1Do you see how in Homer Nestor very often proclaims his own virtues? 1For he was seeing the third generation of men, and he had no need to fear that, in proclaiming the truth about himself, he might seem either too arrogant or too talkative. 1'For,' as Homer says, 'from his tongue flowed speech sweeter than honey;' 1and for this sweetness he had no need of any bodily strength. 1And yet that famous leader of Greece nowhere prays to have ten men like Ajax, but ten like Nestor; and if this should happen to him, he does not doubt that Troy would soon fall. 32But I return to myself. 32I am in my eighty-fourth year: I should like indeed to be able to make the same boast as Cyrus, but still I can say this, that I have not, it is true, the strength I had either as a soldier in the Punic war or as quaestor in the same war or as consul in Spain, or four years later, when as military tribune I fought at Thermopylae in the consulship of Manius Glabrio; 32but still, as you see, old age has not altogether unnerved me, has not crushed me: the senate house does not miss my strength, nor the rostra, nor my friends, nor my clients, nor my guests.
32For I have never agreed with that old and much-praised proverb which advises you to become an old man early if you wish to be an old man long. 32For my part, I would rather be an old man for a shorter time than be an old man before I was one. 32And so no one has yet wished to meet me and found me engaged. 33But I have less strength than either of you. 33Nor do you have the strength of the centurion Titus Pontius: is he therefore the more excellent man? 33Only let strength be used with moderation, and let each man strive as far as he is able, and he will certainly not be gripped by any great longing for strength.
33Milo is said to have walked the length of the stadium at Olympia carrying an ox on his shoulders: which, then, would you rather be given, this strength of body or the strength of mind of Pythagoras? 33In short, use that blessing while it is present, and when it is gone, do not seek it back: unless perhaps young men ought to long for childhood, and those a little advanced in age for youth. 33The course of life is fixed, and nature has a single path, and that a simple one, and to each part of life its own proper season has been given, so that the weakness of children, the high spirit of young men, the seriousness of those now in settled age, and the ripeness of old age each have something natural, which ought to be gathered in its own time.
34I think you hear, Scipio, what your grandfather's guest-friend Masinissa does today at ninety years of age: when he has started a journey on foot, he does not mount a horse at all; 34but when he has started on horseback, he does not dismount; 34no rain, no cold can induce him to cover his head; 34there is the utmost leanness of body in him, and so he performs all the duties and functions of a king. 34Exercise and temperance, then, can preserve something of one's former strength even in old age.