was written at the age of sixty-two years and upwards, and was addressed to his friend Atticus, who was three years older.* It belongs to the division of Ethics, which had for its subject-matter the nature of the summum bonum, and the conduct of life. Since the third century B.C. philosophy had lost the hope of substituting reason for violence in the management of affairs, and had aimed to find for the individual philosopher, in virtue or pleasure or elsewhere, a satisfaction to outweigh the inevitable ills of life. Every relation and incident of life was a subject of philosophical discussion, either from the pleasure it could afford, or the pain it was vulgarly supposed to cause. In this treatise Cicero, imitating Aristò of Ceos, endeavors to show that old age, usually considered one of the ills of life, is to the wise man deprived of its terrors. In form it imitates the Socratic or Platonic dialogue, the slight part taken in it by the other speakers serving only to give an air of reality, and to mark the divisions of the subject, while the name of Cato gives dignity and weight to the argument.† The dialogue is put, apparently, in the last year of Cato's long life, and represents the old man discoursing, calmly and cheerfully, with the younger Scipio (Emilianus), brother-in-law of Cato's elder son, and his friend Lælius, the same who gives his name to the dialogue on Friendship. Cicero himself was strongly attracted by some points of the old statesman's life and character, his plebeian birth, his political struggles, his intellectual eminence, and his genuine love of rural occupations. The incidents of his career het has studied carefully, and introduced into his discourse, with here and there a bit of his antique style, - antiquior sermo, * Ad senem senex de senectute. - Læl. i. 5. Legendus mihi sæpius est Cato Major ad te missus. Amariorem enim me senectus facit: stomachor omnia. — Att. xiv. 21. + Catonem induxi senem disputantem, quia nulla videbatur aptior persona quæ de illâ ætate loqueretur, quam ejus qui et diutissime senex fuisset, et in ipsâ senectute præter ceteros floruisset. Itaque ipse mea legens sic afficior interdum, ut Catonem, non me, loqui existimem. — Læl. i. 4. horridiora verba. But though the discourse is put in Cato's mouth, it is Cicero that speaks. Not merely is there the ripe Latin of the last century of the Republic, and the perfection of style of the greatest of Roman authors, but the thoughts and sentiments, even, are not such as belong to the tough and hard-headed Cato, whom Cicero employs as a lay-figure, to be dressed in the mental costume of his own day. And, withal, he fashions the antique character into something of his own more modern likeness. The Cato of the dialogue is mild-mannered, reflective, at home in philo sophical literature, and even not disinclined to music, after the example of Socrates. The real Cato was harsh in temper, narrow in prejudice, a shrewd hater of the elder Scipio who was his rival, and of the whole party of refinement. He was a man "of iron strength of body and mind, of antique sternness and firmness of character, of simplicity and thrift, of patriotism that was close to narrow bigotry, of strength of will and patient temper, of unwearied force of toil and thirst for knowledge, with a copious knowledge of law and a vigorous original eloquence, of bravery and generalship, of nervous activity in his province as husbandman and householder, as statesman and writer, with a high reputation for practical sagacity, commanding the unshaken regard of the people and senate, in both public and private life, and all this to the very end of his great old age.” † So far as any connection with the substance of the book is concerned, we might dismiss Cato with these few words. It is necessary, however, briefly to describe his life and character, by way of explaining the allusions in the body of the work. MARCUS PORCIUS CATO-"the Elder" or the "Censor" -was born at Tusculum, of a plebeian family, B.C. 234. His *Brutus, 17, 68. † Lahmeyer. Cicero seems to have been aware of this inconsistency in the delineation (see § 3). Perhaps he meant to recommend philosophy by making even Cato in his last years attracted by it. youth was spent in "thrift, hardship, and tillage,” varied, as he came of age, by pleading in the local courts. He served in South Italy against Hannibal under Fabius Maximus (B.C. 212 and 209), again under Nero (B.c. 207) probably as military tribune, in Sicily and Africa as quæstor under Scipio (B.c. 204), as consul in Spain (B.c. 195), and as legatus at Thermopylæ, where he contributed largely to the victory over