that I should receive this estate from my ancestors, but that I should also transmit it in undiminished value to my posterity."
VIII. What I have just quoted from Caecilius[1] about the old man's providing for a coming generation, is very far preferable to what he says elsewhere,—
"Old Age, forsooth, if other ill thou bring not,
This will suffice, that with one's lengthened years
So much he sees he fain would leave unseen,"—
and much, it may be, that he is glad to see; while youth, too, often encounters what it would willingly shun. Still worse, that same Caecilius writes,—
"The utmost misery of age I count it,
To feel that it is hateful to the young."
Agreeable rather than hateful; for as wise old men are charmed with well-disposed youth, so do young men delight in the counsels of the old, by which they are led to the cultivation of the virtues. I do not feel that I am less agreeable to you than you are to me.—To return to our subject, you see that old age is not listless and inert, but is even laborious, with work and plans of work always in hand, generally, indeed, with employments corresponding to the pursuits of earlier life. But what shall we say of those who even make new acquisitions?
- ↑ Caecilius Statius. There can hardly he need of discriminating him from Publius Papinius Statius, whose poems are extant, and familiarly known to classical scholars.
