to
them if they were in their eight-hundredth year than in their eightieth?
For their past, however long, when once it was past, would have no
consolation for a stupid old age. Wherefore, if it is your wont to
admire my wisdom--and I would that it were worthy of your good opinion
and of my own surname of Sapiens--it really consists in the fact that I
follow Nature, the best of guides, as I would a god, and am loyal to
her commands. It is not likely, if she has written the rest of the play
well, that she has been careless about the last act like some idle poet.
But after all some "last" was inevitable, just as to the berries of a
tree and the fruits of the earth there comes in the fulness of time a
period of decay and fall. A wise man will not make a grievance of this.
To rebel against nature--is not that to fight like the giants with the
gods?

_Laelius_. And yet, Cato, you will do us a very great favour (I venture
to speak for Scipio as for myself) if--since we all hope, or at least
wish, to become old men--you would allow us to learn from you in good
time before it arrives, by what methods we may most easily acquire the
strength to support the burden of advancing age.

_Cato_. I will do so without doubt, Laelius, especially if, as you say,
it will be agreeable to you both.

_Laelius_ We do wish very much, Cato, if it is no trouble to you, to
be allowed to see the nature of the bourne which you have reached after
completing a long journey, as it were, upon which we too are bound to
embark.

3. _Cato_. I will do the best I can, Laelius. It has often been my
fortune to bear the complaints of my contemporaries--like will to like,
you know, according to the old proverb--complaints to which men like C.
Salinator and Sp. Albinus, who were of consular rank and about my time,
used to give vent. They were, first, that they had lost the pleasures of
the senses, without which they did not regard life as life at all; and,
secondly, that they were neglected by those from whom they had been used
to receive attentions. Such men appear to me to lay the blame on the
wrong thing. For if it had been the fault of old age, then these same
misfortunes would have befallen me and all other men of advanced years.
But I have known many of them who never said a word of complaint against
old age; for they were only too glad to be freed from the bondage of
passion, and were not at all looked down upon by their friends. The fact
is that the b