Tully's compendious treatise of old age ; intitled Cato Major ... / Translated ... with copious notes, by W. Massey.
- Cicero
- Date:
- 1753
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Tully's compendious treatise of old age ; intitled Cato Major ... / Translated ... with copious notes, by W. Massey. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![with fuch Reluftance ? Is it not, think you, becaufe the Mind, that has the cleareft and moft diftindl View of Things, feems as if it were going to a better State of Exiftence ? Whereas the Mind, whofe Vifion is obftrud;- ed by earthly and vicious Inclinations, has not that agreeable Profped:. 'Tis true, I have an ardent Dehre to fee your Fathers, whom I loved and refpefted ; and not only to fee and meet with thofe again, whom I have been acquainted with, but alfo with others, whom I have heard, read, and written of; and in my Journey thither, nothing fhould retard me^ though I were fure of the Pro- mife that was made to Pelias^. For if I could, * The Story or Fable of Pelia$y that Cato here alludes to, is this. Pelias was an unjuft and tyrannical King of PheJJaly. But Medea, in Revenge for the Injury done to her Hufband yafcn, perfuaded Penas'^ Daughters to kill him (who was then very old) promiftng them, that by her Art and Skill in the Ufe of Drugs, Herbs, and Enchantments, fhe would re- ftore him to Youth again, by boiling him in a Cauldron; making them believe, as a Proof of the Poftibility of the Thing, that by that Means ftie had changed an old Ram into a young Lamb ; but her Promifes were all a Cheat, and the poor old Man was cut to Pieces and boiled in the Pot to no Purpofe, This is O-uidh Account of the Affair, Some have thought, that Pully here forgot himfelf, in afferting that Pe¬ lias was reftored to his Youth again. For the Words in the Original are, tanquam Peliavi recoxerit; but, perhaps, Tully might have read what he afferts in fome ancient Writer, which we now have not. Nay, Plautus (who writ above a hundred Years before Pully] fays the fame Thing in thefe Lines; Item ut Medea Peliam concoxit fenem ; ^uem medicamento, Cf fuis ^enenis dicitur Fecife](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b3050529x_0106.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
