Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
That you, Euphanes, being an admirer of Pindar, often have on your lips, as well and persuasively expressed by him, the words "pretext has cast excellence into steep darkness," we are not unaware. Since, however, most hesitations and reluctance toward political contests find many pretexts, and bring forward old age as their last resort—like the move "from the sacred line"—and since these pretexts, seeming above all to blunt and shame ambition, persuade us that there is a fitting close not only to an athletic career but to a political one as well, I think I ought to go over with you the reflections I often turn over in my own mind concerning statesmanship in old age.
How so? That neither of us will abandon the long companionship that has journeyed with us together up to now, nor cast aside political life, as if it were an agemate and familiar friend, to change over to another, unfamiliar life, one for which we no longer have time enough to make it familiar and our own. Rather, we shall abide by what we chose from the beginning, making the end of living and of living well the same—provided, that is, we are not going to convict, in the brief time remaining, the long time already spent, as having been wasted for nothing good.
For tyranny, as someone said to Dionysius, is not a fine shroud; rather, for that man, not ceasing from his monarchy, together with its injustice, made his misfortune all the more complete. And Diogenes spoke well when, later, seeing his son in Corinth living as a private citizen instead of a tyrant, he said, "How unworthily you are acting, Dionysius! For you ought not to be living here with us in freedom and without fear, but there, walled up in the tyrant's palace, to live out your life to old age as your father did."
But a democratic and law-abiding constitution, for a man accustomed to show himself no less useful as one who is ruled than as one who rules, truly adds a fine shroud—the reputation earned from his life—to his death; for this is the last thing that sinks beneath the earth, as Simonides says—except in the case of those in whom love of humanity and love of the noble die before the body does, and the zeal for what is good gives out before the desire for what is merely necessary, as if the practical and divine part of the soul faded more quickly than the passionate and bodily parts. This is not a thing fit even to say, nor to accept from those who say it: that we grow weary of nothing except making a profit. Rather, we should improve on the saying of Thucydides, and hold that it is not ambition alone that is ageless, but rather the social and political instinct, which persists even in ants and bees until the very end.
For no one has ever seen a bee turned into a drone by old age, as some think statesmen, once past their prime, ought to sit at home being fed and laid up in storage, looking on unconcerned while their practical virtue is quenched by idleness as iron is by rust. Cato used to say that, since old age already carries many evils of its own, one should not willingly add to it the disgrace that comes from vice; and among many vices, none disgraces an old man less than inactivity, cowardice, and softness—sinking down from political office into keeping house among the women, or in the country, watching gleaners and reapers at their work.
"Where now is Oedipus and his famous riddles?" For to begin a political career in old age, and not before—as they say Epimenides fell asleep a young man and woke an old man fifty years later—and then, laying aside so long and settled a quiet life, to plunge oneself into contests and public business, unaccustomed and untrained, having consorted neither with political affairs nor with men, might well give someone with a grievance occasion to say, in the Pythia's words, "You have come too late," as he seeks office and popular leadership, knocking on the general's door out of season, like some rather unskillful reveler arriving by night, or like a stranger changing not place or country but a way of life he has never tried.
For the saying "the city teaches the man," according to Simonides, is true of those who still have time left to be taught anew and to learn a fresh lesson—one worked out only with difficulty through many contests and much business—provided nature takes hold of it in its proper season, while still easily able to bear toil and hardship. One might suppose this said not unfairly against the man who begins his political career in old age. And yet we observe the opposite as well: sensible men turn boys and young men away from managing public affairs, and the laws themselves bear witness to this—in the assemblies, through the herald, it is not Alcibiadeses or Pytheases who are called up first to the platform, but men past fifty, summoned to speak and to give counsel; for lack of experience and boldness, and want of practice, weigh on each of them differently.
But Cato, defending himself in a lawsuit past his eightieth year, said it was hard, having lived among one generation, to defend oneself before another. As for the Caesar who overthrew Antony, all agree that his measures of state became far more kingly and beneficial to the people as he neared the end of his life; and when he was strictly disciplining the young by custom and by law, and they raised an outcry, he said, "Listen, young men, to an old man to whom, when he was young, old men used to listen."
Pericles' statesmanship reached its greatest strength in old age, when he persuaded the Athenians to take up the war; and when they were eager to fight, at an unfavorable moment, against sixty thousand hoplites, he stood firm and prevented it, all but sealing up the people's weapons and the keys of the gates. But indeed what Xenophon wrote of Agesilaus deserves to be quoted in his very words: "For what youth," he says, "did his old age not appear better than? Who, in the prime of life, was so feared by his enemies as Agesilaus at the furthest reach of his years? Whose removal gave the enemy more joy than that of Agesilaus, even though he died an old man? Who inspired greater confidence in his allies than Agesilaus, even though already at the very edge of life? What young man did his friends miss more than they missed Agesilaus, dead in old age?"
Since, then, time did not prevent those men from accomplishing such great deeds, shall we, who now live in ease amid political conditions involving no tyranny, no war, no siege—only unwarlike rivalries and contests of honor settled for the most part by law and by speech, with justice—shall we play the coward, confessing ourselves inferior not only to the generals and popular leaders of that time, but even to poets, sophists, and actors? For Simonides won victories with choruses in his old age, as the epigram shows in its closing verses: "Glory attended Simonides for his teaching, the eighty-year-old son of Leoprepes."
