foremost of philosophers, Pythagoras and Democritus, on Plato, on Xenocrates, in later time, on Zeno and Cleanthes, or on that Diogenes the Stoic whom you saw when he was in Rome?[1] Or with all these men was not activity in their life-work coextensive with their lives? But leaving out of the account these pursuits, which have in them a divine element, I can name old Romans who are farmers in what was the Sabine territory, my neighbors and friends,[2] without whose oversight hardly any important work is ever done on their land, whether in sowing, or harvesting, or storing their crops. This, however, is not so surprising in them; for no one is so old that he does not expect to live a year longer. But the same persons bestow great pains in labor from which they know that they shall never derive any benefit.
"He plants
Trees to bear fruit when he shall be no more,"
as our poet Statius says in his Synephebi.[3] Nor, indeed can the farmer, though he be an old man, if asked for whom he is planting, hesitate to answer, "For the immortal gods, whose will it was, not only
- ↑ We know not how long Homer or Hesiod lived; but they are always spoken of as old men. The reputed age of the others on the list ranged from Plato, at eighty-one, to Democritus, who was said to have reached his hundredth year.
- ↑ Cato generally lived on his Sabine farm when public duty did not require his presence in Rome.
- ↑ Young Friends, probably the name of a play. None of the works of Caecilius Statius, its author, are extant.
