1To what end, then, so much about Maximus? 1Because you surely see that it would be impious to say that such an old age was wretched. 1Yet not everyone can be a Scipio or a Maximus, to remember the storming of cities, battles on land and sea, wars waged by themselves, and triumphs. 1There is also the calm and gentle old age of a life spent quietly, purely and gracefully, such as we are told was Plato's, who died writing in his eighty-first year, and such as was Isocrates', who says that he wrote the book entitled Panathenaicus in his ninety-fourth year, and he lived five years afterwards; 1his teacher, Gorgias of Leontini, completed a hundred and seven years and never ceased from his study and his work.
1When he was asked why he wished to remain alive so long, 'I have nothing,' he said, 'for which to blame old age.' 14A splendid reply, and worthy of a learned man! 14For fools lay their own vices and their own fault on old age, which Ennius, whom I mentioned just now, did not do: 'As a brave horse, which often won at Olympia on the final lap, now rests, worn out by age.' 14He compares his own old age to that of a brave and victorious horse; 14and him you can indeed remember well; 14for the present consuls, Titus Flamininus and Manius Acilius, were elected in the nineteenth year after his death; 14and he died in the consulship of Caepio and of Philippus for the second time, when I, at sixty-five years of age, had spoken for the Voconian law with a loud voice and good lungs.
14At seventy years of age — for Ennius lived that long — he bore the two burdens that are thought the greatest, poverty and old age, in such a way that he seemed almost to take delight in them. 15Indeed, when I consider it in my mind, I find four reasons why old age seems wretched: one, that it calls us away from active affairs; 15the second, that it makes the body weaker; 15the third, that it deprives us of almost all pleasures; 15the fourth, that it is not far from death. 15Let us see, if you please, how great and how just each of these reasons is.