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Now the greatest evil attendant upon public life, envy, is least likely to beset old age, for dogs do indeed bark at whom they do not know, according to Heracleitus, and envy fights against a man as he begins his public career, at the doorway, as it were, of the orator’s platform, and tries to refuse him access, but familiar and accustomed reputation it does not savagely and roughly resent, but puts up with mildly. For this reason envy is sometimes likened to smoke, for in the case of those who are beginning their public career it pours out before them in great volume because they are enkindled, but when they burst into full flame it disappears. And whereas men attack other kinds of eminence and themselves lay claim to good character, good birth, and honour, as though they were depriving themselves of so much of these as they grant to others; yet the primacy which comes from time, for which there is the special word presbeion or the prerogative due to seniority in age, arouses no jealousy and is freely conceded; for of no honour is it so true that it adorns the giver more than the receiver as of that which is paid to old age. Moreover, not all men expect that the power derived from wealth, eloquence, or wisdom will accrue to them, but no one who takes part in public life is without hope of attaining the reverence and repute to which old age leads. So there is no difference between the pilot who has sailed in great danger against adverse winds and waves, and, after clear weather and fair winds have come, seeks his moorings, and the man who has struggled in the ship of State a long time against the billows of envy, and then, when they have ceased and become smooth, backs water and withdraws from public life, giving up his political affiliations and clubs along with his public activities. For the longer the time has been the greater the number of those whom he has made his friends and fellow-workers, and he cannot take them all out with him, as a trainer leads out his chorus, nor is it fair to leave them in the lurch. But a long public career is, like old trees, hard to pull up, for it has many roots and is interwoven with affairs which cause more troubles and torments to those who withdraw from them than to those who remain in them. And if any remnant of envy or jealousy does continue against old men from their political contests, they should rather extinguish this by power than turn their backs and go away naked and unarmed. For people do not attack them so much because of envy if they maintain the contest as because of contempt if they have given up.
