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GROWING OLDER WITH CICERO (AND OTHERS)

Associate Professor of HistoryTexas Tech UniversityLubbock, TX 79409-1013

Old Age in the Roman World: A Cultural and Social History, by Tim G. Parkin. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 2003, 495 pp., $55.00 (cloth).

When I describe to my students how I became a specialist in the history of old age, I offer multiple explanations. Some are scholarly, rooted in the evolution of historical research on the ages of life or in the richness of source materials surviving from my particular period and place of study (18th-century France). Others are more personal, including the influence all four grandparents had on my growing up, both in their lives and in their deaths, and in their ways of being old. The oldest was my paternal grandfather. The one immigrant of the four, he represented a closer connection to the old world, but as he worked at least part-time until his death, he was different from retirees, who seemed functionally "older." His widow, the one who lived longest, expected for years to die "young," and she spoke of friends as "old." I sensed the difficulty in quantifying such things. My maternal grandfather was younger than those two, though somewhat slowed by heart disease, which eventually killed him. Yet, as the medical director of a home and hospital, he treated "old people." Compared with them, he was youthful. Compared with his much younger working wife, the grandparent who ironically died youngest, he was not. Although I didn't know it, I was gaining an education in gerontology. "Old" was a relative term that existed in a host of contexts.

I spent much time with older people, but did I think of them as a category other than that of grandparents? If I did, it might have had to do with the fact that in secondary school Latin class I was required to read Cicero's De Senectute, a defense of old age, an exploration of the predicament of aging. It came from the distant past, but it was part of a humanist curriculum that continued to influence some young people into the 20th century. Hardly a distinguished Latin scholar, I nevertheless remember mulling over the text in light of the elders in my own life. Could I generalize knowing full well how differently they had aged? And then, in my early teens, as three of the grandparents died within a year and a half, I turned my attention to other things. But the text came back to me in graduate school, as I kept encountering 18th-century editions and translations of Cicero. Roman old age, at least Cicero's representation of it, provided a model for European elites of the Enlightenment. I gained a new appreciation for my old text.

Cicero enjoys the largest number of references in the index to Tim Parkin's Old Age in the Roman World: A Cultural and Social History, an important contribution to Roman history and the history of old age. "My" Cicero was a traditional guide to aging even into the modern period. To a nonclassicist like myself, he represented the Roman ideal. Parkin's Cicero, however, is but one of a number of commentators whose views together did not add up to one coherent vision. Roman aging, in this account, is about a lot of individual cases, a variety of representations and social, legal, and medical challenges. Parkin has mastered those bodies of literature, and he knows his demography. He describes the world of the late Republic and the early Empire, but his history often resists the temptation to generalize. Yet, readers will frequently recognize seemingly timeless predicaments.

The book is divided into four parts, representing four different kinds of soundings into the past. "Uncovering Aging Romans" reveals definitions, demography, images, and attitudes. The second part, "Old Age in Public Life," examines rules of age in the Roman Empire and, most particularly, Roman Egypt. Then comes "Old Age in Private Life," which explores marriage, sexuality, and the family. "Putting Older People in their Place" concludes with the marginality of old age but avoids any simple summing up. Indeed, Parkin has joined a number of other historians who have pulled back from grand narratives about historical change. He is skeptical about offering a diachronic perspective, with general changes in attitude from one period to another. Instead, he treats each theme synchronically and discovers diverse ways of aging in a range of contexts.

Parkin explores evidence of age in literature, history, law, and funerary inscriptions as well as the subjective ways in which people probably understood aging. Knowledge of exact age was rarely important, but rules of age did matter. In his chapter on demography, Parkin uses comparative data to reconstruct the probable population structure of Rome. He points out that the Roman Empire was a "young man's world" (p. 50) but that the population aged 60 and older represented 6–8% of the total. Age at marriage as well as mortality rates suggest that coexistence of three generations was relatively rare.

Images and Attitudes
Parkin's chapter on images and attitudes steers clear of any simple evolution, proposed by other scholars, from the "positive" ideals of the early Republic to the "negative" satirical literature of a later period. Parkin recognizes their simultaneity and examines both serious and popular treatments of the aged. Much serious discussion derived from Plato's Republic, which presents old age as freeing the individual from physical desire and emphasizes the role of character at any age. Three centuries later, Cicero borrowed those ideas and elaborated upon them, responding to four complaints: that the old person is removed from active life, that the body is weakened, that old age is devoid of pleasure, and that it is close to death. Cicero emphasizes spiritual or philosophical activities, age-appropriate behavior, and a stoical view of death, and calls for honor and respect. Wishful thinking perhaps, and most appropriate for an officer class, but for centuries the text has urged the maintenance of human dignity.

