The Ancient Art of Growing Old

Presented in an accessible and playful tone, this book deals with ancient attitudes to ageing, supplemented by a translation. It reveals the true art of growing old gracefully.

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Bette Davis said ‘Old age ain’t no place for sissies’. If that’s true, we could all use a little help as we approach our twilight years.

Translator Tom Payne turns to Cicero, Ovid, Seneca, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aristophanes to learn what the wisest minds of antiquity could tell us about the pleasures and pains of old age. His discoveries are not always palatable (old age is an incurable disease) or inspiring (you’ll live longer if you don’t go to dinner parties), but in the surviving works of the classical world there is also comforting, invigorating and poignant counsel on mental decline, medicine, late love affairs, death and legacy.
Presented in a modern, accessible and playful tone, this lively tour around ancient attitudes to ageing, supplemented by a translation of Cicero’s On Old Age, reveals the true art of growing old gracefully.