Yes, I'll step out, I'll step along as ... fast as my age permits and the occasion demands. (halting) But I know well enough how ... easy it is for me. For I've lost my nimbleness ... the years have taken hold of me ... it's a heavy body I carry ... my strength has left me. Ah, old age is a bad thing—a bad piece of freight! Yes, yes, it brings along untold tribulations when it comes; if I were to specify them all, it would be a long, long story.
ut aetas mea est atque ut hoc usus facto est
gradum proferam, progrediri properabo.
sed id quam mihi facile sit hau sum falsus. 755
nam pernicitas deserit: consitus sum
senectute, onustum gero corpus, vires
reliquere: ut aetas mala est! mers mala ergo est.
nam res plurumas pessumas, quom advenit, fert,
quas si autumem omnis, nimis longus sermo est. 760
758 ergo codd.: aegro Gratwick
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Wednesday, April 02, 2025
Ills of Old Age
Plautus, Menaechmi 753-760 (tr. Paul Nixon):