The sixtysomething Mick Jagger is currently bringing tears of nostalgia to all eyes as he relives his glory days of 40 years ago, singing pop songs. In one respect, at any rate, Cicero would have applauded him, as he explains in his essay On Old Age (44 bc).
De senectute is an imaginary conversation staged in Rome in 150 bc. The main speaker is the revered Elder Cato, who would have been 84 at the time. The burden of his case is that, if you have lived a decent, enlightened life, ‘the harvest you reap [in old age] will be astonishing’. But he does acknowledge that old age has its problems, and goes on to deal with them: removal from active work, physical decline, deprivation of sensual pleasures and death.
Of the first, Cato points out that the old are debarred only from work demanding youth and physical strength. But their strength lies in ‘thought, character and judgment’, the real stuff (he argues) of ‘great deeds’. Since physical pleasures decline naturally, men do not miss what they do not want. Further, when ‘sex, ambition, rivalry, quarrelling and all the other passions are ended, the human spirit returns to live within itself — and is well off’. Cato goes on to boast that he is learning Greek, ‘with the greed of a man trying to satisfy a long-endured thirst’. As for death, ‘nothing is so completely in keeping with nature as that the old should die …I feel like a man approaching harbour after a long voyage; I seem to be catching sight of land’.
So far Sir Mick has not scored very highly on the Cato Good Ageing Index, but all that leaping about on stage would certainly have met with approval in this respect: the fight against bodily decline.
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