CICERO’S “DE SENECTUTE” (ON OLD AGE)

When I was a senior at Cathedral Latin High School taking my fourth year of Latin, I remember translating Marcus Tullius Cicero’s essay on old age (De Senectute). At the age of 18, like others in my class, I did not give much thought to the meaning of Cicero’s treatise. All of us knew people who were “old”—grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors on our street. But if I ever thought I would be as old as they, it was only a passing thought. Until now, that is.

Recently I googled Cicero’s “De Senectute” and found an English translation. This time I gave a lot of thought to what Cicero had to say about old age. Consider, for example, these words that he wrote before the time of Christ:

Again, all things that accord with nature are to be counted as good. But what can be more in accordance with nature than for old men to die? A thing, indeed, which young men also believe, though nature revolts and fights against it. Accordingly, the death of young men seems to me like putting out a great fire with a deluge of water; but old men die like a fire going out because it has burnt down of its own nature without artificial means. Again, just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This ripeness is so delightful to me, that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem as it were to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage.

When I first translated De Senectute, the year was 1941. In December of that year the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, causing our country to respond by entering WW II. Four years followed when “violence took life from young men,” not only young Americans but young Germans and young Japanese as well. At my high school graduation, Ed Sadler, 18, gave the commencement address. A few years later he lost his life when his plane was shot down in an air battle with the Germans. He was the first one of our class whose fire of life was doused by a deluge of water, to paraphrase Cicero. Others from colleges and high schools throughout the country met the same fate.

And here I am with the ripeness of old age upon me, coming into port after a long voyage. I hope I don’t reach that port too soon. I want to stay young enough to complete many projects I have in mind for “old age.”

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