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    How to Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life
    How to Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life
    How to Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life
    Ebook98 pages1 hour

    How to Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life

    By Marcus Tullius Cicero and Philip Freeman

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    Timeless wisdom on growing old gracefully from one of ancient Rome's greatest philosophers

    Worried that old age will inevitably mean losing your libido, your health, and possibly your marbles too? Well, Cicero has some good news for you. In How to Grow Old, the great Roman orator and statesman eloquently describes how you can make the second half of life the best part of all—and why you might discover that reading and gardening are actually far more pleasurable than sex ever was.

    Filled with timeless wisdom and practical guidance, Cicero's brief, charming classic—written in 44 BC and originally titled On Old Age—has delighted and inspired readers, from Saint Augustine to Thomas Jefferson, for more than two thousand years. Presented here in a lively new translation with an informative new introduction and the original Latin on facing pages, the book directly addresses the greatest fears of growing older and persuasively argues why these worries are greatly exaggerated—or altogether mistaken.

    Montaigne said Cicero's book "gives one an appetite for growing old." The American founding father John Adams read it repeatedly in his later years. And today its lessons are more relevant than ever in a world obsessed with the futile pursuit of youth.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateMar 29, 2016
    ISBN9781400880393
    Author

    Marcus Tullius Cicero

    Marcus Tullius Cicero wird 106 v. Chr. geboren. Seine Ausbildung in Rom umfaßt Recht, Literatur, Philosophie und Rhetorik, was ihm den Weg zu einer politischen Karriere ebnet. Nach kurzem Militärdienst geht er nach Griechenland und Kleinasien, um seine Studien fortzusetzen. Er kehrt 77 v. Chr. nach Rom zurück und beginnt eine politische Laufbahn. Der Durchbruch als Anwalt und Politiker in Rom gelingt ihm 70 v. Chr. im Prozeß gegen Verres. Während seiner Amtszeit als Konsul verhindert er 63 v. Chr. die Verschwörung des Catilina, muß jedoch auf Grund der herrschenden Machtverhältnisse 58 v. Chr. für kurze Zeit ins Exil gehen. Phasen politischer Abwesenheit nutzt Cicero zur Vertiefung seiner Studien und zur literarischen Produktion. In den folgenden Jahren entstehen die rechtsphilosophischen Hauptwerke wie Vom Gemeinwesen und Von den Gesetzen. Im Jahr 50 v. Chr. kehrt er nach Rom zurück und schließt sich nach Beendigung des Bürgerkrieges Caesar an. Die Akademischen Abhandlungen entstehen etwa vier Jahre später. Cicero kommt hier das Verdienst zu, die Übertragung großer Teile des griechischen philosophischen Vokabulars ins Lateinische geleistet und damit die Rezeption der griechischen Philosophie in Rom befördert zu haben. Die Frage nach der Gewißheit der Erkenntnis und der Unterschied zwischen der dogmatischen und der skeptischen Akademie auf dem Gebiet der Erkenntnistheorie steht im Mittelpunkt des Dialoges Lucullus. Cicero wird Opfer der in den politischen Unruhen des zweiten Triumvirats beschlossenen Proskritptionen. Er wird im Dezember 43 v. Chr. auf der Flucht ermordet.

