An seni respublica gerenda sit

For that reason kings are said to grow better among wars and campaigns than when they live at

leisure. Attalus certainly, the brother of Eumenes, because he was completely enfeebled by long inactivity and peace, was actually kept and fattened like a sheep by Philopoemen, one of his courtiers; so that even the Romans used in jest to ask those who came from Asia if the king had any influence with Philopoemen. And it would be impossible to find many abler generals among the Romans than Lucullus, when he combined thought with action; but when he gave himself up to a life of inactivity and to a home-keeping and thought-free existence, he became a wasted skeleton, like sponges in calm seas, and then when he committed his old age to the care and nursing of one of his freedmen named Callisthenes, it seemed as if he were being drugged by him with potions and quackeries, until his brother Marcus drove the fellow away and himself managed and tended him like a child the rest of his life, which was not long. Dareius the father of Xerxes used to say that when dangers threatened he excelled himself in wisdom,[*](Cf. Moralia, 172 f.) and Ateas the Scythian said that he considered himself no better than his grooms when he was idle; and Dionysius the Elder, when someone asked if he was at leisure, replied: May that never happen to me! For a bow, they say, breaks when too tightly stretched, but a soul when too much relaxed. In fact musicians, if they give up listening to music, and geometricians if they give up solving problems, and arithmeticians if they give up the practice of calculating, impair, as they advance in age, their habits of mind as well as their activities, although the studies which they pursue are not concerned with action but with contemplation; but the mental habit of public men - deliberation, wisdom, and justice, and, besides these, experience, which hits upon the proper moments and words and is the power that creates persuasion - is maintained by constantly speaking, acting, reasoning, and judging; and it would be a crime if, by deserting these activities, it should allow such great and so many virtues to leak out from the soul; for it is reasonable to suppose that love of humanity, public spirit, and graciousness would waste away, none of which ought to have any end or limit.

Certainly if you had Tithonus as your father, who was immortal but always needed much care on account of old age, I do not believe you would avoid or grow weary of attending to him, speaking to him, and helping him on the ground that you had performed those duties for a long time; and your fatherland or, as the Cretans call it, your mother country, which has earlier and greater rights than your parents, is long lived, to be sure, but by no means ageless or self-sufficient; on the contrary, since it always needs much consideration and assistance and anxious thought, it draws the statesman to itself and holds him,

Grasping him fast by the cloak, and restrains him though hastening onward.[*](Homer, Il. xvi. 9.)

Now surely you know that I have been serving the Pythian Apollo for many Pythiads,[*](Periods of four years marked by the quadrennial celebration of the Pythian games in honour of Apollo at Delphi.) but you would not say: Plutarch, you have done enough sacrificing, marching in processions, and dancing in choruses, and now that you are older it is time to put off the garland and to desert the oracle on account of your age. And so do not imagine that you yourself, being a leader and interpreter of the sacred rites of civic life, ought to give up the worship of Zeus of the State and of the Forum, rites to which you have for a long time been consecrated.