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We are well aware, Euphanes, that you, who are an outspoken admirer of Pindar, often repeat, as well and convincingly expressed, these lines of his, When contests are before us, an excuse Casts down our manhood into abysmal gloom.Pindar, ed. Bergk-Schroeder, p. 475, no. 228 (252). But inasmuch as our shrinking from the contests of political life and our various infirmities furnish innumerable excuses and offer us finally, like the move from the sacred lineIn one form of the game of draughts the pieces or men stood on lines, of which there were five for each of the two players. One of these, perhaps the middle one, was called the sacred line. The expression as here used seems to be about equivalent to playing the highest trump. in draughts, old age; and since it is more especially because of this last that these excuses seem to blunt and baffle our ambition and begin to convince us that there is a fitting limit of age, not only to the athlete’s career, but to the statesman’s as well, I therefore think it my duty to discuss with you the thoughts which I am continually going over in my own mind concerning the activity of old men in public affairs, that neither of us shall desert the long companionship in the journey which we have thus far made together, and neither shall renounce public life, which is, as it were, a familiar friend of our own years, only to change and adopt another which is unfamiliar and for becoming familiar with which and making it our own time does not suffice, but that we shall abide by the choice which we made in the beginning when we fixed the same end and aim for life as for honourable life - unless indeed we were in the short time remaining to us to prove that the long time we have lived was spent in vain and for no honourable purpose.