Sophocles, when prosecuted by his own sons on a charge of insanity, is said to have read out, in his defense, the entry-song from his Oedipus at Colonus, which begins: "Stranger, you have come to this land famed for horses, to the finest dwelling place on earth, gleaming Colonus, where the clear-voiced nightingale sings most often, sheltering beneath the green glens." And when the ode appeared marvelous, he was escorted from the courtroom, as if from a theater, amid the applause and shouting of those present. And this small epigram, too, is by common agreement his own: "Sophocles composed a song for Herodotus, being fifty-five years old."
Death overtook Philemon the comic poet, and Alexis too, while they were still competing on stage and being crowned. And Eratosthenes and Philochorus record that Polus the tragic actor, at seventy years of age, performed in eight tragedies over four days, shortly before his death.
Is it not shameful, then, that men of the political platform should be seen as less noble in old age than men of the stage, and that, truly withdrawing from sacred contests, they should lay aside the statesman's mask to take up I know not what in its place? For even the change from kingship to farming is a lowly one: if Demosthenes says that the Paralus, a sacred trireme, suffers indignity in ferrying timber, stakes, and cattle for Meidias, then surely a statesman who has given up the presidency of the games, the office of boeotarch, and the seats of honor among the Amphictyons, and is afterward seen measuring out barley-meal and olive-pulp and sheep's wool, will seem—though no one compels him—to be bringing upon himself nothing other than what is called "the old age of the horse."
And indeed, to take up some vulgar, market-place trade after a political career is like stripping a free and modest woman of her robe, fitting her with an apron, and setting her to keep a tavern stall: for in just this way the dignity and grandeur of political virtue are destroyed when dragged down to petty transactions and money-making.
But if, as remains to be considered, men urge the statesman, calling them ease and enjoyment, pleasures and luxuries, to grow old quietly wasting away amid these things, I do not know to which of two shameful images his life will then seem to correspond more closely: to sailors who spend all the time that remains in their love-affairs, never bringing the ship into harbor but leaving it still at sea; or, as some in jest poorly depict Heracles at Omphale's house, wearing a saffron robe, giving himself over to be fanned and have his hair braided by Lydian maidservants—just so, shall we strip the statesman of his lion-skin, lay him down, and feast him forever while he is serenaded with harp and flute?
Are we not even abashed by the words of Pompey the Great to Lucullus, who, after his campaigns and his public services, had given himself over to baths and banquets, daytime liaisons, much idle wandering, and the building of youthful-looking villas, yet reproached Pompey with love of power and ambition beyond his years? For Pompey said that luxury was more unseasonable in an old man than the holding of office. And when, in his illness, his physician prescribed a thrush for him, and it was hard to obtain out of season, and someone said that Lucullus kept many bred on his estate, Pompey neither sent for one nor accepted it, saying, "So then, if Lucullus did not live in luxury, Pompey could not go on living?"
And indeed, even if nature altogether seeks the pleasant and the joyful, the body of old men has given out for all pleasures but a few necessary ones, and it is not only Aphrodite who finds old men burdensome, as Euripides says, but old men themselves hold their appetites for food and drink mostly blunted and toothless, scarcely managing to whet and sharpen them. In the soul, however, one must cultivate pleasures that are neither ignoble nor illiberal—not as Simonides said to those who accused him of love of money, that being deprived by old age of all other pleasures, he was still, in his old age, nourished by the one pleasure that comes from gain.
But statesmanship holds the finest and greatest pleasures, the very ones the gods themselves are likely to enjoy, either alone or above all others; and these are the pleasures that doing good and accomplishing something noble yield. For if Nicias the painter so delighted in the works of his art that he often had to ask his servants whether he had bathed and had breakfast; and if servants had to drag Archimedes away by force from his drawing-board, strip him, and anoint him, while he went on sketching figures upon his own oiled body; and if Canus the flute-player, whom you too know, used to say that people did not realize that in playing the flute he delighted himself more than others—that he would sooner be paying a fee than receiving one from those who wished to listen—can we then fail to imagine how great are the pleasures that the virtues provide for those who practice them, arising from noble actions, from works of fellowship, and from works of humanity?
These pleasures do not scratch or enervate, as do those movements that grow smooth and soothing to the flesh; those bodily pleasures carry a tickling that is frenzied, unstable, mixed with throbbing, whereas the pleasures that come from noble deeds—deeds of which the man who governs rightly is the craftsman—lift the soul, which takes on greatness and a lofty spirit together with joy, borne aloft not on the golden wings of Euripides, but on wings like those Platonic, heavenly ones.
Remind yourself of what you have often heard. Epaminondas, when asked what had been the sweetest thing that ever happened to him, answered that it was winning the battle of Leuctra while his father and mother were still living. And Sulla, when, having cleared Italy of civil wars, he first drew near to Rome, did not sleep even a little that night, his soul lifted up as if by a great wind of joy and gladness; and he wrote as much of himself in his memoirs.
For let nothing, according to Xenophon, be sweeter to hear than praise; yet of all the things one might see, remember, or reflect upon, none brings so much delight as reviewing one's own deeds done in office and in public affairs, as if in bright and public places. Moreover, kindly favor bearing witness together with one's deeds, and praise contending alongside them—the leader of just goodwill—adds, as it were, a certain light and brightness to the man who takes joy in virtue; and one must not allow one's reputation, like an athlete's crown, to wither in old age,
but rather, by always bringing forward something new and fresh, revive the grace of one's earlier deeds, and make it better and lasting, just as the craftsmen charged with keeping the ship of Delos sound, by putting in new timbers in place of the failing ones and refastening them, were thought to preserve it eternal and imperishable from those ancient times onward. And the preservation and maintenance of both reputation and flame is not difficult, requiring only small kindling; but once either is quenched and cooled, no one could easily rekindle it again without effort.
