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BOOK III, CHAPTER V 9
make themselves of repute and value; they are advancing toward the world, toward authority; we are leaving it; (c) sibi arma, sibi equos, sibi hastas, sibi clavam, sibi pilam, sihi natationes et cursus habeant; nobis senibus, ex lusionibus multis, talos relinquant et tesseras; | (6) the very laws send us into retirement.? I can do no less in favour of this forlorn state into which my years force me than supply it with toys and amusements, as it were childhood; indeed, we fall back into that. Both wisdom and folly will have hard work? to support and succour me by alternating services in this calamity of age. Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem.*
I avoid even the slightest pricks, and those which in other days would not have scratched me now pierce me; my bodily habit begins to incline so easily to all conditions! (c) In Sragili corpore odiosa omnis offensio est.* (2) Mensque pati durum sustinet agra nihil.® I have always been susceptible and sensitive to harmful things; I am now more thin-skinned and everywhere ex- posed, Et minime vires frangere quassa valent.’
My judgement prevents me, indeed, from kicking and grumbling at the discomforts that Nature ordains me to suffer, but not from feeling them. I would go from one end of the world to the other in quest of a gracious year of agree- able and blithe tranquillity, for I have no other aim than to live cheerfully. Of sombre and dull tranquillity there is enough for me, but it puts me to sleep and makes me
1 For them let there be arms, and for them horses and spears and foils and balls and swimming and races; and of all the many games let them leave us old men the knuckle-bones and the dice. — Cicero, De Senectute, XVI.
® See Jéid., XI. ’ duront prou.
« Mingle a little folly with your wisdom. — Horace, Odes, IV, 12.27.
® To a feeble body every mishap is hateful. — Cicero, De Senectute, XVIII.
- A sick mind can not endure any thing disagreeable. — Ovid, De
Ponto, I, §.18. T And the least effort is enough to break what is already cracked.
—Idem, Tristia, II], 11-22.