De senectūte (‘on old age’), dialogue by Cicero ((1) 5), whose title for it was Cato Maior de senectute, probably written just before Julius Caesar's murder in 44 BC. The work is dedicated to Atticus. The conversation is supposed to take place in 150 BC, when M. Porcius Cato (the Censor) was in his eighty-fourth year. At the request of his young friends Scipio Aemilianus and Laelius, Cato expounds how the burden of old age may best be borne; he describes its compensations and consolations, drawing illustrations from his own experience, from reminiscences of old men he has known, and from his reading (notably of Plato and Xenophon). He concludes with a reasoned statement of his belief in the immortality of the soul. The early part of the dialogue is imitated from the conversation of Socrates and Cephalus in book 1 of Plato's Republic.