As Lampis the ship-owner, when asked how he had acquired his wealth, said: "The great fortune, without difficulty; the small one, with toil and slowly"—so too it is not easy, at the outset, to attain political glory and power, but to increase it further and to preserve it once it has grown great is easy, whatever the circumstances that come along. For a friend, once he has become a friend, does not require many great services in order to remain a friend; small signs, given continuously, always preserve his goodwill. And the friendship and trust of the people, not always requiring one who funds a chorus, or pleads a case, or holds an office, is held together by eagerness itself, and by not abandoning beforehand, and not giving up, one's care and concern.
For military campaigns, too, do not always consist of battle-lines, fights, and sieges, but sometimes admit, in between, sacrifices and social gatherings and abundant leisure spent in games and idle amusement. Why, then, should one fear political life as something inconsolable, laborious, and burdensome, when there are also theaters, processions, distributions, and "choruses and the Muse and Splendor," and when the honor paid to some god, ever smoothing the furrowed brow of every office and council, gives back many times over what is delightful and pleasing?
The greatest evil that political life carries, then—envy—presses least of all against old age: for "dogs bark even at one they do not know," as Heraclitus says, and envy fights against the man just beginning, as it were at the very doors of the platform, and does not...
...does not give it entry. But the reputation that has grown up with age, familiar and long-standing, it endures not savagely nor harshly, but gently. This is why some compare envy to smoke: it billows up thick at the start, while the fire is being kindled, but once the flames have caught, it vanishes. Other kinds of superiority men fight over and dispute — excellence, birth, ambition — as though whatever they concede to another they thereby take from themselves. But the primacy that comes from time, properly called seniority, provokes no jealousy and is yielded willingly; for there is no honor whose bestowal so adorns the one who gives it as it does the one who receives it, as does the honor paid to the old. Moreover, not everyone expects to attain the power that comes from wealth, or skill in speech, or wisdom; but the respect and reputation to which old age leads, no one engaged in public life despairs of reaching.
So the man who, after fighting off envy in a long naval battle, then, once it has subsided and been calmed, backs his ship out of public life and abandons, along with his activities, his partnerships and friendships, is no different from a helmsman who has sailed dangerously against an adverse wave and wind, and then, when fair weather and calm air have come, seeks to put into harbor. For the longer time has gone by, the more friends and comrades-in-struggle it has brought him, whom he can neither lead off together with himself, like a chorus-trainer taking his chorus, nor rightly abandon. Rather, like old trees, a long political career, having many roots and being entangled with affairs, is not easy to uproot — and uprooting causes more turmoil and tearing to those who leave than to those who stay. And if any remnant of envy or rivalry toward old men still survives from their political struggles, this should be quenched by strength, rather than met by turning one's back and departing naked and unarmed; for men attack not so much out of envy toward those still contending, as out of contempt for those who have given up.
This is confirmed too by what the great Epaminondas said to the Thebans when, it being winter, the Arcadians invited them to come into the city and lodge in their houses. He would not allow it, but said, "Right now they admire you and watch you as you exercise and wrestle under arms; but if they see you sitting by the fire gulping down beans, they will think you no different from themselves." So too it is a dignified sight, an old man speaking and acting and being honored; but one who spends his day in bed, or sits in the corner of a portico chattering nonsense and wiping his nose, is easily despised. This, indeed, Homer too teaches those who listen rightly: Nestor, campaigning at Troy, was venerable and greatly honored, while Peleus and Laertes, staying at home, were cast aside and despised.
For the disposition of good sense does not remain the same in those who let themselves go; rather, relaxed and dissolved bit by bit by idleness, it always needs some exercise of thought to rouse and purify the reasoning and practical faculty — for it shines in use, like handsome bronze. Bodily weakness in those who take to the platform and the general's post beyond their expected age is not so great a harm to public life as is the good they bring in caution and prudence — not rushing blindly, sometimes through miscalculation, sometimes through empty vanity, into public affairs and sweeping the crowd along as the sea is stirred up by winds, but rather dealing with those they meet gently and with moderation.
Hence cities, whenever they stumble or take fright, long for the rule of older men; and often, bringing a man down from his farm who neither asked for it nor wished it, they have forced him, as though laying hold of the tiller, to bring their affairs to safety, pushing aside generals and popular leaders able to shout loudly and speak without pausing for breath and, by Zeus, able to cross over and fight the enemy well — as when the orators at Athens, putting forward Chares son of Theochares to strip for competition against Timotheus and Iphicrates, a man in the prime of bodily vigor and strength, demanded that such a man be the Athenians' general. But Timotheus said, "No, by the gods — such a man should rather be the one who carries the general's bedding, while the general should be one who sees affairs both before and behind at once, and whose reckonings about advantage are disturbed by no passion."
For Sophocles said that, having grown old, he was glad to have escaped the pleasures of love, as one escapes a savage and raging master; but in political life one must escape not one master — desire for boys or women — but many more frenzied than this: love of contention, love of glory, the desire to be first and greatest, a disease most productive of envy, jealousy, and faction. Of these, old age relaxes and blunts some, and utterly extinguishes and cools others, taking away not so much the impulse to act as it wards off the unrestrained and burning passions, so that it brings a sober and settled reasoning to bear on one's concerns.
