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my request, but make our house your resort and keep company with these
young men; we are old friends, and you will be quite at home with us.
I replied: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than
conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travellers who have gone a
journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire whether
the way is smooth and easy or rugged and difficult. And this is a question
which I should like to ask of you, who have arrived at that time which the
poets call the “threshold of old age”: Is life harder toward the end, or what
report do you give of it?
I will tell you, Socrates, he said, what my own feeling is. Men of my age
flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says; and at our
meetings the tale of my acquaintance commonly is: I cannot eat, I cannot
drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away; there was a good time
once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life. Some complain of the
slights which are put upon them by relations, and they will tell you sadly of
how many evils their old age is the cause. But to me, Socrates, these
complainers seem to blame that which is not really in fault. For if old age
were the cause, I too, being old, and every other old man would have felt as
they do. But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have
known. How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the
question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles—are you still the man you
were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you
speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. His words
have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem as good to me now as at
the time when he uttered them. For certainly old age has a great sense of calm
and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we
are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth
is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to
be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men’s characters and
tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the
pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age
are equally a burden.
I listened in admiration, and wanting to draw him out, that he might go on
—Yes, Cephalus, I said; but I rather suspect that people in general are not
convinced by you when you speak thus; they think that old age sits lightly
upon you, not because of your happy disposition, but because you are rich,
and wealth is well known to be a great comforter.
You are right, he replied; they are not convinced: and there is something in
what they say; not, however, so much as they imagine. I might answer them
as Themistocles answered the Seriphian who was abusing him and saying that
1013
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book The Complete Plato"
The Complete Plato
- Title
- The Complete Plato
- Author
- Plato
- Date
- ~347 B.C.
- Language
- English
- License
- PD
- Size
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Pages
- 1612
- Keywords
- Philosophy, Antique, Philosophie, Antike, Dialogues, Metaphysik, Metaphysics, Ideologie, Ideology, Englisch
- Categories
- Geisteswissenschaften
- International