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those who fill
their chief magistracies are called “elders,” as they
are in fact. And indeed, if you care to read or hear
foreign history, you will find that the greatest states
have been overthrown by the young and sustained
and restored by the old.
How lost you, pray, your mighty state so soon?
for such is the question put in a play entitled the
Wolf, by the poet Naevius. Several answers are
given, but the one chiefly in point is this:
Through swarms of green, declaiming, silly lads.
True enough, for rashness is the product of the
budding-time of youth, prudence of the harvest-time of age.