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[83]
the most foolish
with the least? Is it not apparent to you that it
is because the soul of the one, having a keener
and wider vision, sees that it is setting out for a
better country, while that of the other, being of
duller sight, sees not its path?
Really, Scipio, I am carried away with the desire
to see your father, and yours too, Laelius, both of
whom I honoured and loved; and, indeed, I am
eager to meet not only those whom I have known,
but those also of whom I have heard and read and
written. And when I shall have set out to join
them, assuredly no one will easily draw me back.
or boil me up again, as if I were a Pelias.1 Nay, if
some god should give me leave to return to infancy
from my old age, to weep once more in my cradle, I
should vehemently protest; for, truly, after I have
run my race I have no wish to be recalled, as it were,
from the goal to the starting-place.
1 Cicero here confuses Pelias with his half-brother Aeson, whom Medea restored to youth by cutting him up and boiling him in a cauldron.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
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