Spoken Latin: What does “Onus Aetna Gravius” mean?

This week’s episode of our series treat­ing Latin expres­sions and pas­sages is about the phrase Onus Aet­na grav­ius, which comes from Cicero’s work On old age. I dis­cuss the con­text of the phrase, its mean­ing and use. As always, the episode is entire­ly in Latin, so as to pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice hear­ing com­pre­hen­sion as well as, per­haps, learn new vocab­u­lary and structures. 

Sug­gest­ed watch­ing: Spo­ken Latin: What does in ali­ud tem­pus dif­ferre mean?

If you want to fol­low along in the text I talk about, you will find it below the video.

I high­ly rec­om­mend this par­tic­u­lar work by Cicero as it is not only inter­est­ing but it tends to be eas­i­er than many of his Ora­tions and works on Ora­to­ry, since they con­tain a wide range of legal and rhetor­i­cal ter­mi­nol­o­gy respec­tive­ly. Fur­ther­more, On old age (De senec­tute) is writ­ten as a dia­logue with over­all short­er sentences.

Video in Latin

Latin audio

Lis­ten to the audio of this episode here on Latini­tium or in your pod­cast app.

Cicero’s text

Sci­pio. Saepe numero admi­rari soleo cum hoc C. Lae­lio cum ceter­arum rerum tuam excel­len­tem, M. Cato, per­fec­tamque sapi­en­ti­am, tum vel maxime quod numquam tibi senec­tutem gravem esse senser­im, quae plerisque senibus sic odiosa est, ut onus se Aet­na grav­ius dicant sustinere.

Cato. Rem haud sane dif­fi­cilem, Sci­pio et Laeli, admi­rari videm­i­ni. Quibus enim nihil est in ipsis opis ad bene beat­eque viven­dum, eis omnis aetas gravis est; qui autem omnia bona a se ipsi petunt, eis nihil malum potest videri quod nat­u­rae neces­si­tas adfer­at. Quo in genere est in prim­is senec­tus, quam ut adip­is­cant­ur omnes optant, ean­dem accu­sant adep­tam; tan­ta est stul­ti­ti­ae incon­stan­tia atque per­ver­si­tas. Obrepere aiunt eam citius, quam putassent. Pri­mum quis coe­git eos fal­sum putare? Qui enim citius adules­cen­ti­ae senec­tus quam pueri­ti­ae adules­cen­tia obrepit? Deinde qui minus gravis esset eis senec­tus, si octin­gen­tes­i­mum annum ager­ent quam si octo­ges­i­mum? Prae­teri­ta enim aetas quamvis lon­ga cum effluxis­set, nul­la con­so­la­tio per­mul­cere pos­set stul­tam senectutem.