HOW TO GROW OLD HOW TO GROW OLD Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life Marcus Tullius Cicero Translated and with an introduction by Philip Freeman PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD Copyright © 2016 by Philip Freeman Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press.princeton.edu Jacket art: Head of an Old Man (marble) (b/w photo), Roman (1st century BC) / Palazzo Torlonia, Rome, Italy / Alinari / Bridgeman Images All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cicero, Marcus Tullius, author. | Freeman, Philip, 1961– translator. | Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Cato maior de senectute. | Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Cato maior de senectute. English. Title: How to grow old : ancient wisdom for the second half of life / Marcus Tullius Cicero ; translated and with an introduction by Philip Freeman. Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2016] | In English and Latin. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2015024460 | ISBN 9780691167701 (hardcover : acid-free paper) Subjects: LCSH: Old age—Early works to 1800. Classification: LCC PA6308.C2 F7 2016 | DDC 305.26—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015024460 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Garamond and Futura Printed on acid- free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 CONTENTS Introduction vii How to Grow Old 1 Notes 179 Further Reading 195 INTRODUCTION Forty- five BC was a bad year for Marcus Tullius Cicero. The famous Roman orator and states- man was in his early sixties and alone. He had divorced his wife of thirty years not long before and married a younger woman, only to divorce her almost immediately. His beloved daughter Tullia had died at the beginning of the year, plunging Cicero into despair. And his place at the forefront of Roman politics had been lost just four years earlier when Julius Caesar crossed the Ru- bicon River and forced the Roman Repub- lic into civil war. Cicero could not support Caesar and so, after initially standing against the new dictator and subsequently receiving a humiliating pardon, he had vii INTRODUCTION retired to his country estate. There he re- mained, far from Rome, an old man in his own mind useless to the world. But rather than sinking into his wine cups or committing suicide as his friend the younger Cato had done, Cicero turned to writing. He had been an avid student of Greek philosophy in his youth and longed to make his mark in the literary world by explaining to his Roman countrymen the ideas he had discovered in Plato, Aristotle, and other great thinkers. He was naturally inclined to the Stoic doctrines of virtue, order, and divine providence, as opposed to what he saw as the limited and self- indulgent views of the Epicureans. And so he began to write. In an astonishingly short period of time, working from early morn- ing until late into the night, he produced numerous treatises on government, ethics, viii INTRODUCTION education, religion, friendship, and moral duty. Just before Caesar’s murder on the Ides of March in 44 BC, Cicero turned to the subject of old age in a short treatise titled De Senectute. In the ancient world as in the modern, human life could be short, but we err when we suppose that the lifespan in Greece and Rome was necessarily brief. Al- though longevity in antiquity is notori- ously difficult to measure, and infant and childhood mortality was certainly high, if men and women reached adulthood, they stood a decent chance of living into their sixties, seventies, or beyond. Greek authors before Cicero had written about the last phase of life in different ways. Some idealized the elderly as enlightened bearers of wisdom, such as Homer’s King Nestor, while others caricatured them as ix INTRODUCTION tiresome and constant complainers. The poet Sappho from the sixth century BC is perhaps the most striking of all ancient writers on the subject as she mourns the loss of her own youth in a recently discov- ered fragmentary poem: . . . my skin once soft is wrinkled now, . . . my hair once black has turned to white. My heart has become heavy, my knees that once danced nimbly like fawns cannot carry me. How often I lament these things— but what can be done? No one who is human can escape old age. Cicero, however, wanted to move be- yond mere resignation to offer a broader picture of old age. While acknowledging its limitations, he sought to demonstrate that x