are extinguished by old age. Indeed, while over-exertion tends by fatigue to weigh down the body, exercise makes the mind elastic. For, when Caecilius speaks of
"Foolish old men, fit sport for comedy,"[1]
he means those who are credulous, forgetful, weak-minded,[2] and these are the faults, not of old age, but of lazy, indolent, drowsy old age. As wantonness and licentiousness are the faults of the young rather than of the old, yet not of all young men, but only of such of them as are depraved, so the senile folly which is commonly called dotage[3] belongs not to all, but only to frivolous old men. Appius, when both blind and old, governed four grown-up sons, five daughters, a very large household, a numerous body of clients; for he had his mind on the alert, like a bent bow, nor did he, as he became feeble, succumb to old age. He maintained, not only authority, but absolute command over all who belonged to him. His servants feared him; his children held him in awe; all loved him. In that family the manners and discipline of the earlier time were still in the ascendant. Old age,
- ↑ A foolish old man, the butt of ridicule and the victim of fraud, trickery, and knavery, was a favorite character in Roman comedy, having a part in almost every comic drama extant.
- ↑ Latin, dissolutos, which might be not unaptly rendered out of joint, or at loose ends.
- ↑ Latin, deliratio, which is here much better expressed by dotage than by delirium.
