Old Age and Elders in Rome

 

For a general discussion of old age in Greece and Rome, including

the representation of elders in Roman comedy, see: T. Falkner and J. de

Luce. 1992. "A view from Antiquity: Greece, Rome, and Elders", in Handbook

of Humanities and Aging, ed. T. Cole, et al, Springer Publishing.

 

For discussions of intergenerational relations, see: S. Bertman ed.

1976. The Conflict of Generations in Greece and Rome. Gruner.

 

In any discussion of old age it is essential to distinguish between

those characteristics which are the products of old age in general and

those characteristics which are the products of a particular individual's

personality and life experiences. Thus, at the outset we must be careful to

recognize that many factors affect the experience of growing old: economic

class, social class, status (free or slave, married or single), gender,

health, individual personality. Cicero's de Senectute may suggest, for

example, what old age could be like for certain upper-class men who had

been active in public life, but that old age could not have been enjoyed by

old women. Most of our evidence for old age in ancient Rome comes from the

upper class; thus, while we have a good deal of information about growing

old, we do not have a full picture of what the experience would have been

like for more than a tiny percentage of the population.

 

In order to understand aging in Rome, we have to make a further

distinction between the accounts of actual men and women and the literary

tradition. Pliny's letters provide valuable portraits of elders,

including his friend Spurinna, at 77, and 79-year-old Ummidia Quadratilla.

Historians such as Tacitus include portraits of old women who exerted their

influence as Vestal Virgins and in their own families. Such sources

suggest the opportunities for influence and the respect which male and

female elders might actually enjoy.

 

The literary tradition, however, perhaps taking a cue from the

pessimism of the Greek tradition, tends to represent old age as a grim time

of loss in which wisdom and serenity may be accompanied by vulnerability.

At the very least, the Romans regarded old age with ambivalence. Elders

come in for ridicule if they violate the rules of temptestivitas. The

Romans tended to follow a system of age-grading; that is, they identified

certain behaviors and activities as appropriate for particular ages. For

example, old men are ridiculed for their greed, for their timidity, and

above all for their inappropriate lust. Old women, too, may be ridiculed

for their hopeless sexual appetite; indeed they are represented with

particular viciousness for desiring to be sexually active. According to

tempestivitas, passion is the province of the young.

 

When was a man or woman "old"? While the available evidence for

life expectancies in ancient Rome is neither unequivocal nor complete, it

appears that the median age of death for women was about 35, 45 for men.

Romans tended to regard 70 as the normal life span. Women would have been

regarded as "old" after menopause, around 40, according to ancient

physicians. Traditionally, women are regarded as old earlier than men; in

Rome men would have been regarded as old by 50.

 

While Rome was not a gerontocracy (that is, elders did not regard

themselves as a class which ruled Rome), old men and women could exert

considerable influence in private and public life. We know that male elders

could remain active in public life. In the senate the first speaker

recognized was the most senior patrician, and among the Augurs the oldest

men enjoyed the privilege of speaking first in debate. Post-menopausal

women, while no longer valued for their fertility, might still exert

considerable influence within their families. Unable to vote, hold office,

or engage in those political activities which old men might still enjoy,

Roman upper class women were not without influence, in part because of the

greater freedom they enjoyed precisely because they were no longer able to

bear children. On the other hand, laws and customs requiring children to

care for their aging parents remind us of the vulnerability of elders

without social services to provide care if the family could or would not.

 

Selected Bibliography:

J. de Luce. 1996. "Aging and Mythology," in Encyclopedia of Aging.

Academic Press.

 

----------- 1994. Ed., "Reading Cicero on Aging"; author of introductory

essay,"Continuity and Change: Four Disciplinary Perspectives on Reading

Cicero's De Senectute" (335-338), author of "Theme and Variations in the De

Senectute" (361-371) Journal of Aging Studies, 7, 333-381.

 

----------- 1993. "Ancient Images of Aging: Did Ageism Exist in Greco-Roman

Antiquity?", in "Changing Perceptions of Aging and the Aged", Generations

17, 41-45.

 

----------- 1993."Quod temptabam scribere versus erat: From the Despair of Old

Age to the Confidence of the Artist" in Creativity, Aging and Gender in

Literature of the Life Cycle, ed. Anne Wyatt-Brown and Janice Rossen,

University Press of Virginia.

 

----------- 1989. "Ovid as an Idiographic Study of Creativity in Old Age" in

Old Age in Greek and Latin Literature.

 

T. Falkner and J. de Luce, eds. 1989. Old Age in Greek and Latin

Literature. SUNY press. (includes an annotated bibliography)

 

J. P. Hallett. 1984. Fathers and Daughters in Roman society: Women and the

Elite Family. Princeton University Press.

 

C. G. Harcum. 1914. "The Ages of Man: A Study Suggested by Horace, Ars

Poetica." Classical World, 7, 114-118.

 

M. S. Haynes. 1963. "The Supposedly Golden Age for the Aged in Ancient

Rome: A study of Literary Concepts of old Age." Gerontologist, 3, 26-35.

 

K. Hopkins. 1966. "On the Probable Structure of the Roman Population."

Population Studies, 20, 245-264.

 

----------- 1983. Death and Renewal. Cambridge University press.

 

R. B. Kebric. 1983. "Aging in Pliny's Letters: A View from the Second

Century A. D." Gerontologist, 23, 538-545.

 

V. Rosivach. 1994 "Anus: Some Older Women in Latin Literature." Classical

World, 88,107-117

 

D. Schaps. 1979. The Economic Rights of Women in Ancient Greece. Edinburgh

University Press.