An seni respublica gerenda sit

Is it, then, not disgraceful that the old men of the public platform are found to be less noble than those of the stage, and that they withdraw from the truly sacred contests, put off the political rôle, and assume I do not know what in its stead? For surely after the rôle of a king that of a farmer is a mean one. For when Demosthenes says[*](Demosthenes, xxi. (Against Meidias) 568.) that the Paralus, being the sacred galley, was unworthily treated when it was used to transport beams, stakes, and cattle for Meidias, will not a public man who gives up such offices as superintendent of public games, Boeotian magistrate, and president of the Amphictyonic council, and is thereafter seen busying himself with measuring flour and olive cakes and with tufts of sheep’s wool - will not he be thought to be bringing upon himself the old age of a horse, as the saying is, when nobody forces him to do so? Surely taking up menial work fit only for the market-place after holding public offices is like stripping a freeborn and modest woman of her gown, putting a cook’s apron on her, and keeping her in a tavern; for just so

the dignity and greatness of high ability in public life is destroyed when it is turned to household affairs and money-making. But if - the only thing left - they give to self-indulgence and luxury the names of rest and recreation, and urge the statesman quietly to waste away and grow old in them, I do not know which of two disgraceful pictures his life will seem to resemble more closely, that of sailors who desert their ship, when they have not brought it into the harbour but it is still under sail, and devote themselves to sexual indulgence for all time to come, or that of Heracles, as some painters playfully, but with evil influence, represent him in Omphalê’s palace wearing a yellow gown and giving himself up to her Lydian maids to be fanned and have his hair curled. Shall we in like manner strip the statesman of his lion’s skin and make him constantly recline at banquets to the music of harps and flutes? And shall we not be deterred by the words addressed by Pompey the Great to Lucullus? For Lucullus gave himself up after his military activities to baths, banquets, sexual intercourse in the daytime, great listlessness, and the erection of new-fangled buildings; and he reproached Pompey for his love of office and of honour as unsuited to his age. Then Pompey said that it was more untimely for an old man to indulge in luxury than to hold office. And once when he wras ill and the physician prescribed a thrush (which was hard to get and out of season), and someone said that Lucullus had plenty of them in his breeding-place, Pompey refused to send and get one, saying, Could Pompey, then, not live if Lucullus were not luxurious?

For granted that nature seeks in every way

pleasure and enjoyment, old men are physically incapacitated for all pleasures except a few necessary ones, and not only

Aphroditê with old men is wroth,[*](Euripides, Aeolus, Frag. 23, Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 369. Plutarch, Moralia 285 b, gives two lines: ἀλλ’ ῆ τὸ γῆρας τὴν Κύ῀αν χαίρειν ἐᾷἧ τ’ Ἀφροδίτη τοῖς γεροῦσαν ἅχθεται, But either eld to Cypris bids farewell Or Aphroditê with old men is wroth. )

as Euripides says, but their appetites also for food and drink are for the most part blunted and toothless, so that they can, if I may say so, hardly whet and sharpen them. They ought to prepare for themselves pleasures in the mind, not ignoble and illiberal ones like that of Simonides, wrho said to those who reproached him for his avarice that, since old age had deprived him of all other pleasures, he was comforting his declining years with the only one left, the pleasure of gain. Public life, on the other hand, possesses pleasures most noble and great, those in fact from which the gods themselves, as we may reasonably suppose, derive their only or their chief enjoyment. These are the pleasures that spring from good deeds and noble actions. For if Nicias the painter took such delight in the labours of his art that he often had to ask his servants whether he had had his bath and his breakfast; and if Archimedes when intent upon his drawing-tablet had to be dragged away by force, stripped and anointed by his servants, and then drew diagrams upon his anointed body; and if Canus the flute-player, with whom you also are acquainted, used to say that people did not know how much greater pleasure he gave to himself than to others when he played, for if they did, those who wished to hear him would receive pay instead of giving it. In view of these examples, do we not perceive how great are the pleasures the virtues provide, for those who practise them, as the result of the noble deeds they do and their works for the good of the community and of mankind; and that too without tickling or enervating them as do the smooth and gentle motions made on the body? Those have a frantic, unsteady titillation mixed with convulsive throbbing, but the pleasures given by noble works, such as those of which the man who rightly serves the State is the author, not like the golden wings of Euripides[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 655, no. 911.) but like those heavenly Platonic pinions,[*](Plato, Phaedrus, 246 b=248 e, where the soul is likened to a chariot and charioteer with winged steeds.) bear the soul on high as it acquires greatness and lofty spirit mingled with joy.