From Melmoth’s translation of the “De Senectute.”

XENOPHON represents the elder Cyrus, in his last moments, as expressing his belief in the soul’s immortality in the following terms: “Oh, my sons, do not imagine when death shall have separated me from you that I shall cease to exist. You beheld not my soul whilst I continued amongst you, yet you concluded that I had one, from the actions you saw me perform; infer the same when you shall see me no more. If the souls of departed worthies did not watch over and guard their surviving fame, the renown of their illustrious actions would soon be worn out of the memory of men. For my own part, I never could be persuaded that the soul could properly be said to live whilst it remained in this mortal body, or that it ceased to live when death had dissolved the vital union. I never could believe either that it became void of sense when it escaped from its connection with senseless matter, or that its intellectual powers were not enlarged and improved when it was discharged and refined from all corporeal admixture. When death has disunited the human frame, we clearly see what becomes of its material parts, as they apparently return to the several elements out of which they were originally composed; but the soul continues to remain invisible, both when she is present in the body, and when she departs out of it. Nothing so nearly resembles death as sleep, and nothing so strongly intimates the divinity of the soul as what passes in the mind upon that occasion. For the intellectual principle in man, during this state of relaxation and freedom from external impressions, frequently looks forward into futurity, and discerns events ere time has yet brought them forth—a plain indication this what the powers of the soul will hereafter be, when she shall be delivered from the restraints of her present bondage. If I should not therefore be mistaken in this my firm persuasion, you will have reason, my sons, when death shall have removed me from your view, to revere me as a sacred and celestial spirit. But although the soul should perish with the body, I recommend it to you, nevertheless, to honor my memory with a pious and inviolable regard, in obedience to the immortal gods, by whose power and providence this beautiful fabric of the universe is sustained and governed.” Such were the sentiments of the dying Cyrus; permit me now to express my own.

  Never, Scipio, can I believe that your illustrious ancestors, together with many other excellent personages, whom I need not particularly name, would have so ardently endeavored to merit the honorable remembrance of posterity, had they not been persuaded that they had a real interest in the opinion which future generations might entertain concerning them. And do you imagine, my noble friends (if I may be indulged in an old man’s privilege to boast of himself), do you imagine I would have undergone those labors I have sustained, both in my civil and military employments, if I had supposed that the conscious satisfaction I received from the glory of my actions was to terminate with my present existence? If such had been my persuasion, would it not have been far better and more rational to have passed my days in an undisturbed and indolent repose, without labor and without contention? But my mind, by I know not what secret impulse, was ever raising its views into future ages, strongly persuaded that I should then only begin to live when I ceased to exist in the present world. Indeed, if the soul were not naturally immortal, never, surely, would the desire of immortal glory be a passion which always exerts itself with the greatest force in the noblest and most exalted bosoms.

  Tell me, my friends, whence it is that those men who have made the greatest advances in true wisdom and genuine philosophy are observed to meet death with the most perfect equanimity, while the ignorant and unimproved part of our species generally see its approach with the utmost discomposure and reluctance? Is it not because the more enlightened the mind is, and the further it extends its view, the more clearly it discerns in the hour of its dissolution (what narrow and vulgar souls are too short-sighted to discover) that it is taking its flight into some happier region?

  For my own part, I feel myself transported with the most ardent impatience to join the society of my two departed friends, your illustrious fathers, whose characters I greatly respected, and whose persons I sincerely loved. Nor is this, my earnest desire, confined to those excellent persons alone with whom I was formerly connected; I ardently wish to visit also those celebrated worthies, of whose honorable conduct I have heard and read much, or whose virtues I have myself commemorated in some of my writings. To this glorious assembly I am speedily advancing; and I would not be turned back in my journey, even upon the assured condition that my youth, like that of Pelias, should again be restored. The sincere truth is, if some divinity would confer upon me a new grant of my life, and replace me once more in the cradle, I would utterly, and without the least hesitation, reject the offer; having well-nigh finished my race, I have no inclination to return to the goal. For what has life to recommend it? Or rather, indeed, to what evils does it not expose us? But admit that its satisfactions are many, yet surely there is a time when we have had a sufficient measure of its enjoyments, and may well depart contented with our share of the feast; for I mean not, in imitation of some very considerable philosophers, to represent the condition of human nature as a subject of just lamentation. On the contrary, I am far from regretting that life was bestowed upon me, as I have the satisfaction to think that I have employed it in such a manner as not to have lived in vain. In short, I consider this world as a place which nature never designed for my permanent abode, and I look upon my departure out of it, not as being driven from my habitation, but as leaving my inn.

  Oh, glorious day, when I shall retire from this low and sordid scene, to associate with the divine assembly of departed spirits, and not with those only whom I just now mentioned, but with my dear Cato, that best of sons and most valuable of men. It was my sad fate to lay his body on the funeral pile, when by the course of nature I had reason to hope he would have performed the same last office to mine. His soul, however, did not desert me, but still looked back upon me in its flight to those happy mansions, to which he was assured I should one day follow him. If I seemed to bear his death with fortitude, it was by no means that I did not most sensibly feel the loss I had sustained; it was because I supported myself with the consoling reflection that we could not long be separated.

  Thus to think and thus to act has enabled me, Scipio, to bear up under a load of years with that ease and complacency which both you and Lælius have so frequently, it seems, remarked with admiration; as indeed it has rendered my old age not only no inconvenient state to me, but even an agreeable one. And after all should this my firm persuasion of the soul’s immortality prove to be a mere delusion, it is at least a pleasing delusion, and I will cherish it to my latest breath. I have the satisfaction in the meantime to be assured that if death should utterly extinguish my existence, as some minute philosophers assert, the groundless hope I entertained of an after-life in some better state cannot expose me to the derision of these wonderful sages, when they and I shall be no more. In all events, and even admitting that our expectations of immortality are utterly vain, there is a certain period, nevertheless, when death would be a consummation most earnestly to be desired. For Nature has appointed to the days of man, as to all things else, their proper limits, beyond which they are no longer of any value. In fine, old age may be considered as the last scene in the great drama of life, and one would not, surely, wish to lengthen out his part till he sunk down sated with repetition and exhausted with fatigue.

  These, my noble friends, are the reflections I had to lay before you on the subject of old age, a period to which, I hope, you will both of you in due time arrive, and prove by your own experience the truth of what I have asserted to you on mine.