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:
