1Of old age, however, there is no fixed limit, and one lives rightly in it so long as one can perform and maintain the task of duty and despise death, from which it comes about that old age is even bolder and braver than youth. 1This is what was meant by Solon's answer to the tyrant Pisistratus, when, to the tyrant's question of what in the world he relied on in opposing him so boldly, he is said to have answered, 'Old age.' 1But the best end of living is when, with mind unimpaired and senses sound, the same nature that put together its own work takes it apart. 1Just as a ship or a building is most easily pulled down by the same man who built it, so a man is best taken apart by the same nature that glued him together.
1Moreover, every joining is hard to tear apart when fresh, easy when it has grown old. 1So it comes about that the short remainder of life is neither to be clutched at greedily by old men nor to be abandoned without reason; 73and Pythagoras forbids us to leave our guard-post and station in life without the order of our commander, that is, of god. 73There is, indeed, an epitaph of the wise Solon in which he says that he does not wish his death to lack the grief and lamentation of his friends. 73He wants, I suppose, to be dear to his own people. 73But I rather think Ennius said it better: 'Let no one honour me with tears, nor make my funeral with weeping.' 73He does not think that a death should be mourned which is followed by immortality.
74Then again, there can be some feeling in dying, and that for a short time, especially for an old man: after death, indeed, feeling is either to be wished for or there is none. 74But this ought to have been practised from youth, that we disregard death; 74without this practice no one can be of a tranquil mind. 74For die we certainly must, and it is uncertain whether it will not be this very day. 74How then can anyone who fears death, hanging over him at every hour, keep his mind steady? 75On this there seems to be no need of very long discussion, when I recall not Lucius Brutus, who was killed in freeing his country, not the two Decii, who spurred their horses to a voluntary death, not Marcus Atilius, who set out to his punishment in order to keep the faith he had pledged to the enemy, not the two Scipios, who wished to block the Carthaginians' path even with their own bodies, not your grandfather Lucius Paulus, who paid with his death for his colleague's rashness in the disgrace at Cannae, not Marcus Marcellus, whose death not even the cruellest of enemies allowed to go without the honour of burial, but our legions, which, as I have written in my Origins, have often set out with eager and lofty spirit for a place from which they believed they would never return.
75What young men, then, and those not only unlearned but even rustic, despise, shall learned old men dread? 76Altogether, as it seems to me at least, satiety of all pursuits produces satiety of life. 76There are certain pursuits of childhood: do young men then long for them? 76There are those of early youth: does the age now settled, which is called middle life, seek them? 76There are those of that age too: not even these are sought in old age. 76There are certain final pursuits of old age: so, just as the pursuits of earlier ages fall away, so too do those of old age; 76and when this happens, satiety of life brings the time ripe for death.