Antiochus. Though by birth a simple yeoman, as Marius was a hundred years later, he was never like him a popular partisan, but became himself a leading mem- ¿ ber of the aristocracy. Gifted with a shrewd common sense, and an effective popular eloquence, the energetic, upright young rustic became known to the patrician Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who was his fast friend in Rome, and afterwards his colleague as consul, legatus, and censor. With all his intellectual vigor he had the prejudices of the narrow and bigoted conservatism that marked the temper, of the elder Republic; and it was one of his acts to expel the Athenian envoys mentioned above from Rome, for fear of corrupting the Roman youth. His son Marcus, who died B.C. 152,- a man of marked genius and merit, ried the daughter of Æmilius Paulus, and so was brotherin-law of the younger Scipio. Another son, born when Cato was eighty years old, was the grandfather of Cato Uticensis, the most able and honest of Cæsar's enemies. After a long controversy with Scipio Nasica, Cato succeeded (B.c. 150) in forcing on the third and last war with Carthage. He died the following year, at the age of eighty-five. mar Cato is best known by the severity with which he exercised the censorship. This gave him the name by which he is best known, Censorius, or the censor. This office was then at the height of its efficiency, and was an engine of almost despotic power. The men holding it had the unrestricted right to make out the list of Senators, that is, to determine who should govern Rome for the next five years; and, on the other hand, to punish, by expulsion from the Senate, by a private stigma of infamy, or even by the entire deprivation of political rights, any person whom they chose. (See § 42.) A cause must be assigned; but even if this were omitted, there seems to have been no appeal from their judgment. Flaccus, the colleague of Cato, stood steadily by him in his action as censor, and, with his narrowness, obstinacy, prejudice, but entire honesty, he exercised the power of his office with relentless vigor. If it was especially his own private enemies that he punished, no doubt he sincerely believed them to be dangerous to the State, or they would not be enemies of his. These characteristics clung to him through life. Whatever was new he opposed; and in this way he has the credit of having resisted many baneful innovations, as also many salutary ones. He had no capacity to distinguish between the steady movement of national life and those insidious influences from outside, which eat out the national vigor. By his stubborn conservatism he gained the repute of being a typical Roman of the old school; while, in fact, the glory and strength of Rome lay in her ability to draw into herself, and not exclude or destroy, the life of the races she subdued. The writings of Cato were: 1. De Re Rustica, the first Latin treatise on agriculture, full of practical observations and directions, in great part still extant; 2. Origines, the first historical work in Latin, curtly and briefly told, from the earliest legendary stories down to his own day, of which only fragments remain; 3. various writings on politics, antiquities, and war, with numerous orations, of which Cicero had read "more than a hundred and fifty." * Brut. 17. ON OLD AGE. CATO MAJOR, sive DE SENECTUTE. O TITE, si quid te adiuero curamve levasso Licet enim mihi versibus eisdem adfari te, Attice, quibus adfatur Flamininum Ille vir haud magna cum re, sed plenus fidei. Quamquam certo scio, non, ut Flamininum, Sollicitari te, Tite, sic noctisque diesque; novi enim moderationem animi tui et aequitatem, teque non cognomen solum Athenis deportasse, sed humanitatem et prudentiam intellego. Et tamen te suspicor eisdem rebus quibus meipsum interdum gravius commoveri, quarum consolatio et maior est et in aliud tempus differenda. Nunc autem visum est mihi de senectute aliquid ad te conscribere. 2. Hoc enim onere quod mihi commune tecum est, aut iam urguentis aut certe adventantis senectutis, et te et me ipsum levari volo: etsi te quidem id modice ac sapienter, sicut omnia, et ferre et laturum esse certo scio. Sed mihi, cum de senectute vellem aliquid scribere, tu occurrebas dignus eo munere quo uterque nostrum communiter uteretur. Mihi quidem ita iucunda hujus libri confectio fuit, ut non modo omnis absterserit senectutis molestias, sed effecerit mollem etiam et iucundam senectutem. Numquam igitur laudari satis digne philosophia poterit, cui qui pareat omne tempus aetatis sine molestia possit degere. 3. Sed de ceteris et diximus multa, et saepe dicemus: hunc librum ad te de |