He Plants His Trees to Serve a Race to Come: From On Old Age
Original title: Cato Maior de Senectute, 24–25 (Latin)
Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE)
Translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (1843–1906), 1900
44 BCE

Cold Library · Open Stacks · S-008207 · https://coldlibrary.com/s/008207
Rights: Cicero wrote the dialogue in 44 BCE. Shuckburgh's translation was published in 1900; he died in 1906. Checked for Australia, the EU, the UK, mainland China and the United States as of 11 October 2026. Guidance, not legal advice.
Source: Project Gutenberg #2808, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2808/pg2808.txt (retrieved 2026-10-11)
Generated 2026-10-14 from https://coldlibrary.com/en/open-stacks/cicero-trees-for-another-age

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But, to pass over these sublime studies, I can name some rustic Romans from the Sabine district, neighbours and friends of my own, without whose presence farm work of importance is scarcely ever performed—whether sowing, or harvesting or storing crops. And yet in other things this is less surprising; for no one is so old as to think that he may not live a year. But they bestow their labour on what they know does not affect them in any case:

> He plants his trees to serve a race to come,

as our poet Statius says in his Comrades. Nor indeed would a farmer, however old, hesitate to answer any one who asked him for whom he was planting: "For the immortal gods, whose will it was that I should not merely receive these things from my ancestors, but should also hand them on to the next generation."