Nevertheless, let there also be, and let it seem, a discouraging argument spoken against one who is beginning to play the youth in his gray hairs, reproaching an old man who, after long staying at home, rouses and bestirs himself, as though rising from a sickbed, for a generalship or some undertaking: "Stay, poor wretch, quietly in your bed." But the man who will not allow one who has lived his whole life in political action and struggle to advance to the torch and the crowning point of his life, but calls him back and bids him turn about as if from a long journey, is altogether unreasonable and in no way resembles the other case.
For just as the man who dissuades an old man preparing for marriage, garlanded and perfumed, by saying to him the words meant for Philoctetes — "What bride, what young maiden would accept you? Well indeed are you fit for marriage, poor wretch!" — is not out of place, since old men themselves make many such jokes at their own expense, "I am marrying in my old age, I well know it, and so do the neighbors" — yet the man who thinks that one who has long lived with and dwelt beside a wife blamelessly for many years ought, because of old age, to put her away and live by himself, or take a little concubine in place of his lawful wife, has left no room for greater absurdity. In the same way it makes some sense to admonish and restrain an old man approaching public life who is like Chlidon the farmer, or Lampon the ship-owner, or one of the philosophers of the Garden, and to keep him at his accustomed inactivity. But the man who takes hold of a Phocion, a Cato, or a Pericles and says, "Stranger, Athenian or Roman, withering in dry old age, you fret and fume — file your divorce from public life, abandon your occupations about the platform and the general's post and your cares, and hasten to the countryside to keep company with a hired hand in farming, or to spend your remaining time on some household management and accounts" — such a man persuades the statesman to do what is both unjust and thankless.
What then, someone might say — do we not hear in comedy a soldier saying, "Does not my white hair make me unfit for pay from now on?" Yes indeed, my friend; for it is fitting that the servants of Ares be young and in their prime, engaged as they are in the grim business of war and battle, in which, even if the old man's helmet hides his gray hairs, still his limbs are secretly weighed down, and his strength gives out before his eagerness does. But of the servants of Zeus the Counselor, of the Marketplace, and of the City, we require not deeds of feet and hands, but counsel and foresight and speech — speech that makes not surf and noise before the people, but has sense and prudent care and steadiness — to which the gray hair men laugh at, and the wrinkle, appear as a witness of experience, and lend it, as an ally, both persuasiveness and a reputation for character.
For youth is fit to obey, but old age to command; and a city is best preserved where the counsels belong to old men and the fighting spears to young men who trust in them, and the line "First he set the council of great-hearted elders beside Nestor's ship" is rightly admired. That is why the Pythian god called the aristocratic council yoked alongside the kings at Sparta "the elder-born," while Lycurgus called them outright "old men," and the Roman senate is called, even to this day, the "council of elders." And just as custom bestows the diadem and the crown, so nature bestows gray hair as an honored symbol of commanding dignity; and, I think, the word for a prize of honor, and the verb to honor, having derived from the word for old men, remain in use as solemn terms — not because old men bathe in warm water and sleep more softly, but because they hold a kingly rank in their cities by virtue of prudence, whose proper and perfect good, like that of a late-fruiting plant, nature scarcely yields before old age.
When, at any rate, the king of kings prayed to the gods, "Would that ten such counselors of the Achaeans were mine as Nestor was," none of the warlike, furious-breathing Achaeans found fault with him; all agreed that old age carries great weight not only in political life but in war as well, for one wise plan overcomes many hands, and a single judgment, backed by reason and persuasion, accomplishes the finest and greatest of public achievements.
And yet kingship, being the most complete and greatest of all constitutions, involves the most cares, labors, and preoccupations. They say, at any rate, that Seleucus used to remark that if the many knew how laborious a thing it is merely to write and read so many letters, they would not even pick up a diadem lying on the ground; and that Philip, when about to encamp in a fine spot, on hearing that there was no fodder for the pack animals, said, "Heracles! What a life ours is, if we must live even by the timetable of donkeys." It would then be time to advise a king, once he has grown old, to lay aside the diadem and the purple, and, taking up a cloak and a shepherd's crook, to spend his time in the countryside, lest he seem to be doing something excessive and unseasonable, reigning on in his gray hairs.
But if it is not fitting to say such things about Agesilaus, Numa, and Darius, and if we should not lead Solon out of the Council of the Areopagus, nor Cato out of the Senate, on account of old age, then let us not advise Pericles either to abandon the democracy. For it makes no sense, otherwise, that a man who leapt onto the platform while young and poured out those mad ambitions and impulses toward public life should then, once the age that brings good sense through experience has arrived, abandon and desert public life as though he had merely used a woman and cast her off.
For Aesop's fox would not let the hedgehog, who wished to remove her ticks, do so: "If you take these away," she said, "now that they are full, others will come who are hungry." A state that constantly casts off its old men is bound to be filled up with young men thirsting for glory and power yet lacking political sense — for how could they have it, if they are to be disciples and spectators of no old man engaged in politics? Does not, indeed, mere knowledge of navigation manuals fail to make men captains of ships, unless they have often stood in the stern as spectators of the struggles against wave and wind and stormy night, "when longing for the sons of Tyndareus strikes the sea-tossed sailor"? Could a young man rightly manage a city, and persuade a people or council, merely by having read a book or written a treatise on politics in the Lyceum, unless, having often stood by the rein and the tiller, swaying now this way, now that, along with the experience and fortunes of contending popular leaders and generals, he has gained his learning amid dangers and real affairs? One cannot say so. Rather, if for no other reason, the old man must remain in politics for the sake of the education and instruction of the young.
