e case of my excellent son--as you
had, Scipio, in that of your brothers, who were expected to attain the
highest honours--to realise that death is common to every time of life.
Yes, you will say; but a young man expects to live long; an old man
cannot expect to do so. Well, he is a fool to expect it. For what can be
more foolish than to regard the uncertain as certain, the false as true?
"An old man has nothing even to hope." Ah, but it is just there that
he is in a better position than a young man, since what the latter only
hopes he has obtained. The one wishes to live long; the other has lived
long.

And yet, good heaven! what is "long" in a man's life? For grant
the utmost limit: let us expect an age like that of the King of the
Tartessi. For there was, as I find recorded, a certain Agathonius at
Gades who reigned eighty years and lived a hundred and twenty. But to my
mind nothing seems even long in which there is any "last," for when that
arrives, then all the past has slipped away--only that remains to which
you have attained by virtue and righteous actions. Hours indeed, and
days and months and years depart, nor does past time ever return, nor
can the future be known. Whatever time each is granted for life, with
that he is bound to be content. An actor, in order to earn approval,
is not bound to perform the play from beginning to end; let him only
satisfy the audience in whatever act he appears. Nor need a wise man go
on to the concluding "plaudite." For a short term of life is long enough
for living well and honourably. But if you go farther, you have no more
right to grumble than farmers do because the charm of the spring season
is past and the summer and autumn have come. For the word "spring" in a
way suggests youth, and points to the harvest to be: the other seasons
are suited for the reaping and storing of the crops. Now the harvest of
old age is, as I have often said, the memory and rich store of blessings
laid up in easier life. Again, all things that accord with nature are to
be counted as good. But what can be more in accordance with nature
than for old men to die? A thing, indeed, which also beliefs young men,
though nature revolts and fights against it. Accordingly, the death of
young men seems to me like putting out a great fire with a deluge of
water; but old men die like a fire going out because it has burnt down
of its own nature without artificial means. Again, just as apples when
unripe are tor