[328e]
For to my
thinking we have to learn of them as it were from wayfarers1 who have preceded us on a road on which we
too, it may be, must some time fare—what2 it is like—is it rough3 and hard
going or easy and pleasant to travel. And so now I would fain learn of you
what you think of this thing, now that your time has come to it, the thing
that the poets call ‘the threshold4 of old age.’ Is it a hard
part of life to bear or what report have you to make of
it?”“Yes, indeed,
Socrates,” he said, “I will tell you my own feeling
about it.
1 Much of this passage, including the comparison of old men to travellers, is copied by Cicero, De sen. 3 ff.
2 Cf. Horace, Epistles i. 11 “Quid tibi visa Chios?” The vague neuter and the slight anacoluthon give a colloquial turn to the sentence.
3 Hesiod, Works and Days 290, says that the path of virtue is rough at first and then grows easy.
4 This, whatever its precise meaning, was a familiar phrase like our “One foot in the grave.” Cf. Leaf on Iliad xxii. 60, xxiv 487; Hyperides (i. xx. 13) employs it without apology in prose.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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