This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
[33]
But it may be said that I have less strength than
either of you; but I reply that you, for your part,
have not the strength of the centurion Titus Pontius1 ;
is he, for that reason, more excellent than you?
Only let every man make a proper use of his strength
and strive to his utmost, then assuredly he will have
no regret for his want of strength. It is said that
Milo walked the length of the race-course at Olympia,
carrying an ox on his shoulders. Which, therefore,
would you prefer should be given to you—the
physical powers of Milo, or the mental powers of
[p. 43]
Pythagoras? In short, enjoy the blessing of strength
while you have it and do not bewail it when it is
gone, unless, forsooth, you believe that youth must
lament the loss of infancy, or early manhood the
passing of youth. Life's race-course is fixed;
Nature has only a single path and that path is run
but once, and to each stage of existence has been
allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the
weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth,
the seriousness of middle life, the maturity of old
age—each bears some of Nature's fruit, which must
be garnered in its own season.
1 This was some man famous for his strength in Cato's day, but of whom we know nothing more.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.