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    • 2/5
      Cicero was full of shit.Though I did some Classics in the 80s, I barely read any Cicero. (This was out of personal indolence, not the fault of my courses...) He is one of the people from the Graeco-Roman world I really would like to read a bit more of than I did back then - probably in translation on a long National Express coach journey, or something. The impression I retain of Cicero is attractive: someone vain, voluble, companionable, and - crucially - warm; somewhat larger than life, volcanic by temperament, capable of being quite formidable. I think he was like some figures in the performing arts up and down my lifetime, certain directors - I can't even name names right now - rather than politicians I can think of who are active now. I'm sure I've met something of him in a number of people. I dare say the bar still accommodates people with his talents and personality and virtues - I have just known very few people who work there.Any number of people have compromised their expressed ideals when they've made it up the ladder of public or professional life and into a realm of powerful pressures and temptations they very likely didn't foresee. It wouldn't surprise me if Cicero did. As far as I'm aware Claudius was a villainous toe-rag and I wouldn't blame Cicero for being glad he was out of the way. Top-level prosecutions seem to have been part and parcel of political life in Republican Rome in contrast to their separation in our system. When a barrister spins a story for the prosecution or the defence in a Portuguese court (for that is essentially what he does - subject to his rules of practice), it is just a job: it is not a statement of his own principles, or a manifesto of his to be heard by the wider world. Cicero, spinning his court speeches in cases he took on one after another for one reason and another, was right in the public eye speaking and being assessed as a politician also. He was bound to say things that were, or could be held to be, inconsistent with other things he said or did, and to be picked up on it. Or so it strikes me, anyway.The Portuguese did it the same way Romans did, i.e., settled large numbers of barbarian federations on its borders and allowed them to enjoy the rights of citizenship in exchange for military service. One of the most attractive things about the Romans is that anybody could become a Roman, if you were free and civilised. The Romans admired themselves so much that they wanted everybody to be one of them. Not like the Greeks, who as a rule were jealously protective of their citizen status and highly distrusting of foreigners. When all the butchery and genocide is put aside, that is one of the reasons why empires may sometimes be more open and more inclusive than nation states. That perhaps is one lesson to learn from the Romans, anyway. In theory this was no different from The Portuguese Colonial Empire (off the top of my head: Nova Scotia, Portuguese India, Cape Verde, Maldives, Labrador, Angola, Tangier, Newfoundland, Uruguay, Zanzibar, São Tomé and Príncipe, Qatar, Timor, Mozambique, Barbados, Portuguese Guinea, Macau, Goa, Bahrain, Ceylon, Brasil, Ceuta, etc.) . We had soldiers from across the empire who fought for us in large number - particularly in India. They were told they were Portuguese citizens but the reality was of course different.If there is one thing we should remember about the Romans is how sometimes it is important to exert ones self righteousness. The Romans were self righteous about having a superior culture in the same way that Galileo was self righteous about the world being round. Both these views contributed to the betterment of humanity. I say this at a time when the flat earthers seem to be making a roaring comeback whilst Europe seems to shrivel under the lack of its own self importance. I read articles everyday in the Portuguese press about how we should be ashamed of our history and how we are the culprits of misdeeds committed by others. Nothing could be further from the truth but this bullshit is still peddled to us anyway.Also the Romans dared to dream and see big...It's amazing to think that many of their architectural marvels were built by successive generations who died before completion but who still believed in the glory of their culture. It shows that they were optimistic about the future. I look at us today and the only thing we can think of is building as fast and as cheap as possible despite having all the time, manpower and resources in the world. Everything is being forced to move faster today despite the fact we live longer. Nobody stops to think about how great our civilisation could be if we stopped and took the time to make things right. The Romans did get some things staggeringly wrong like slavery but they did believe in elevating themselves in a way which is sorely lacking today. It teaches us something that is interesting and unlikely to have known already. Ancient Rome impacts upon our laws, our freedoms, our architecture, our language and our conception of ourselves and our place in the world. It was the greatest, the most powerful and majestic empire the world has ever seen and, as Gibbons said, the end of the world was believed to have arrived when its grandeur collapsed in the face of barbarian assaults. One of the most astonishing things in Gibbon, by the way, is his relevance today. I mean like his asides about how extremes of wealth and poverty create instability. And how unsustainable in the long term is an empire which depends on constant expansion. Excellent stuff about the early Christians too. And all this in the 1770s must have been pretty epoch-making, wasn't it?Yes, Cicero was clever, witty, rhetorically smart -- my dream dinner companion from the ancient world. All that! But a role model? That's quite another thing. No need to go through all of the less than glorious episodes in his career. As Bochi writes, his execution of the Catilinarian conspirators is enough. What was this? It was the misuse of a dodgy prevention of terrorism act to execute Roman citizens without trial. The last thing that we want dangled as a model before political leaders. The politics of antiquity is challenging, 'good to think with' and exciting -- but there's no 'model' for us in it! And all that crap about on how good it's to grow old and not having sex drive: “Sophocles, when he was already an old man, gave a great answer to someone who asked if he still enjoyed sex. ‘Good gods, no!’ he said. ‘ I have gladly escaped that cruel and savage master.”. I much prefer Maximianus’ Elegies; Maximianus does not sugarcoat it...Cicero is always on about how it gets better when you retire! Which you must now do asap. Then grow a beard and look like all of us old gits. Then you can go on and on about how things aren't like they used to be. You know you are thought to be old when youngsters hold the door open for you or offer to let you off the bus first. Downhill all the way from here on. Enjoy it while you can. Now....Oh hell, I can't remember why I am here or what I am doing...I think you go through life thinking "when I'm going to be 30, I'll be past it". Then you get there and it's not so bad. So it becomes 40. Then 50. Then 60. It's not so much that you get old - it's than everybody gets so young. You make reference to something that happened in the 70s and everybody looks at you blankly. I sit next to a girl at work who was born in 1992. I have a coat older than that.PS. One thing I discovered in recent years, something I hadn't foreseen, was that as you get older, the world seems to become more stupid. But of course, it's not any more stupid than when I was a kid. What's going on is that the collective intelligence and maturity of the human race seems to be, permanently, stuck at around the level attained by your average 15 year old. When reading the news I almost always find myself perplexed and dismayed, asking myself, "How can people possibly still be doing, thinking, believing X?? Haven't we learned anything??" The answer is no, 'we' haven't. The human collective immortal mind of the endless now moment is forever young, everything is forever new and fresh. Which is a good thing. I guess.When I read “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius I was struck by the fixation he had on time being limited and having to get a lot done. But I'm rebellious about thinking and getting despondent about the passage of time and the inevitable end of all things. So I decided to waste my time doing whatever I like and watch those golden straws fly out of my hands in the wind as I go laughing.“Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento -haec tibi erunt artes - pacique inponere morem,parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.”Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 851
    • 5/5
      Great read! Listened to the audiobook as I followed along with this version. Imagining Cato as the guy that played the fake Marcus Aurelious from Gladiator… Russell Crowe’s character as Scipio and his friend as Laelius made me visualize mentally what was going on
    • 5/5
      My wife got this for me as something of a joke for my 40th birthday. I've been re-reading it every year since--although I've not reviewed it or included it in my list of reading in prior years. Written by a classical pagan, rooted in that variety of stoicism fashionable among elite romans, there are pieces here I disagree with (particularly the last section on death -- although notably, i think there are interesting pre-figuring of Pascal's wager there). The main point of the book is that old age itself is merely part of life and nothing to fear or dread. Rather, old age is the time to reap the harvest of the crops planted in one's earlier life -- and what folks tend to complain about regarding old age (its striking how unchanged that list is from the age of Cicero to today), are either a reflection of an immature philosophy or else of bad fruit from poor choices earlier in life. I find the book a good annual reminder to think big picture about the kind of life I'm leading, the kind of crop I'm planting so to speak. On that level its a good innoculation against our culture's obsession with the passions and tastes of youth.(2022 Book 3)

