consulship of Caepio and the second consulship of Philippus, when I, being sixty-five years old, with a strong voice and sound lungs, spoke in favor of the Voconian law.[1] At the age of seventy years—for so many did Ennius live—he bore the two burdens which are esteemed the heaviest, poverty and old age, in such a way that he almost seemed to take delight in them. To enter into particulars, I find on reflection four reasons why old age seems wretched;—one, that it calls us away from the management of affairs; another, that it impairs bodily vigor; the third, that it deprives us to a great degree of sensual gratifications; the fourth, that it brings one to the verge of death. Let us see, if you please, how much force and justice there is in each of these reasons.
VI. Old age cuts one off from the management of affairs. Of what affairs? Of those which are managed in youth and by strength of body? But are there not affairs properly belonging to the later years of life, which may be administered by the mind, even though the body be infirm? Did Quintus Maximus then do nothing? Did Lucius Paullus,
- ↑ A law restricting, and in the case of large estates prohibiting, the bequest of property to women, perhaps with the view of preventing the alienation of estates from the families in which they had been transmitted. But an extract from Cato's speech, given by Aulus Gellius, charges wives who had separate estates of their own with first lending money to their husbands in their stress of need, and then becoming their most relentless and annoying creditors.
