Laudator Temporis Acti

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 26.1 (tr. Richard M. Gummere):

I was just lately telling you that I was within sight of old age. I am now afraid that I have left old age behind me. For some other word would now apply to my years, or at any rate to my body; since old age means a time of life that is weary rather than crushed. You may rate me in the worn-out class—of those who are nearing the end.

Modo dicebam tibi, in conspectu esse me senectutis; iam vereor, ne senectutem post me reliquerim. aliud iam his annis, certe huic corpori, vocabulum convenit, quoniam quidem senectus lassae aetatis, non fractae, nomen est; inter decrepitos me numera et extrema tangentis.

J.N. Adams, An Anthology of Informal Latin, 200 BC - AD 900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 231-233 (on decrepitus in Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 12.3):

[T]he adjective, of disputed etymology (see de Vaan 2008: 164), is applied particularly to old men (and sometimes women): see TLL V.1.218.14ff. It is found in both Plautus and Terence, and occasionally in literature over a long period, but does not survive in the Romance languages. It looks like an emotive, sometimes (as here) disparaging, term of the literary language.

Decrepitus is used five times of old men in Plautus, three times in asyndeton bimembre with uetus or uetulus, combinations that look stylised or ‘proverbial’ (see Preuss 1881: 9): Epid. 666 nos uetulos, decrepitos duos, Merc. 291 senex uetus, decrepitus, Merc. 314 uetulus, decrepitus senex. There are also two instances of decrepitus in Terence. The word occurs just once in the whole of Cicero (Tusc. 1.94), where he has it in reference to certain creatures (bestiolas quasdam) which according to Aristotle live for just one day. A creature which has lived to the eighth hour, prouecta aetate mortua est. One which lives until sunset, is decrepita. It is a stronger term than prouecta aetate here, and presumably than uetus/uetulus, expressing extreme decrepitude: in the three asyndeta above it follows uetus/uetulus, and the asyndeta are of that type in which the second term intensifies the first. Timpanaro (1978: 172) refers to the type as ‘asindeto accrescitivo’, as at Lucr. 1.557–8 longa diei | infinita aetas, ‘lunga, (anzi) infinita’, ‘the long, nay infinite, age of days’. The second term means much the same as the first but is stronger, almost a correction. Cf. Plaut. Bacch. 732 quid si potius morbum mortem scribat?, ‘What if he’s writing a greeting of illness and death to him instead?’ (de Melo, Loeb). Mortem caps morbum, though alternatively here there may be a sequential relationship, with death following disease (for this pair see Wölfflin 1933: 267).

Though decrepitus faded from literature, it was always available as a means of stressing extreme old age and/or unfitness for some task. It is even used (with the latter function) by Echion in Petronius in a notoriously substandard speech (45.11 dedit gladiatores sestertiarios iam decrepitos, quos si sufflasses cecidissent), which undermines any idea that the word was ‘archaic’ or the like.

At Aug. Conf. 9.8.17 there is the phrase famulae cuiusdam decrepitae, of an old slave of Augustine’s mother Monica. Burton (2007: 53) comments: ‘The old woman is broken down, decrepitus, an adjective in classical Latin rare outside comedy; there is some evidence of its revival in post-classical Latin, but it is likely to have remained in part at least a conscious archaism’ (cf. Summers 1910: 169 ‘a colloquial, probably old-fashioned word’). In a footnote (53 n. 33) Burton adds: ‘Plautus and Terence together provide seven of the eight Perseus instances. Most of the later examples in TLL 5.1.217–8 are from Christian authors, but Apuleius and Symmachus also feature.’

The phraseology in Seneca is not at all suggestive of the language of comedy, or of deliberate archaising. Seneca himself has a few other instances of decrepitus. Note first Dial. 10.11.1 decrepiti senes paucorum annorum accessionem uotis mendicant: minores natu se ipsos esse fingunt. At Epist. 26.1 he explains the point of the word. He fears that he has now left old age behind. Senectus is the name of a weary age, not a broken one, and a different word is needed for his own state, decrepitus, ‘in reach of the end’: modo dicebam tibi in conspectu esse me senectutis: iam uereor ne senectutem post me reliquerim. aliud iam his annis, certe huic corpori, uocabulum conuenit, quoniam quidem senectus lassae aetatis, non fractae nomen est: inter decrepitos me numera et extrema tangentis. For Seneca decrepitus is a word adopted for its semantics (‘on his last legs’), not for its earlier stylistic associations. See also frg. 36.10 Archimimus, senex iam decrepitus. Seneca’s explanation above matches the use of the word at Jerome, Vita Malchi 2.2 (of a woman): ualde decrepita et iam morti proxima. The example in our letter has exactly that meaning.

Michiel de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 164: Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, s.v. decrepitus: