[7]
3. CATO. I will do so, Laelius, as well as I
can. For I have often listened to the complaints of
my contemporaries (and according to the old adage,
“like with like most readily foregathers”), complaints made also by the ex-consuls, Gaius Salinator
and Spurius Albinus,1 who were almost my equals
in years, wherein they used to lament, now because
they were denied the sensual pleasures without
which they thought life not life at all, and now
because they were scorned by the people who had
been wont to pay them court. But it seemed to me
[p. 17]
that they were not placing the blame where the
blame was due. For if the ills of which they complained were the faults of old age, the same ills would
befall me and all other old men: but I have known
many who were of such a nature that they bore their
old age without complaint, who were not unhappy
because they had been loosed from the chains of
passion, and who were not scorned by their friends.
But as regards all such complaints, the blame rests
with character, not with age. For old men of self-control, who are neither churlish nor ungracious,
find old age endurable; while on the other hand
perversity and an unkindly disposition render irksome every period of life.
1 Both were younger than Cato.
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