For just as teachers of letters and music themselves first strike up the tune and read aloud, leading the way for their pupils, so the statesman, not merely by speaking or dictating from outside but by actually conducting and administering public affairs, guides the young man aright, molding him vividly and shaping him by deeds together with words. For a man trained in this way — not in the wrestling-schools and safe practice-bouts of graceful sophists, but truly, as it were, in the Olympic and Pythian games — "runs alongside like a foal beside a mare," as Simonides says: as Aristides ran alongside Cleisthenes, Cimon alongside Aristides, Phocion alongside Chabrias, Cato alongside Fabius Maximus, Pompey alongside Sulla, and Polybius alongside Philopoemen. For, being young men attaching themselves to their elders, then sprouting alongside them, as it were, and rising up together with their political careers and actions, they acquired experience and familiarity with public affairs, together with reputation and power.
Now the Academic Aeschines, when certain sophists said that he only pretended to have been a pupil of Carneades without actually having been one, replied, "But it was then, at least, that I attended Carneades' lectures, when his discourse, having through old age let go its surf and noise, had drawn together into what was useful and companionable." For since the political activity of old men has been freed, not only in word but in deed, from pomp and popularity-hunting — just as they say that the iris plant, once it has grown old, breathes off its rank and murky smell and takes on a more fragrant, aromatic one — so no opinion or plan of an old man is agitated, but everything about him is weighty and settled.
That is why, for the sake of the young too, as has been said, the old man must engage in politics, so that, in the way Plato speaks of unmixed wine blended with water — "the mad god being chastened and disciplined by another, sober god" — so too the caution of old age, blended with the youth that seethes among the people, raging like a Bacchant under the influence of ambition and love of glory, may remove what is mad and altogether unmixed in it.
Apart from these considerations, those err who think that engaging in politics is like sailing or soldiering — something done for the sake of something else, and coming to an end once that goal is attained. For political life is not a public service that has an end once its need is met, but is the life of a creature that is civilized, political, and social by nature, born to live, for as long as is fitting, in a political, honor-loving, and humane way. That is why the duty is to be engaging in politics, not to have engaged in politics — just as it is one's duty to be speaking the truth, not to have spoken it once; to be acting justly, not to have acted justly once; and to be loving one's country and fellow citizens, not to have loved them once. For to this nature leads us, and it dictates these words to those not utterly corrupted by idleness and softness: "And your father begets you of great worth to mortals — let us never cease doing good to men."
Those who plead their infirmities and incapacities are really accusing sickness and disability, rather than old age; for many young men are sickly, and many old men are vigorous. So one must turn away not the old, but the incapable, and summon not the young, but the capable. Indeed, Arrhidaeus was young and Antigonus old, yet the one won for himself almost the whole of Asia, while the other was, as if on a stage, a mute stage-attendant — a mere name and mask of a king, insulted and abused by whoever happened to hold power at the time. So then, just as one who [would compare?] Prodicus the sophist, or Philetas the...
...the poet, to hold public office—young men indeed, but thin, sickly, and for the most part bedridden through weakness—would be foolish; just so is the man who prevents old men of this sort from ruling and commanding armies, men such as Phocion was, such as Massinissa the Libyan was, such as Cato the Roman was. For Phocion, when the Athenians were eager to make war at an inopportune time, ordered that all men up to sixty years of age take up arms and follow him, and when they protested, he said, "There is nothing dreadful in it; for I myself will be your general, though I am past eighty years old." Polybius reports that Massinissa died at ninety, leaving behind a four-year-old child born to him, and that a little before his death, having won a great battle over the Carthaginians, he was seen the next day in front of his tent eating coarse bread; and to those who marveled at this, he said that this was why he did it: "Bronze, kept in use, shines like a thing of beauty, but left idle in time it dulls and its roof sags," as Sophocles says—or, as we would put it, that brightness and radiance of the soul by which we reason, remember, and think. This is why kings, they say, become better in wars and campaigns than when they are at leisure.
Attalus, for instance, the brother of Eumenes, thoroughly enfeebled by long idleness and peace, was literally shepherded—like a fattened sheep—by one of his own companions, Philopoemen, so that the Romans, in jest, would constantly ask those sailing from Asia whether the king was thriving under Philopoemen's care. Among the Romans one could find few generals more formidable than Lucullus, so long as he kept his intelligence bound up with action; but once he gave himself over to a life of inactivity, a stay-at-home and carefree regimen, he wasted away and withered like sponges in calm water, and then, handing his old age over to a certain freedman, Callisthenes, to be fed and tamed, he seemed to be drugged by that man's potions and spells—until his brother Marcus drove the fellow off and himself managed and guided the rest of his life, which was not long.
