corrected by good manners and liberal culture, as we may see in actual life, as well as on the stage in the brothers in the play of the Adelphi. What grimness do we see in one of these brothers; what a genial disposition in the other! So it is in society; for as it is not wine of every vintage, so it is not every temper that grows sour with age. I approve of gravity in old age, so it be not excessive; for moderation in all things is becoming: but for bitterness I have no tolerance. As for senile avarice, I do not understand what it means; for can anything be more foolish than, in proportion as there is less of the way to travel, to seek the more provision for it?
XIX. There remains a fourth reason for deprecating old age, that it is liable to excessive solicitude and distress, because death is so near; and it certainly cannot be very far off. O wretched old man, not to have learned in so long a life that death is to be despised! which manifestly ought to be regarded with indifference if it really puts an end to the soul, or to be even desired if at length it leads the soul where it will be immortal; and certainly there is no third possibility that can be imagined.[1] Why then should I fear if after death I shall be
- ↑ Cicero seems to have forgotten that the Stoics of the earlier school believed in the survival of the soul after death, but not in its immortality. The soul was, at the consummation of the present order of the universe, to be reabsorbed into the divine essence from which it emanated, and thus in the new creation that would ensue to have no separate existence.
