And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death:
Ver. 2. I am old, I know not the day of my death.] No more doth any, though never so young. There be as many young skulls as old, in Golgotha. But, young men, we say, may die; old men must die. To the old, death is pro ianuis; to the young, in insidiis. Senex, quasi semi-nex. Old men have pedem in cymba Charontis, one foot in the grave already. Our decrepit age both expects death, and solicits it: it goes grovelling, as groaning for the grave. Whence Terence a calls an old man Silicernium; and the Greeks γηροντα, πασα το εις γην οραν, of looking toward the ground, whither he is tending; or, as others will have it, of loving earth and earthly things; which old folk greedily grasp at, because they fear they shall not have to suffice them while alive, and to bring them honestly home, as they say, when they are dead; as Plutarch gives the reason, b
a Vel quod curvus silices cernat; vel quod mox silentiqus umbris cernendus sit. - Ter, in Adelph.
b Tους θριψαντας, και τους θαψαντας .