But Darius, the father of Xerxes, used to say that he himself grew wiser in the face of dangers; and the Scythian Ateas said that he thought himself no different from his own grooms whenever he was at leisure. And Dionysius the Elder, when asked whether he ever had leisure, said, "May that never happen to me!" For a bow, they say, breaks when it is stretched taut, but the soul when it is slackened. Indeed, musicians lose their ear for a well-tuned instrument, geometers lose their skill in analysis, and arithmeticians their continuity in calculation, once they abandon these activities—their faculties growing dim along with their years, even though theirs are not practical but theoretical arts. But the statesman's faculty—good counsel, prudence, and justice, and besides these an experience skilled at gauging occasions and arguments, a power that is the craftsman of persuasion—is sustained by constantly speaking, acting, reasoning, and judging; and it would be a dreadful thing if, by fleeing from these activities, it should stand by and watch such great and so many virtues drain away from the soul. For it is likely that benevolence too would wither away, along with sociability and gratitude—qualities that ought to have no end or limit.
If, for instance, you had Tithonus for a father—immortal, yet needing, because of his old age, constant and abundant care—I do not think you would shrink from tending him, addressing him, and helping him, on the ground that you had already performed this service for a long time. But one's fatherland and motherland, as the Cretans call it, holding rights over us older and greater than those of parents, though long-lived, is not ageless nor self-sufficient, but always in need of care, help, and concern; it draws in and holds fast the statesman, laying hold of his garment and restraining him even when he is eager to hurry off.
And indeed you know that I have served the Pythian god through many Pythiads; yet you would not say, "Plutarch, you have done enough—you have sacrificed, processed, and danced in the choruses; now that you are older, it is time to lay aside the crown and abandon the oracle because of your age." So you must not think that you yourself, being a leader and prophet of the rites of the state, should give up the honors of Zeus Polieus and of Zeus Agoraios, since you were long ago initiated into their rites.
But, if you wish, let us set aside the argument that would tear us away from public life, and instead consider—let us now philosophize on this point—how we may take up no undertaking unbecoming or burdensome to old age, since public life has many parts fitting and suited to men of that age. For just as, if it were fitting to go on singing throughout one's life, one would have to choose, among the many pitches and modes of voice available—those which musicians call harmonies—not to pursue, once one has become old, the high and taut register, but the one in which ease attends along with fitting character; so too, since it is more natural for human beings than for swans to sing—that is, to act and speak—right up until the end of life, one must not abandon action altogether, as though letting go a lyre strung taut, but rather relax it toward what is light and moderate and befitting old men, retuning our political activities accordingly.
For we do not allow our bodies to become entirely motionless and untrained just because we can no longer use the spade or the jumping-weights, or throw the discus or practice fencing as before; instead we keep them moving with swinging exercises and walks, and some, lightly wrestling with a ball and conversing, keep the breath moving and fan the inner warmth. So too we should neither allow ourselves to become entirely frozen and chilled through inactivity, nor, on the other hand, should we grasp at every office and reach out for every kind of public undertaking, and thus force old age, once exposed, to be reduced to uttering words like these: "O right hand, how you long to grasp the spear; but in weakness you have lost your longing." For not even a man in his prime and at the height of his powers is praised if he takes all public affairs upon himself alone and is unwilling to yield any share to another—as the Stoics say of Zeus, weaving himself into everything and mixing himself with all things—out of an insatiable appetite for glory, or out of envy toward those who somehow share in any honor or power in the city.
For a man who is thoroughly old, even setting aside the disrepute of it, it is toilsome and wretched to nurse an ambition for office that shows up at every election, an officiousness that lies in wait for every opportunity of a court session or council, and a rivalry for honor that snatches up every embassy and every advocate's case for itself. For to do these things is burdensome for one's age even when done with good will; but in fact the opposite happens: such men are hated by the young, as not allowing them opportunities for action nor letting them come forward into the public eye, and their love of being first and love of office are held in no less disrepute among others than the love of wealth or love of pleasure is in other old men.
Just as Alexander, unwilling to burden Bucephalas now that he was growing old, used to ride other horses before the battle while going around the phalanx and setting it in order, and then, once he had given the signal and mounted the old horse, would immediately lead the charge against the enemy and share the danger—so the statesman, if he has sense, will act as his own charioteer, and once he has become old will hold back from what is not necessary, and will allow those in their prime to employ the city's resources for the lesser matters, while in the great ones he himself will contend eagerly. For athletes keep their bodies untouched and unimpaired by unnecessary exertions, reserving them for what is truly needful; we, on the contrary, letting the small and trivial matters go, will keep ourselves in reserve for what is worth the effort. For perhaps it is fitting, in Homer's words, for a young man to do "all things," and people accept and welcome this, calling the man who does many small things a man of the people and industrious, and the one who does brilliant and dignified things noble and high-minded; and there are occasions when even contentiousness and rashness have a certain bloom and charm becoming to men of that age.
But an old man in public life who submits to menial services—such as the auctioning of tax contracts, oversight of harbors and of the market—and who moreover runs off on embassies and journeys abroad to governors and potentates, missions in which there is nothing necessary or dignified but only flattery and currying favor, seems to me, my friend, pitiable and unenviable; and to others, perhaps, it seems oppressive and vulgar as well. For it is not becoming for a man of such an age to be carried into offices, except those that possess some real greatness and dignity, such as the one you now hold at Athens, the presidency of the Council of the Areopagus, and, by Zeus, the honorable office of the Amphictyonic presidency, which your fatherland has entrusted to you for your whole life, an office that has "sweet toil and labor well worth laboring." But even these honors ought not to be pursued; rather one should hold office while fleeing it, not by seeking it but by declining it, not as though taking office for oneself, but as giving oneself over to office.
