Of priests?[1] Of augurs? Of philosophers? How many things do they retain in their memory! Old men have their powers of mind unimpaired, when they do not suspend their usual pursuits and their habits of industry. Nor is this the case only with those in conspicuous stations and in public office; it is equally true in private and retired life. Sophocles in extreme old age still wrote tragedies. Because in his close application he seemed to neglect his property, his sons instituted judicial proceedings to deprive him, as mentally incompetent, of the custody of his estate, in like manner as by our law fathers of families who mismanage their property have its administration taken from them. The old man is said to have then recited to the judges the Oedipus at Colonus, the play which he had in hand and had just written, and to have asked them whether that poem seemed the work of a failing intellect.[2] On hearing this, the judges dismissed the case. Did old age then impose silence, in their several modes of utterance, on him, on Homer, on Hesiod, on Simonides, on Stesichorus, on Isocrates and Gorgias of whom I have just spoken, on those
- ↑ There was a considerable body of pontifical law,—corresponding to the canon law of Christendom,—consisting, in part, of immemorial usage or prescription, and, in part, even of legislative enactments, of which the members of the pontifical college were the judges and administrators, so that, like the augurs, they needed officially unimpaired powers of mind and retentive memory.
- ↑ He was at this time nearly ninety years of age.
