, would you have been eminent had you been an Athenian." Very much the same may be said about old age, which cannot be easy in extreme poverty, even to a wise man, nor can it be otherwise than burdensome to one destitute of wisdom, even with abundant resources of every kind. The best-fitting defensive armor of old age, Scipio and Laelius, consists in the knowledge and practice of the virtues, which, assiduously cultivated, after the varied experiences of a long life, are wonderfully fruitful, not only because they never take flight, not even at the last moment,—
- ↑ One of the Cyclades, known in mythology, as the island on which Perseus was driven on shore and brought up, and whose inhabitants he turned to stone with the Gorgon's head; and in history, for its insignificance and poverty,—the reason why under the Roman emperors it was a frequent place of banishment for state criminals; celebrated also (probably in myth rather than fact) for a race of voiceless frogs.—Herodotus tells this story of Themistocles.
