On Old Age
- Language:
- Latin
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~58,500 words · 278 passages
Cite this work
- APACicero. (n.d.). Cato Maior de Senectute with Introduction and Notes by Marcus Tullius Cicero [On Old Age]. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/cato-maior-de-senectute-with-introduction-and-notes-by-marcus-tullius-cicero
- MLACicero. Cato Maior de Senectute with Introduction and Notes by Marcus Tullius Cicero [On Old Age]. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/cato-maior-de-senectute-with-introduction-and-notes-by-marcus-tullius-cicero.
- ChicagoCicero. Cato Maior de Senectute with Introduction and Notes by Marcus Tullius Cicero [On Old Age]. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/cato-maior-de-senectute-with-introduction-and-notes-by-marcus-tullius-cicero.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The Latin original of Cicero's dialogue on old age, of 44 BC, in a school edition with introduction and notes.
Context and history
Cicero was sixty-two, had just lost his daughter and the political world he had commanded, and put the defence of old age into the mouth of Cato the Elder, who is eighty-four in the year of the dialogue. The four charges against old age — that it withdraws us from affairs, weakens the body, takes away pleasure, and stands next to death — are answered one by one, and the underlying answer is always the same: what old age removes is what is no longer needed, and what it leaves is what matters. Dedicated to Atticus, like the 'De amicitia', and read without interruption ever since: Montaigne quotes it, and the translation Franklin printed was among the first classics stamped in America. The introduction and notes of this edition are the modern editor's, not Cicero's: they are there to help with the Latin, not to be cited.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
which had disappeared. Glabrio denounced Cato as a perjurer, but yet retired from his candidature. On this occasion Cato and Flaccus failed, Marcellus being elected as plebeian and Flamininus as patrician censor. In the next year (188) Cato acted in the senate with the party which tried unsuccessfully to refuse the triumph to the two consuls of 189, M. Fulvius Nobilior and Cn. Manlius Vulso, the former of whom had gained none but trifling advantages over the Aetolians, while the latter had disgraced the Roman name by making war without authorization upon the Gauls of Asia Minor, and had also suffered a humiliating defeat from some Thracian robber bands on his homeward march. Not disheartened by ill success, Cato and his friends determined to strike at higher game. L. Scipio Asiaticus (or Asiagenus), the brother of Africanus, was asserted in the senate to have appropriated 3000 talents of public money when in command against Antiochus. Legal proceedings were taken not only against Asiaticus, but against Africanus, who behaved with great violence and arrogance. In the end Africanus withdrew to his country estate, while his brother was condemned to pay a heavy fine. A death-stroke had been given to the almost kingly authority of Africanus, who never again showed his face in Rome. The proceedings against the Scipios seem to have begun in 187 and not to have been completed before 185. Nearly twenty years had passed since the conflict between Cato and Scipio began, and now it had ended in a complete triumph for Cato.[43] But the new modes of which Scipio was the chief patron were too strong to be conquered, and Cato spent the rest of his life in fighting a hopeless battle against them, though he fought for a time with the strongest weapons that the constitution supplied. In 184 he was censor along with Flaccus, who seems to have allowed his colleague full liberty of action.…