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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
There is no substance at all, then, to the claim of those who say that old age takes no part in life's activities. They are like people – if such there be – who would declare that the helmsman “engages in no activities” in the sailing of a ship: after all, here are men climbing the rigging, others hurrying up and down the decks, still others bailing the bilges, and what is he doing? Why just sitting peacefully in the stern-sheets with his hand on the tiller! Granted that an old man does not do what young men do: still, the things he does are vastly more significant and more worthwhile. It is not by the strong back or the nimble foot or the muscular physique that important questions are settled, but by consultation, by personal influence, by expression of opinion, and from these activities, old age is not ordinarily cut off; on the contrary, it usually acquires an even greater share in them.
The gerontocratic ideals expressed in this quotation from Cicero's De Senectute also existed in eighteenth-century England. As we saw in the last chapter, however, in the eighteenth century, motifs of power, dignity, and influence in old age would have had to compete with common associations of old age with decrepitude and dependence. There was no single style of representation of old people in the English past: both positive characterizations of the elderly and vicious ageism have been evident throughout English history.
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