EDITED BY E. CAPPS, PH.D., LL.D. T. E. PAGE, LITT.D. W. H. D. ROUSE, LITT.D. CICERO DE SENECTUTE, DE AMICITIA, DE DIVINATIONE CICERO DE SENECTUTE, DE AMICITIA, WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY RECENTLY JUDGE TENTH CHANCERY CIRCUIT, ARKANSAS, U.S.A. H LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN MCMXXIII PREFACE This WHILE my uncle,1 1 then in his eighty-first year, was confined to his room by a serious illness, he received a letter of consolation from a friend, who quoted from Shuckburgh's translation of the De senectute. quotation, though short, brought solace and cheer to the invalid and made him eager to hear more of Cicero's views on old age, and, as a result, he asked me to bring him the essay in the Latin and read it to him. Twenty years had passed since I had read the tractate at the University of Virginia under my revered old professor, Dr. Wm. E. Peters, and hence my rendering at sight must have done violence to the original in many places; but just as 'honour peereth in the meanest habit,' so the light of Cicero's genius was not wholly obscured by the medium through which it passed. At any rate, when I had finished, my uncle begged me-more, I think, for my good than for his own pleasure-to write out a translation of the entire treatise. I pleaded that my Latin was too rusty and that my judicial duties did not leave me leisure for such a task. He replied that my Latin would brighten with use and that an hour or 1 Gen. H. B. Armistead, of Charleston, Ark.; b. 1832 in Fauquier Co., Virginia; Secretary of State of Arkansas, 1892-1896. |