For it is not, as Tiberius Caesar used to say, shameful for men past sixty years old to hold out their hand to the physician; rather it is more shameful to hold out one's hand to the people, asking for a vote or a shout of election—for that is ignoble and low. Whereas, on the contrary, there is a certain dignity and honor in it when one's country chooses and calls and waits for him, so that he comes down to it with honor and goodwill, truly venerable and conspicuous, to embrace and welcome the privilege of office.
In something like this manner too one should use speech in the assembly once one has become old: not leaping up to the platform continuously, nor always crowing back at every speaker like a rooster, nor by wrangling and provoking loosening the young men's respect for oneself, nor cultivating in them a habit and familiarity with disobedience and unwillingness to listen, but sometimes yielding ground and even allowing them to toss their heads and grow bold for the sake of reputation, and not being present nor meddling where there is nothing great at stake for the common safety or for what is honorable and fitting. But there, where such things are at stake, one must press forward even beyond one's strength, though no one is calling, entrusting oneself to guides or being carried, as they say was done at Rome by Appius Claudius.
For when the Romans had been defeated by Pyrrhus in a great battle, and he learned that the Senate was entertaining proposals for a truce and peace, he found it intolerable, although he had lost both his eyes; yet he came, borne through the forum, to the senate-house, and entering and taking his stand in the midst, he said that formerly he had been grieved at being deprived of his sight, but that now he would even pray not to hear as well, given the shameful and ignoble deliberations and actions they were engaged in. Then, partly rebuking them and partly instructing and urging them on, he persuaded them at once to take up arms and fight to the finish for Italy against Pyrrhus.
And Solon, when it became clear that Pisistratus's demagoguery was a contrivance for tyranny, and no one dared to resist or hinder it, himself brought out his own weapons and, setting them down before his house, called upon the citizens to help. And when Pisistratus sent to him and asked what he was relying on to do this, he said, "On my old age." Thus matters of such necessity kindle and rouse up even utterly spent old men, so long as they still draw breath.
In other matters, however, as has been said, sometimes by declining he will act tunefully, avoiding the paltry and menial tasks—those which involve for the doer more trouble than the benefit and usefulness for whose sake they are undertaken. And sometimes, by waiting for the citizens to summon him, to wish for him, and to come and fetch him from home, he descends to their need with all the more credibility. Most of the time, even while present, he yields the floor in silence to the younger men, acting, as it were, as umpire of their rivalry for political honor; but if it exceeds due measure, he checks it gently and, with kindness, removes contentiousness, abusive language, and anger; and in matters of judgment, he comforts the one who errs without reproach, and teaches him, while praising fearlessly the one who succeeds, and often willingly lets himself be overcome, forgoing the satisfaction of persuading and prevailing, so that the young may grow and gain confidence; and in some cases he even fills out, with kindly words, what is lacking, as Nestor does: "No one of the Achaeans will find fault with your speech, nor will he speak against it in turn; and yet you have not reached the end of your speech. Indeed, you are still young, and you might well be my own son."
But it is even more statesmanlike than this, not to reproach openly and in public, without a sharp sting that cuts a man down and humbles him, but rather to offer suggestions privately to those naturally suited for public life, and kindly to help introduce good speeches and policies along with them, spurring them on jointly toward noble ends and helping to make their purpose more brilliant, and, like those who teach horsemanship, providing at the outset a people that is tame and gentle to mount; and if the young man should stumble in some matter, not looking on while he loses heart, but raising him up and comforting him—as Aristides did for Cimon, and Mnesiphilus for Themistocles, when they were at first disliked and spoken ill of in the city as reckless and undisciplined, lifting them up and restoring their courage.
It is said too that when Demosthenes was hissed off the platform before the assembly and was taking it hard, a certain old man, one of those who had heard Pericles, took him aside and told him that, resembling that man in nature as he did, he had judged himself unjustly. So too, when Timotheus was being hissed for his innovation and for seeming to transgress the laws of music, Euripides bade him take courage, since in a short time the theaters would be his to command.
And in general, just as at Rome the time of the Vestal Virgins is divided so that part of it is spent learning, part performing the established rites, and the third, finally, teaching others; and among those attending Artemis at Ephesus, likewise, each is called first a Melliere, then a Hiere, and third a Pariere—so too the fully accomplished statesman, in the first period, still engages in politics as one learning and being initiated, and in the last period, as one teaching and initiating others. For to oversee others as they compete is not itself to compete; but the man who trains a young man in matters of common and public concern, and prepares him for his fatherland to be "both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds," is useful in no small or trivial part of political life—indeed, in the very thing to which Lycurgus above all first devoted and habituated himself: to accustom the young to continue obeying every old man as though he were a lawgiver.
For with what in mind did Lysander say that men grow old most nobly in Lacedaemon? Was it because the elderly there are especially free to be idle, and to sit together lending money, or playing dice, or gathering for drinking at the proper hour? You would not say so; rather it is because all men of that age there hold, in a sense, the rank of magistrates, or a kind of guardians of the law, or tutors. They oversee not only the common affairs, but continually study each of the young men's doings, in their exercises, their games, and their ways of life, not as a side matter—being fearsome to those who err, but respected and longed for by the good. For the young are always attending upon them and seeking them out, since these old men foster what is orderly and noble in them and take pride, without envy, in their growth. This...
