It has been remarked as extraordinary, that, amidst the anxious enumeration of the comforts of age, those arising from domestic society are not mentioned by Cicero; but his favourite daughter Tullia was now no more, and the husband of Terentia, the father of Marcus Cicero, and the father-in-law of Dolabella, may have felt something on that subject, of which he was willing to spare himself the recollection. But though he has omitted what we number among its chief consolations, still he has represented advanced age under too favourable a view. He denies, for instance, that the memory is impaired by it—asserting, that everything continues to be remembered, in which we take an interest, for that no old man ever forgot where he had concealed his treasure. He has, besides, only treated of an old age distinguished by deeds or learning, terminating a life great and glorious in the eyes of men. The table of the old man whom he describes, is cheered by numerous friends, and his presence, wherever he appears, is hailed by clients and dependants. All his examples are drawn from the higher and better walks of life. In the venerable picture of the Censor, we have no traces of second childhood, or of the slippered pantaloon, or of that melancholy and almost frightful representation, in the tenth satire of Juvenal. But even persons of the station, and dignity, and talents of Cato, are, in old age, liable to weaknesses and misfortunes, with which the pleasing portrait, that Tully has drawn, is in no way disfigured:—
“In life’s last scene, what prodigies surprise,
Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise!
From Marlborough’s eyes the tears of dotage flow,
And Swift expires a driveller and a show.”
The treatise De Senectute has been versified by Denham, under the title of Cato Major. The subject of the evils of old age is divided, as by Cicero, into four parts. “I can neither,” says he, in his preface, “call this piece Tully’s nor my own, being much altered from the original, not only by the change of the style, but by addition and subtraction.” In fact, the fine sentiments are Cicero’s—the doggerel English verse, into which he has converted Cicero’s classical prose, his own. The fourth part, on the approach of death, is that which is best versified.
This tract is also the model of the dialogue Spurinna, or the Comforts of Old Age, by Sir Thomas Bernard. Hough, Bishop of Worcester, who is in his ninetieth year at the date [pg 262]of the conference, supposed to be held in 1739, is the Cato of the dialogue. The other interlocutors are Gibson, Bishop of London, and Mr Lyttleton, subsequently Lord Lyttleton. After considering, in the same manner as Cicero, the disadvantages of old age, the English author proceeds to treat of its advantages, and the best mode of increasing its comforts. Many ideas and arguments are derived from Cicero; but among the consolations of advanced age, the promises of revelation concerning a future state of happiness, to which the Roman was a stranger, are prominently brought forward, and the illustrations are chiefly drawn from British, instead of Grecian or Roman history.
De Amicitiâ.—In this, as in all his other dialogues, Cicero has most judiciously selected the persons whom he introduces as speakers. They were men of eminence in the state; and though deceased, the Romans had such a just veneration for their ancestors, that they would listen with the utmost interest even to the supposed conversation of the ancient heroes or sages of their country. Such illustrious names bestowed additional dignity on what was delivered, and even now affect us with sentiments of veneration far superior to that which is felt for the itinerant sophists, who, with the exception of Socrates, are the chief speakers in the dialogues of Plato.
The memorable and hereditary friendship which subsisted between Lælius and the younger Scipio Africanus, rendered them the most suitable characters from whom the sentiments expressed on this delightful topic could be supposed to flow. Their mutual and unshaken attachment threw an additional lustre over the military glory of the one, and the contemplative wisdom of the other. “Such,” says Cicero in the introduction to the treatise De Republicâ, “was the common law of friendship between them, that Lælius adored Africanus as a god, on account of his transcendent military fame; and that Scipio, when they were at home, revered his friend, who was older than himself, as a father[456].” The kindred soul of Cicero appears to have been deeply struck with this delightful assemblage of all the noblest and loveliest qualities of our nature. The friendship which subsisted between himself and Atticus was another beautiful example of a similar kind: And the dialogue De Amicitiâ is accordingly addressed with peculiar propriety to Atticus, who, as Cicero tells him in his dedication, could not fail to discover his own portrait in the delineation of [pg 263]a perfect friend. This treatise approaches nearer to dialogue than that De Senectute, for there is a story, with the circumstances of time and place. Fannius, the historian, and Mucius Scævola, the Augur, both sons-in-law of Lælius, paid him a visit immediately after the sudden and suspicious death of Scipio Africanus. The recent loss which Lælius had thus sustained, leads to an eulogy on the inimitable virtues of the departed hero, and to a discussion on the true nature of that tie by which they had been so long connected. Cicero, while in his earliest youth, had been introduced by his father to Mucius Scævola; and hence, among other interesting matters which he enjoyed an opportunity of hearing, he was one day present while Scævola related the substance of the conference on Friendship, which he and Fannius had held with Lælius a few days after the death of Scipio. Many of the ideas and sentiments which the mild Lælius then uttered, are declared by Scævola to have originally flowed from Scipio, with whom the nature and laws of friendship formed a favourite topic of discourse. This, perhaps, is not entirely a fiction, or merely told to give the stamp of authenticity to the dialogue. Some such conversation was probably held and related; and I doubt not, that a few of the passages in this celebrated dialogue reflect the sentiments of Lælius, or even of Africanus himself.
The philosophical works of Cicero, which have been hitherto enumerated, are complete, or nearly so. But it is well known that he was the author of many other productions which have now been entirely lost, or of which only fragments remain.