Parkin considers Plato and Cicero as offering a philosophical and somewhat idealized view of old age. For him, realities are better expressed by Seneca the Younger and Pliny the Elder. Seneca poses a fundamental question:

Is the final stage of life the dregs, or is it the clearest and purest part of all, provided only that the mind is unimpaired, and the senses, still sound, give their support to the spirit, and the body is not worn out and dead before its time? For it makes a great deal of difference whether a man is drawing out his life or his death. (pp. 70–71)

He contemplates suicide:

I shall not abandon old age, if old age preserves me intact for myself, and intact as regards the better part of myself; but if old age begins to shatter my mind, and to pull its various faculties to pieces, if it leaves me, not life, but only the breath of life, I shall leap from a building that is crumbling and tottering. (p. 71)

Seneca was not alone in contemplating mind and body, but he was especially eloquent in presenting the challenge of the aging self.

As Parkin puts it, "The professed ideal for Seneca, as for Cicero and no doubt for many elderly aristocratic Roman males of the late republic or the empire, was a healthy old age enjoyed pursuing worthwhile and rewarding activities. This may be summed up as otium honestum ... (an honorable withdrawal to leisure)" (p. 72). Parkin goes on to quote Pliny's observations of the late lives of aristocrats. Some were healthful and tranquil, others painful to behold:

Deformed and crippled in every limb, he [Cn. Domitius Tullus] could only enjoy his enormous wealth by contemplating it and could not even turn in bed unless he was man-handled. He also had to have his teeth cleaned and brushed for him—a squalid and pitiful detail. When complaining about the humiliations of his infirmity, he was often heard to say that every day he licked the fingers of his slaves. (pp. 74–75)

Such an example mustn't lead us to assume Rome had generally turned against the aged, only that experiences and representations varied.

A tradition going back to Aristotle saw the old person as pessimistic, suspicious, and malicious. Parkin traces influences ahead to Horace, who speaks of the old man as cold, timid, and ill tempered. For a more satirical depiction, Parkin turns to Juvenal and a focus on "wrinkles, tremulousness, baldness, a runny nose, and loss of teeth" (p. 81). He goes on to discuss the drunken old man, the oversexed old woman, infirmity, and disability. For Parkin, literary representations were stereotypes that emphasized infirmity. How the stereotypes were related to realities is not such a simple matter.

Age Norms
The chapter on rules of age in the Roman Empire explores the transition from youth to adulthood around age 25, with the possibility of reaching major status at 18 or 20 years old. The military man was a junior from age 17–46, when he became a senior. But senior meant older, not necessarily senex, old man. The threshold of old age was not marked by a number, but Parkin uses age 60 for convenience and then discovers that senators were often surprisingly young:

The probable age breakdown of the imperial senate in my model is: 25–29 years, 14–16%; 30–39 years, 25–28%; 40–49 years, 22–23%; 50–59 years, 17–19%; 60–69 years, 11–13%; 70+ years, 5–6%. Using these figures, it may be estimated that only about 17% of senators at any one time (i.e., around 100 out of 600) would have been 60 years of age or older, while something of the order of 65% (around 400 out of 600) would have been under the age of 50 years. Conversely, it might be noted, a fair number of senators did survive to age 60, but it is only the "successful" ones we tend to hear about, thus conjuring up the image, perhaps, that all older senators were prominent. (p. 105)

The image of aged senators was a false one, but one that Romans themselves fostered.

When he turns to emperors, Parkin discovers that neither youth nor age was privileged, as the ideal emperor was in his 40s or 50s. He traces a large sample of careers and discovers patterns that applied to many. For example, the proconsulship of Africa or Asia might go to an older person, but it may have had to do with slow advancement rather than honor of the aged (p. 117). He finds a large group of elderly amici or advisors to emperors. But they were there for their experience and continued activity, not their age, and certainly not because of having stepped down from active political life. And in the senate one had optional, not mandatory, retirement, an option that may have had less to do with honor than with the possibility of being pushed out (p. 128).

Duties and Exemptions
Parkin goes on to investigate duties and public offices and exemptions by reason of age as aspects of municipal life. Exemption for particular posts at particular times varied from ages 55 to 65 to 70. But immunity wasn't necessarily granted. To explore the phenomenon more fully, Parkin looks at Roman Egypt, whose rich sources reveal "the actual workings and practicalities of such rules of age" (p. 138). Parkin demonstrates how knowledge of exact age didn't always match what one might expect from a society that granted age-based exemptions, so he looks at statements of age and discovers a sophisticated bureaucratic system in which age-rounding occurred less frequently in public documents than in private ones. What it adds up to is the existence of minor privileges for the aged. And yet Parkin finds also that throughout the Roman world there was little registration of births; thus, ages were simply accepted as stated.

