Look to the Greeks for a robust view of old age

If one has acquired a lifetime’s cargo of books, one is liable to have to buy new copies of familiar texts, because one has no idea in which packing case one’s own copy is to be found. That is the drawback; the compensating advantage is that the books one did not even know one possessed float mysteriously to the surface, full of interest and promise.

To the true book lover, every day is Christmas and all the forgotten books are potential presents. Last week, in Somerset, I had a particularly satisfactory example of this serendipity, to borrow Horace Walpole’s word for those books which come to hand just when one wants them. I had, for some time, been thinking that I ought to read Cicero’s famous essay On Old Age. I do have it in Latin, but my grip on Latin is too feeble for me to wish to translate it for myself.

The reason I wanted to read this essay was that Cicero summarises the wisdom of the ancient world about the experience of ageing. He was not an original philosopher, but he had read widely in Greek philosophy; Cicero was something like a Roy Jenkins of the 1st-century BC, an experienced and scholarly statesman who used secondary sources to write excellent books.

I came across the essay on the dining room window ledge in Somerset — when every bookshelf is full, window sills take part of the overflow. It proved to be more than just a text of the work I wanted. On January 27, 1958, four days after her 66th birthday, my mother had bought the Everyman Library edition of Cicero, which included On Old Age. She had marked the passages that most interested her.

Sixty-six does not seem any great age to me nowadays; indeed I regard one’s 60s as a sort of amiable adolescence in which one prepares for the greater wisdom of one’s 70s. Yet I imagine that the date of the purchase means that her 66th birthday led my mother to think about her own old age — she was to live for another 20 years. As I read the passages that she had marked, it brought back memories of many similar conversations with her; the annotations, though brief, are characteristic.

Cicero takes a robust view of old age, which my mother shared in her own life. The first passage she marked was his account of the story of Sophocles, the great Greek dramatist: “Sophocles continued in extreme old age to write tragedies. As he seemed to neglect his family affairs while he was fully intent on his dramatic compositions, his sons instituted a suit against him, suggesting his understanding was impaired, and praying that he might be removed from the management of his estate . . . it is said that when the old bard appeared in court he desired that he might be permitted to read a play which he had lately finished; it was his Oedipus in Colonos . . . the result was that the court unanimously dismissed the complainants’ petition.”

Cicero was not himself an old man when he wrote his essay. He composed it in 44BC when he was only 62. In the following year he was killed by the triumvirate of Octavian, Mark Antony and Lepidus, in revenge for his speeches attacking Antony. His head was cut off and nailed to the Rostra in Rome, where he had so often spoken. Fulvia, Antony’s disagreeable wife, then drove a long needle through his tongue. Such were the hatreds of the revolutionary period in which he lived.

The next passage which my mother marked also expresses an optimism in which she shared. Cicero points out: “If long life may occasion our being the painful spectators of many calamities which an earlier death would have concealed from our view, it may equally afford us the satisfaction of seeing many happy events which could not have otherwise come within our notice.” For my mother the happy events of her later life included the birth of six of her grandchildren.

My mother also noted Cicero’s advice on health in old age. “We should be regularly attentive to the article of health, use moderate exercise, and neither eat nor drink more than is necessary for repairing our strength, without oppressing the organs of digestion.” That sentence gives me particular pleasure, since it is precisely the advice my doctor gives me.

Cicero was not the first to give such advice — I feel sure that it can be found in the works of early Greek physicians such as Galen and Hippocrates. The advance of medical science has not changed the best advice on diet and exercise in more than two millennia. That makes me think it is likely to be correct.

In old age, as Shakespeare observed, what may once have been a “big manly voice, turning again towards childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sound”. Cicero, who had earned his living and his reputation as an orator, was naturally conscious of the way the voice, as much as the face, alters with age. My mother, who before her marriage had earned her living as an actress in the United States — in 1916 she had played with Sarah Bernhardt on Broadway — was equally aware of it. She marked one rather reassuring observation; I feel sure that she applied it to herself, as Cicero applied it to himself.

“There is a certain sweetness of utterance which, I know not how, is not subject to be impaired by years, and this melody of voice (old as you see I am) I have not yet lost.”

Cicero was what one could call a broad church Stoic, which is a surprisingly English thing for an Ancient Roman to have been; it has endeared him to generations of Englishmen, particular those in public life, at least since the days of Sir Thomas More. Perhaps his stoic view of the countervailing benefits which offset the loss of “sensual gratifications” will seem less sympathetic to our modern Epicurean tastes.

He quotes the Greek philosopher Archytas of Tarentum, as saying: “Nature has not conferred on mankind a more dangerous present than those pleasures which attend the sensual indulgences; as the passions they excite are too apt to run away with reason, in a lawless and unbridled pursuit of their respective enjoyments. It is to gratify inclinations of this ensnaring kind that men attempted to hold clandestine correspondence with enemies of the state, to subvert governments, and turn traitors to their country.”

My mother marked that passage, with the comment: “Burgess, Maclean”. If Mark Antony had not had him killed, Cicero could have made a similar reference to the equally unstoic conduct of Antony with Cleopatra.

We shall not all find ourselves in agreement with Cicero’s attitude to old age. Stoicism is not the philosophy of our time, though it may still seem well adapted to human experience and human nature. It has certainly helped, through the grammar schools and the classical syllabus, to shape our English culture. What is “the stiff upper lip” but Stoicism in action?

Cicero emphasises that old age, given reasonable health, can be active, useful and enjoyable, and that it should be so. He understands the pleasure the old get from the company of the young, and the pleasure they also get from the company of their contemporaries; he would himself have made an admirable member of the Garrick Club, though he might have been blackballed if Mark Antony had been on the committee.

He recognises that the old have less physical strength, but considers that they usually retain those faculties they best develop when young. He cites the example of Roman judges: “Whose superior strength of understanding continued in all its force and vigour to the conclusion of their numerous years.” I have seen the same thing with retired law lords.

Old age is much more like the rest of life than the young can imagine. The old are happiest when they feel most alive, when they are active and useful, when they are social with their family and friends, when they are meeting new people or enjoying new ideas. Retirement itself, when it occurs, should, if possible, be filled with activity. In short, the old are human.