An seni respublica gerenda sit

What then? someone may say; do we not hear a soldier say in a comedy

My white hair grants me henceforth full discharge?

[*](Kock, Com. Att. Frag. iii. p. 451, no. 226. Poet and play are unknown.) Certainly, my friend, for the servants of Ares should properly be young and in their prime, as practising

war and war’s practices baneful,[*](Homer, Il. viii. 453.)

in which even if an old mans hoary hair is covered by a helmet,

Yet are his limbs by unseen weight oppressed,[*](Homer, Il. xix. 165.)

and though the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak; but from the servants of Zeus, god of the Council, the Market-place, and the State, we do not demand deeds of hands and feet, but of counsel, foresight, and speech - not such speech as makes a roar and a clamour among the people, but that which contains good sense, prudent thought, and conservatism; and in these the hoary hair and the wrinkles that people make fun of appear as witnesses to a man’s experience and strengthen him by the aid of persuasiveness and the reputation for character. For youth is meant to obey and old age to rule, and that State is most secure

1. Where old men’s counsels and the young men’s spears
2. Hold highest rank[*](Pindar, Bergk-Schroeder, p. 467, no. 199 (213).);

and the lines

1. First he established a council of old men lofty in spirit
2. Hard by the vessel of Nestor[*](Homer, Il. ii. 53.)

meet with wonderful approval. And therefore the Pythian Apollo named the aristocracy which was coupled with the kingship at Lacedaemon Ancients (Presbygeneas), and Lycurgus named it Elders (Gerontes), and the council at Rome is still called the Senate (body of elders). And just as the law places diadem and crown upon the head, so nature puts grey hair upon it as an honourable symbol of the high dignity of leadership. And the words geras (honour, also reward) and gerairein (venerate) retain, I believe, a meaning of veneration derived from old men (gerontes), not because they bathe in warm water or sleep in softer beds than other men, but because they hold royal rank in the States in accordance with their wisdom, the proper and perfect fruit of which, as of a late-bearing plant, nature produces after long effort in old age. At any rate when the king of kings prayed to the gods:

Would that I had ten such advisers among the Achaeans[*](Homer, Il. ii. 372. Agamemnon is the speaker.)

as Nestor was, not one of the martial and might-breathing Achaeans found fault with him, but all conceded that, not in civil affairs alone, but in war as well, old age has great weight;

1. For one wise counsel over many hands
2. Is victor,[*](Euripides, Antiopê, Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 419, no. 200.)

and one sensible and persuasive expression of opinion accomplishes the greatest and most excellent public measures.

Certainly the office of king, the most perfect and the greatest of all political offices, has the most cares, labours, and occupations. At any rate Seleucus, they used to tell us, constantly repeated that if people in general knew what a task it was merely to read and write so many letters, they would not even pick up a crown that had been thrown away. And Philip, we are told, when he heard, as he was on the

point of encamping in a suitable place, that there was no fodder for the beasts of draught, exclaimed: O Heracles, what a life is mine, if I must needs live to suit the convenience even of my asses! There is, then, a time to advise even a king when he has become an old man to lay aside the crown and the purple, to assume a cloak and a crook, and to live in the country, lest it be thought, if he continues to rule when his hair is grey, that he is busying himself with superfluous and unseasonable occupations. But if it is not fitting to say this about an Agesilaüs or a Numa or a Dareius, let us neither remove a Solon from the Council of the Areopagus nor a Cato from the Senate on account of old age, and let us not advise a Pericles to leave the democracy in the lurch. For anyhow it is absurd that a man when he is young should prance (about upon the platform and then, after having poured out upon the public all those insane ambitions and impulses, when the age arrives which brings wisdom through experience, should give up public life and desert it like a woman of whom he has had all the use.