For this feeling, though fitting at no time of life, nevertheless finds decent names ready to hand among the young, being called rivalry and emulation and love of honor; but among old men it is utterly unseasonable, savage, and ignoble. Therefore the statesman in his old age must keep as far as possible from envy, and must not, like a spiteful old tree, plainly strip away and lop off the shoots and growth of those springing up and coming to life beneath him, but should welcome them kindly and give himself to those who reach for him and cling to him, setting them upright, leading them by the hand, and nourishing them—not only with guidance and good counsel, but also by yielding to them shares of public business that carry honor and reputation, or such services as bring no harm but are pleasant and gratifying to the many; while whatever is unpalatable and disagreeable—like medicines, which sting and pain at once but afterward yield what is good and beneficial—he should not thrust upon the young or subject them to public disturbances, since they are unused to the unreasonableness of crowds, but should himself take upon himself the odium incurred for the sake of the common advantage. For by this he will make the young both better disposed toward him and more eager in their other services.
Besides all this, one must remember that engaging in politics is not simply holding office and serving as envoy and shouting loudly in the assembly and raving about the speaker's platform while speaking or writing—things which most people suppose to constitute political life, just as, of course, they suppose that only those who converse from a professor's chair and conduct classes over books are practicing philosophy; but the constant political activity and philosophy that is seen daily, evenly, in deeds and actions, escapes their notice. Indeed, people say that those who pace back and forth in the colonnades are "walking," as Dicaearchus used to say, but no longer apply the word to those going to the country or to a friend's house. In the same way, engaging in politics is like practicing philosophy. Socrates, at any rate, neither set up benches nor sat upon a chair nor kept a fixed hour for discussion or for walking with his acquaintances, but by joining in play whenever it happened, and drinking together, and campaigning with some, and going to market with them, and finally even by being imprisoned and drinking the hemlock, he practiced philosophy—being the first to show that life, in every season and part of it, in every experience and circumstance whatsoever, admits of philosophy.
So too one must think about political life: that the foolish, even when they hold military command or act as secretary or address the assembly, are not truly engaging in politics but courting the mob, or holding festival, or stirring up faction, or performing compulsory public services; whereas the man who is truly sociable, humane, devoted to his city, solicitous, and a genuine statesman, even if he never puts on the general's cloak, is nonetheless always engaged in politics—by spurring on those who have power to act, by giving guidance to those in need, by standing alongside those who deliberate, by turning aside those who do mischief, by strengthening the well-disposed, by making it plain that he attends to public affairs not casually, nor goes to the theater or the council-chamber only where there is some eagerness or urging on account of primacy of place, and otherwise attends as a spectator or listener merely for pastime when it happens to occur; but rather, even if he is not present in body, he is present in mind and by inquiry, approving some of what is done and objecting to other parts.
For neither Aristides among the Athenians nor Cato among the Romans held office often, but throughout their whole lives they offered themselves ever active to their fatherlands. Epaminondas, for his part, accomplished many great things as a general, yet no less memorable than these is a deed of his when he was neither general nor holding any office, in Thessaly, when the generals had led the phalanx into difficult terrain and it was thrown into confusion (for the enemy were pressing hard upon them with missiles): recalled from the ranks of the hoplites, he first stopped the army's disorder and fear by encouraging them, and then, arranging and refitting the confused phalanx, led it out easily and drew it up facing the enemy, so that the enemy withdrew and turned away.
And when King Agis was already leading his army in Arcadia, drawn up for battle against the enemy, one of the elder Spartans cried out that he intended to cure one evil with another, showing that he wished this present ill-timed eagerness to be a recovery for the blameworthy withdrawal from Argos, as Thucydides says; and Agis, hearing this, was persuaded and withdrew.
Menecrates, too, had a chair set out for him daily beside the doors of the government office, and often the Ephors would rise and go to him to make inquiries and take counsel together on matters of the greatest importance. He was reputed to be a man of sound mind and known for his wisdom. And so, though his bodily strength was by now utterly worn away and he spent most of his days confined to bed, when the Ephors once sent for him to come to the marketplace, he set out, rising to walk, making his way forward with difficulty and hardship; then, meeting some small boys along the road, he asked them whether they knew of anything more necessary than obeying one's master. When they replied, "not being able to," he took this as marking the limit of his service and turned back home. For one must not let eagerness give out before one's strength does, but once strength has failed, one must not force the matter.
And indeed Scipio always used Gaius Laelius as an adviser, both in his generalship and in his political activity, so that some even said that Scipio was the actor of the deeds but Gaius their author. Cicero himself acknowledges that the finest and greatest of the counsels by which he set his country right during his consulship were composed together with the philosopher Publius Nigidius. Thus in many ways of engaging in political life, nothing prevents old men from benefiting the community with the best that they have—word and judgment and frank speech and prudent care, as the poets indeed say. For it is not our hands, nor our feet, nor the strength of our body that belongs to and forms a part of the city alone, but first of all the soul, and the beauties of the soul: justice, temperance, and wisdom. Since these are received into their own only late and slowly, it is absurd that a man should enjoy his house and his land and his other wealth and possessions, but no longer be of use in common to his fatherland and his fellow citizens on account of his age—age which takes away not so much his capacity for service as it adds to his capacity for leadership and statesmanship. This is why sculptors make the older images of Hermes without hands and without feet, but with the genital member fashioned in full, hinting that old men have the least need of those who are active through the body, provided they keep their reason active, as is fitting, and productive.