Now it makes a great deal of difference what you have in mind when you approach a given subject. If a man is to be a scholar,932 and is examining the works of Virgil, he does not interpret the noble passage
Time flies away, and cannot be restored933
in the following sense: “We must wake up; unless we hasten, we shall be left behind. Time rolls swiftly ahead, and rolls us with it. We are hurried along ignorant of our destiny; we arrange all our plans for the future, and on the edge of a precipice are at our ease.” Instead of this, he brings to our attention how often Virgil, in speaking of the rapidity of time, uses the word “flies” (fugit).
The choicest days of hapless human life
Fly first; disease and bitter eld succeed,
And toil, till harsh death rudely snatches all.934
He who considers these lines in the spirit of a philosopher comments on the words in their proper sense: “Virgil never says, ‘Time goes,’ but ‘Time flies,’ because the latter is the quickest kind of movement, and in every case our best days are the first to be snatched away; why, then, do we hesitate to bestir ourselves so that we may be able to keep pace with this swiftest of all swift things?” The good flies past and the bad takes its place. Just as the purest wine flows from the top of the jar and the thickest dregs settle at the bottom; so in our human life, that which is best comes first. Shall we allow other men to quaff the best, and keep the dregs for ourselves? Let this phrase cleave to your soul; you should be satisfied thereby as if it were uttered by an oracle:
Each choicest day of hapless human life
Flies first.
Why “choicest day”? Because what’s to come is unsure. Why “choicest day”? Because in our youth we are able to learn; we can bend to nobler purposes minds that are ready and still pliable; because this is the time for work, the time for keeping our minds busied in study and in exercising our bodies with useful effort; for that which remains is more sluggish and lacking in spirit—nearer the end.
Let us therefore strive with all courage, omitting attractions by the way; let us struggle with a single purpose, lest, when we are left behind, we comprehend too late the speed of quick-flying time, whose course we cannot stay. Let every day, as soon as it comes, be welcome as being the choicest, and let it be made our own possession. We must catch that which flees. Now he who scans with a scholar’s eye the lines I have just quoted, does not reflect that our first days are the best because disease is approaching and old age weighs upon us and hangs over our heads while we are still thinking about our youth. He thinks rather of Virgil’s usual collocation of disease and eld; and indeed rightly. For old age is a disease which we cannot cure. “Besides,” he says to himself, “think of the epithet that accompanies eld; Virgil calls it bitter,”—
Disease and bitter eld succeed.
And elsewhere Virgil says:
There dwelleth pale disease and bitter eld.935
There is no reason why you should marvel that each man can collect from the same source suitable matter for his own studies; for in the same meadow the cow grazes, the dog hunts the hare, and the stork the lizard. When Cicero’s book On the State is opened by a philologist, a scholar, or a follower of philosophy, each man pursues his investigation in his own way. The philosopher wonders that so much could have been said therein against justice. The philologist takes up the same book and comments on the text as follows: There were two Roman kings—one without a father and one without a mother. For we cannot settle who was Servius’s mother, and Ancus, the grandson of Numa, has no father on record.936 The philologist also notes that the officer whom we call dictator, and about whom we read in our histories under that title, was named in old times the magister populi; such is the name existing today in the augural records, proved by the fact that he whom the dictator chose as second in command was called magister equitum. He will remark, too, that Romulus met his end during an eclipse; that there was an appeal to the people even from the kings (this is so stated in the pontiffs’ register and is the opinion of others, including Fenestella937). When the scholar unrolls this same volume, he puts down in his notebook the forms of words, noting that reapse, equivalent to re ipsa, is used by Cicero, and sepse938 just as frequently, which means se ipse. Then he turns his attention to changes in current usage. Cicero, for example, says: “Inasmuch as we are summoned back from the very calx by his interruption.” Now the line in the circus which we call the creta939 was called the calx by men of old time. Again, he puts together some verses by Ennius, especially those which referred to Africanus:
A man to whom nor friend nor foe could give
Due meed for all his efforts and his deed.940
From this passage the scholar declares that he infers the word opem to have meant