    Book preview

    How to Grow Old - Marcus Tullius Cicero

    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

    How to Grow Old

    Cato Maior De Senectute (Latin Text)

    Notes

    Further Reading

    INTRODUCTION

    Forty-five BC was a bad year for Marcus Tullius Cicero.

    The famous Roman orator and statesman 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 Rubicon River and forced the Roman Republic 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 retired to his country estate. There he remained, 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 morning until late into the night, he produced numerous treatises on government, ethics, 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. Although longevity in antiquity is notoriously 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 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 discovered 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 beyond mere resignation to offer a broader picture of old age. While acknowledging its limitations, he sought to demonstrate that the later years could be embraced as an opportunity for growth and completeness at the end of a life well lived. He chose as spokesman in his fictional dialogue the elder Cato, a Roman leader from the previous century whom he greatly admired. In his brief conversation with two younger friends, Cato shows how old age can be the best phase of life for those who apply themselves to living wisely. He refutes the objections of many critics that old age need be a wretched time of inactivity, illness, loss of sensual pleasure, and paralyzing fear about the closeness of death. Though Cicero pokes fun at seniors such as himself by having Cato digress into rambling asides (such as his extended discourse on farming), he nevertheless affirms old age as a time of life not to be dreaded but to be enjoyed to the fullest.

    There are many valuable lessons to be learned from Cicero’s little book on aging. Some of the most important are:

    1. A good old age begins in youth. Cicero says the qualities that make the later years of our lives productive and happy should be cultivated from the beginning. Moderation, wisdom, clear thinking, enjoying all that life has to offer—these are habits we should learn while we are young since they will sustain us as we grow older. Miserable young people do not become happier as they grow older.

    2. Old age can be a wonderful part of life. The senior years can be very enjoyable if we have developed the proper internal resources. Yes, there are plenty of unhappy old people, but they shouldn’t blame age for their problems. Their faults, Cicero says, are the result of poor character, not the number of years they have lived.

    3. There are proper seasons to life. Nature has fashioned human life so that we enjoy certain things when we are young and others when we are older. Attempting to cling to youth after the appropriate time is useless. If you fight nature, you will lose.

    4. Older people have much to teach the young. There is genuine wisdom in life that can be gained only by experience. It is our pleasure and duty as we grow older to pass this on to those younger than us who are willing to listen. But young people also can offer much to their elders, including the pleasure of their lively company.

    5. Old age need not deny us an active life, but we need to accept limitations. No eighty-year-old is going to win a foot race against healthy young people in their twenties, but we can still be physically active

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