athbed when
he was a very old man, said that he never felt that his old age had
become feebler than his youth had been. I recollect, when a boy, that
Lucius Metellus,[7] who, when four years after his second consulship
he had been made "pontifex maximus," and for twenty-two years held
that sacerdotal office, enjoyed such good strength at the latter
period of his life, that he felt no want of youth. There is no need
for me to speak about myself, and yet that is the privilege of old
age, and conceded to my time of life.

Do you see how, in Homer, Nestor very often proclaims his own virtues?
for he was now living in the third generation of men; nor had he
occasion to fear lest, when stating the truth about himself, he should
appear either too arrogant or too talkative; for, as Homer says, from
his tongue speech flowed sweeter than honey; for which charm he stood
in need of no strength of body; and yet the famous chief of Greece
nowhere wishes to have ten men like Ajax, but like Nestor; and he does
not doubt if that should happen, Troy would in a short time perish.

But I return to myself. I am in my eighty-fourth year. In truth I
should like to be able to make the same boast that Cyrus did; but one
thing I can say, that altho I have not, to be sure, that strength
which I had either as a soldier in the Punic war or as questor in the
same war, or as Consul in Spain, or, four years afterward, when as
military tribune I fought a battle at Thermopylae, in the consulship of
Marcus Acilius Glabrio; yet, as you see, old age has not quite
enfeebled me or broken me down: the senate-house does not miss my
strength, nor the rostra, nor my friends, nor my clients, nor my
guests; for I have never agreed to that old and much-praised proverb
which advises you to become an old man early if you wish to be an old
man long. I for my part would rather be an old man for a shorter
length of time than be an old man before I was one. And, therefore, no
one as yet has wished to have an interview with me to whom I have been
denied as engaged.

But I have less strength than either of you two. Neither even do you
possess the strength of Titus Pontius the centurion; is he, therefore,
the more excellent man? Only let there be a moderate degree of
strength, and let every man exert himself as much as he can; and in
truth that man will not be absorbed in regretting the want of
strength. Milo, at Olympia, is said to have gone over the course while
suppo