And if political conflict does leave you some remnant of jealousy or antagonism to face when you are old, it is better to quell it by means of your position than to turn your back and retire without armour or weapons of defence. People are not so ready to attack you out of jealousy when you are still in action as they are out of contempt when you give it up.
|788| We may also appeal to the great Epaminondas and his remark to the Thebans. It was winter at the time, and the Arcadians were inviting them to enter the city and live in the houses. This he refused to allow, observing: ‘At the present time they come to look at you and admire your wrestling and military exercises; but if they see you sitting by the fire and chewing your beans, they will regard you as no better than themselves.’ So with an aged man. When making a speech, transacting business, or receiving honours, he is a dignified spectacle; but when he lies all day on a couch or sits in the corner of a public |B| resort talking drivel and wiping his nose, he is an object of contempt. This is precisely what Homer teaches, if you read him rightly. Nestor, who was campaigning at Troy, received high respect and honour; whereas Peleus and Laertes, the stay-at-homes, were despised, and counted for nothing.
Nay, even intellectual power begins to fail those who have let themselves relax. Idleness gradually renders it feeble and flaccid, in the absence of some necessary exercise of thought to keep the logical and practical faculty perpetually alive and in trim.
Like glossy bronze, ’tis use that makes it shine.
Bodily weakness may be a drawback to public activity in the |C| case of those who, in spite of their years, make the platform or the Cabinet their goal. But it is more than compensated by the advantage of their caution and prudence. They do not dash into public affairs with the expression of opinions prompted by error or vanity as the case may be, and carrying the mob with them in as excited a condition as a stormy sea; but they deal in a mild and reasonable fashion with such matters as arise. It is for this reason that, in times of disaster or alarm, communities feel the need of a Board of Government consisting of senior men. Often they have fetched back from the country |D| an old man who neither asked nor wished it, and have compelled him to put his hand to the helm and steer the ship of State into safety, while they thrust aside generals and popular leaders, despite all their ability to shout, to talk without taking breath, and also, no doubt, to make ‘sturdy stand and doughty fight’ against the enemy. When Chares, the son of Theochares—a man in the prime of bodily strength and condition—was brought into the ring in opposition to Timotheus and Iphicrates by the public speakers of Athens, with the claim that ‘this is the kind of general the Athenians should have’, Timotheus |E| replied: ‘By no manner of means. No doubt that is the sort needed to carry the general’s baggage; but the general should be one who “sees before and after”, and whose calculations as to policy no distractions can disturb.’ Sophocles said ‘he was glad that old age had enabled him to escape from sexual passion—a fierce and mad master.’ But in public life we have to escape, not from one master—the love of women—but from many madder still; from contentiousness, vanity, and the desire to be first and greatest—a malady most fertile in envy, jealousy, and |F| feud. Some of these feelings are abated or dulled, some are altogether chilled and quenched, by old age. And though old age may do something to diminish our zest for action, it does more to guard us from the intemperate heat of passion, so that we can bring a sober and steady reason to bear upon our thoughts.
By all means, in dealing with one who begins to play the youth when his hair is grey, let it be—as it is considered—sound warning to say:
Misguided man, stay quiet in thy bed.
|789| Let us remonstrate with an old man when he rises from a long privacy, as from a bed of sickness, and bestirs himself to obtain a command or an official post. But suppose a man has lived a life of public action and thoroughly played the part. To prevent him from going on till ‘finis and the torch’, to call him back and bid him change the road he has long followed, is utterly unfeeling, and bears no resemblance to the case just given. If an old man has his wreath on and is scenting himself in readiness to marry, there is nothing unreasonable in trying to dissuade him by quoting the lines addressed to Philoctetes:
But, pray, where is the bride, where the young maid,
Would welcome thee? Rare bridegroom thou, poor soul!