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Testimony to the point is what Epameinondas the Great said to the Thebans when in winter weather the Arcadians invited them to come into the city and be quartered in their houses. He forbade it, saying Now they admire you and gaze at you as you do your military exercises and wrestle, but if they see you sitting by the fire and sipping your bean porridge, they will think you are no better than they are. Just so an old man active in word and deed and held in honour is a sight to arouse reverence, but one who spends the day in bed or sits in the corner of the porch chattering and wiping his nose is an object of contempt. And undoubtedly Homer also teaches this to those who hear aright; for Nestor, who went to the war at Troy, was revered and highly honoured, but Peleus and Laërtes, who stayed at home, were put aside and despised. For the habit of prudence does not last so well in those who let themselves become slack, but, being gradually lost and dissipated by inactivity, it always calls for what may be called exercise of the thought, since thought rouses and purifies the power of reason and action; For when in use it gleams like beauteous bronze.From an unknown drama of Sophocles; Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. p. 314, no. 780; it is quoted in fuller form in Moralia, 792 a and 1129 c. For the evil caused by their physical weakness to the public activities of those who step into civil or military office when beyond the usual age is not so great as the advantage they possess in their caution and prudence and in the fact that they do not, borne along sometimes because of past failures and sometimes as the result of vain opinion, dash headlong upon public affairs, dragging the mob along with them in confusion like the storm-tossed sea, but manage gently and moderately the matters which arise. And that is why States when they are in difficulties or in fear yearn for the rule of the elder men; and often they have brought from his field some aged man, not by his request and even contrary to his wish, and have forced him to take the helm, as it were, and steer affairs into safety, and in so doing they have pushed aside generals and politicians who were able to shout loud and to speak without pausing for breath and, by Zeus, even men who were able, planting their feet firmly, to fight bravely against the enemy.A reminiscence of Tyrtaeus, 8. 31 ἀλλά τις εῦ διαβὰς μενέτος, and Homer, Il. xii. 458. So, for example, the politicians at Athens grooming Chares, son of Theochares, a powerful man at the height of his physical strength, to be the opponent of Timotheüs and Iphicrates, declared that the general of the Athenians ought to be such as he, but Timotheüs said, No, by the gods, but such should be the man who is to carry the general’s bedding. The general should be one who sees at the same time that which is before and behindHomer, Il. i. 343. and does not let anything that happens disturb his reasoning as to what is for the best. Sophocles Cf. Plato, Republic, 329 c, with Shorey’s note. indeed said that he was glad to have escaped, now that he was old, from sexual love, as from a cruel and raging tyrant; but in public life one must escape, not from one tyrant, the love of boys or women, but from many loves which are more insane than that: love of contention, love of fame, the desire to be first and greatest, which is a disease most prolific of envy, jealousy, and discord. Some of these old age does slacken and dull, but others it quenches and cools entirely, not so much by withdrawing a man from the impulse to action as by keeping him from excessive and fiery passions, so as to bring sober and settled reasoning to bear upon his thoughts.
