1There remains the fourth reason, which seems most of all to distress and trouble our age: the approach of death, which certainly cannot be far from old age. 1O wretched old man, who in so long a life has not seen that death is to be despised! 1Death is either to be utterly disregarded, if it entirely extinguishes the soul, or even to be wished for, if it leads the soul somewhere where it will be eternal. 1And yet certainly no third possibility can be found. 67What then should I fear, if after death I am going to be either not wretched or even happy? 67And yet who is so foolish, however young he may be, as to be certain that he will live until evening?
67Indeed, that age has many more chances of death than ours: young men fall into illnesses more easily, are more gravely ill, and are cured with more difficulty. 67And so few reach old age; 67if this did not happen so, men would live better and more wisely. 67For intelligence and reason and counsel are found in old men, and if there had been none of them, there would have been no states at all. 67But I return to impending death. 67What sort of charge against old age is that, when you see that it is shared with youth? 68I have felt in the case of my excellent son, and you, Scipio, in the case of your brothers, who were expected to reach the highest rank, that death is common to every age.
68But a young man hopes to live long, which an old man cannot hope. 68He hopes foolishly; 68for what is more foolish than to take the uncertain for certain, the false for true? 68But an old man has not even anything to hope for. 68Yet he is in a better position than the young man, since what the young man hopes for, he has already obtained: the one wants to live long, the other has lived long. 69And yet, good gods, what is there in man's nature that is long? 69For grant the furthest limit of time; 69let us look for the age of the king of the Tartessians — for there was, as I see it recorded, a certain Arganthonius at Gades, who had reigned eighty years and lived a hundred and twenty — but to me nothing seems even lasting in which there is something final; 69for when that comes, then what has passed has flowed away; 69there remains only what you have achieved by virtue and right actions.
69Hours indeed pass away, and days and months and years, nor does past time ever return, nor can it be known what is to follow. 69Whatever time is given to each man for living, with that he ought to be content. 70For an actor need not play the drama through to the end in order to please, provided he wins approval in whatever act he appears; 70nor need the wise go on until the 'Applaud!', for a short span of life is long enough for living well and honourably; 70but if one goes on further, one ought not to grieve any more than farmers grieve that, when the sweetness of springtime is past, summer and autumn have come.
70For spring, like youth, signifies and shows the fruits to come; 70the remaining seasons are suited to reaping and gathering the fruits. 71And the fruit of old age, as I have often said, is the memory and abundance of blessings won in earlier years. 71Moreover, all things that happen in accordance with nature are to be counted as good; 71and what is so much in accordance with nature as for old men to die? 71The same thing befalls young men while nature opposes and resists. 71And so young men seem to me to die as when the force of a flame is smothered by a flood of water, but old men as when a fire that has burnt itself out goes out of its own accord, with no force applied; and just as apples, if they are unripe, are torn from the trees with difficulty, but if ripe and mellow, fall of themselves, so force takes life from young men, ripeness from old; 71and this ripeness is so pleasant to me that, the nearer I approach death, I seem, as it were, to be sighting land and to be about to come at last into harbour after a long voyage.