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The Elderly in Classical Antiquity1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

M. I. Finley
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Extract

We begin with an obvious but not simple question: Who are, or were, the elderly? There is, of course, a vague biological boundary-line, but the ‘concept of ageing is a statistical one, and no valid means ofmeasuring it in the individual are available'. Statistically, today as in antiquity, the agreed points at which to draw the line in general terms seem to be either sixty or sixty-five. In concrete terms, however, there are many lines, determined by social, economic, and political considerations, for which biology provides no more than crude limits. For example, in England today a woman qualifies as an old-age pensioner at sixty, a man at sixty-five. Retirement is normal in the civil service at sixty, compulsory in the universities at sixty-five or sixty-seven, depending on a vote taken in individual institutions more than twentyfive years ago, but in Scotland at seventy. Members of parliament and until recently judges, in contrast, are allowed to go on until they drop if they so choose, and many do so choose. That these variations are directly linked with political influence, pensions, the desire to spread employment, access to lucrative post-retirement employment, ideology, and so on, not with biology, is self-evident.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , October 1981 , pp. 156 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1981

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References

Notes

2. Roth, Martin in Aging of the Brain and Dementia., ed. Amaducci, C. et al. (New York, 1980), p. 5Google Scholar.

3. See Hopkins, Keith, ‘On the Probable Age Structure of the Roman Population,’ Pop. Studies 20 (1966), 245–64CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

4. ‘Synopsis and Concluding Remarks’ in Bayer-Symposium VII, Brain Function in Old Age (Berlin, 1979), pp. 501–17Google Scholar.

5. What follows is based on an unpublished essay by J. Eisinger, ‘Lead and Wine’.

6. Old Age, transl. O'Brian, P. (London, 1972), p. 4Google Scholar.

7. Ibid., pp. 366–7.

8. Hopkins, M. K., ‘The Age of Roman Girls at Marriage,’, op. Studies 18 (1965), 309–27Google Scholar.

9. Suetonius, , De grammaticis et rhetoribus 25. 1Google Scholar.

10. Kirk, G. S., ‘Old Age and Maturity in Ancient Greece’, Eranos Jahrbuch (1971), 123–58, at p. 123Google Scholar.

11. See Brisson, Luc, Le my the de Tirésias (Leiden, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Laslett, P., ‘Societal Development and Aging’ in Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences, ed. Binstock, R. H. and Shanas, E. (New York, 1974), ch. 4Google Scholar.

13. Assembly of Women 877–1111; Plutus 959–1095.

14. Old Age, p. 10.

15. I refer to my Ancient Economy (Berkeley and London, 1973)Google Scholar.

16. Sheppard, H. L. in Handbook of Aging, p. 287Google Scholar.

17. ‘Vie de Trimalcion’, Annales, E.S.C. 16 (1961), 213–47, at pp. 238–9Google Scholar.

18. See R. Hirzel, Der Selbstmord (repr., Darmstadt, 1966, from Arch. f. Religionswiss. 11 1908.

19. See Flashar, H., Melancholie und Melancholiker in den medizinischen Theorien der Antike (Berlin, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. Eventually, but perhaps not before the end of the second century A. D., the Roman lawyers held that legally there could be madness without violent agitation and crisis, but they did not pursue the distinction further: Renier, E., ‘Observations sur la terminologie de l'aliénation mentale’, Rev. int. des droits de l'antiquité 5 (1950), 429–55Google Scholar.

21. See Drabkin, I. E., ‘Remarks on Ancient Psychopathology’, Isis 46 (1955), 223–34CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. This is a programmatic article deploring the present state of knowledge of the subject and laying down a detailed research programme. Hardly a word needs to be changed today.