have you use strength of body while you have it: when it fails, I would not have you complain of its loss, unless you think it fitting for young men to regret their boyhood, or for those who have passed on a little farther in life to want their youth back again. Life has its fixed course, and nature one unvarying way; each age has assigned to it what best suits it, so that the fickleness of boyhood, the sanguine temper of youth, the soberness of riper years, and the maturity of old age, equally have something in harmony with nature, which ought to be made availing in its season. You, Scipio, must have heard what your grandfather's host Masinissa[1] does now that he is ninety years old. When he starts on a journey on foot, he never mounts a horse; when he starts on horseback, he never relieves himself by walking; he is never induced by rain or cold to cover his head; he has the utmost power of bodily endurance; and so he performs in full all the offices and functions of a king. Exercise and temperance, then, can preserve even in old age something of one's pristine vigor.
XI. Old age lacks strength, it is said. But strength is not demanded of old age. My period of life is exempted by law and custom from offices
- ↑ King of the Numidians, and for the most part a faithful, though not a disinterested, ally of the Romans, in the Punic wars. He was eulogized by Roman writers generally; yet with the rude strength he probably combined no little of the rude ethics of a barbarian chieftan.