Private and Public Responsibilities
In order to study private life, Parkin examines the social legislation of Augustus that encouraged both marriage and childbearing. He uses the law to explore expectations of fertility and menopause and of marriage. Men aged 25–59 and women aged 20–49 were expected to be married and have children. Parkin then goes on to study expectations of intergenerational relations, particularly of rights of support in old age. Certainly ancient culture expressed the ideal of honoring parents and repaying a debt incurred since childhood, but there was also interesting discussion of "whether a child's devotion toward his or her parents was a result of natural feelings or of a sense of obligation" (p. 206). The Athenians were obligated by the state to see to their aged parents' welfare, but legislation obliging filial support of aged parents was never enacted in Rome. It was just encouraged as a moral matter in the second century AD. The expectation was that the power of the father, the patria potestas, ensured at least the security of the male head of the family. Beyond the family, Parkin finds little evidence of institutionalized help or public charities, only the occasional gift by a wealthy benefactor. Literature and inscriptions express the expectation that the individual man will make himself financially secure by age 50. A friend might provide help, but he might be indistinguishable from the inheritance hunter.

In the end, despite ideas of filial piety, how one aged was one's own responsibility:

Eventually the old person must look to his or her own resources, and the pervasive mentality that one's lot was what one deserved—a sentiment with something of a modern ring to it—left little room for genuine interest or sympathy. This negative conclusion is, of course, a subjective generalization, to be gleaned as much from inference as from the inadequate ancient sources, but it is, I believe, a necessary antidote to a long-standing myth that in past cultures, both in antiquity and in more recent history, older people enjoyed a life of prestige, comfort, and respect—with an implied contrast to the present day. That some did is certain. That most did not should be recognized. (p. 226)

Age and Status
Parkin also discusses the possibility of an aged father's senile dementia requiring intervention by a son and the state. The possibility existed, but he suggests it was rarely if ever used. Indeed, he concludes that the very idea might have been enough to encourage settlement of any lawsuit out of court. Thus, conflicts were probably worked out individually, with much hidden from public view, including that of the historian.

Parkin concludes with the theme of marginality. He insists on the importance of different circumstances for different groups of old people. Above all he sees the older person's status as a function of continued ability, be it as a statesman or as a child minder.

In other words, the prestige enjoyed, the part played, the actual status of an aged person in the Roman world depended more on the person than on the general fact that he or she was old. Just as Plato's Cephalus and Cicero's Cato, among others, stated that the faults found in an old person were due not to old age but to that person's character, so it may be said that society's view of an elderly Roman was dictated by the extent to which that individual continued to find a niche in that society. Old people were not automatically accorded a role or privileged position—hence, perhaps, the insistence of some ancient authors that, for example, old men still have an important part to play in public life. (p. 240)

In short, health mattered. The medical literature, uncertain whether the process of aging is physiological or pathological, paid modest attention to old age, but it did set the tone for centuries of medicine thereafter. The same prescriptions for slowing the processes of aging were repeated over and over.

In mythical and religious literature, youth was glorified over age. Stories were told of other peoples, such as the legendary Hyperboreans of the north, who disposed of the aged. Thus, senicide or euthanasia was something supposedly done by others but, evidently, thought about by the Romans both in legends and proverbs. Talking about how others (including distant ancestors) might have killed those older than 60 provides opportunities for overcoming such temptations; it might also reveal a certain wistfulness.

The Significance of Old Age
Parkin concludes:

Although criteria of age played an important part in public and private life alike, old age, the inevitable conclusion of a long life and the precursor to death, was not accorded in practice the esteem or authority that people such as Cicero and Plutarch in their own old age felt it merited. Whatever the scattered expressions of reverence for old age might suggest, there is nothing to indicate any significantly positive role for "the elderly" as a group in the Roman world, whether as decision makers or as advisers. Privileges granted to old age generally took the form of exemptions from duties (not always freely given at that), rather than positive benefits. The feeling was, to put it in very general terms, that old age was a time not of power or authority but of acceptance of the realities of aging and, when necessary, of withdrawal, with the minimum of fuss. As one maxim of the Delphic canon had put it ... accept old age. The primary factor that ultimately determined an older person's place in the society was the health, mental and physical, that that person did or did not enjoy: in short, his or her social "worth." (pp. 275–276).

Hardly a dramatic conclusion. Parkin has gone to great trouble to reconstruct populations, to imagine careers, and to understand cultural representations. Because he is working with a famously patriarchal society, he pays less attention than one might have hoped to female aging, a gender bias that would continue to characterize representations of late life. Yet, he has still produced the most thorough study of the period.

We look to historians to explain change and the "pastness" of the past, but we should also be grateful when they discover continuities. Old age wasn't the "problem" it would become in the modern era. But the problems of individual aging had been identified, and certain texts, laws, and practices from the Roman world provided materials for subsequent reflection. Cicero's writing in particular made Roman aging a western ideal in later centuries. That's what I found in the 18th century and even in my own youth. Cicero's little book has guided young people in thinking about their elders, who themselves may not have found much comfort. For Parkin, Roman old age was more marginal and ambiguous, but it provided ideas and representations that we have been using ever since.

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