When the king of kings prayed to the gods
Would that among the Achaeans were ten such as he to advise me!
|790| —meaning Nestor—not one of the ‘valorous’ and ‘prowess-breathing’ Achaeans complained. They all admitted that not only in statesmanship, but in war also, age was of great moment, since
More worth is one sage thought than many a hand,
and one rational and cogent judgement achieves the finest and most important results in public affairs.
Now kingship, the most complete and comprehensive form of public activity, is full of cares, labours, and preoccupations. Seleucus, it was said, used to declare that if ordinary people knew what a business it was merely to write and read so many letters, they would not pick up the crown if they found it |B| lying in the street. And the story goes that, when Philip was proposing to encamp in an excellent position, but was told that there was no fodder for the pack-animals, he exclaimed: ‘Good Heavens! what is our life worth, when we are obliged to suit it to the convenience of our asses?’ Ought we then to give the same advice to a king when he has grown old? Bid him lay aside the crown and the purple, take to a cloak and a crutched stick, and live in the country, for fear people should think it officious and unseasonable of him to be reigning when he is grey?
But we have no right to talk in this way about an Agesilaus, or a Numa, or a Darius. Neither then should we compel a Solon |C| to leave the Council of the Areopagus, nor a Cato the Senate, nor yet urge a Pericles to leave popular government to look after itself. It is contrary to reason that in our youth we should bounce upon the platform, spend upon the public all the passionate licence of our ambition, and then, when age arrives and brings the wisdom of experience, desert and betray our public standing like a woman whom we have used at our pleasure.
In Aesop, when the hedgehog wanted to pick off his ticks, the fox would not let him. ‘These are glutted,’ said he, ‘and |D| if you get rid of them, hungry ones will be at you in their place.’ So with public life. If it is perpetually shedding the old men, it will necessarily be plagued with young ones, who are thirsting for notoriety and power but devoid of political sense. How can they be otherwise, if they are to have no elderly statesman to watch and learn from? A ship’s captain is not made by treatises on navigation. He must often have stood upon the quarter-deck and watched the struggle with wave and wind and stormy nights, when
The sailor on the brine longs sore
For Tyndareus’ twin sons.