Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

100 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
ruling over the third” (1.250–52). Although given to delivering
over-lengthy diatribes about the superiority of the men of his generation
to those of the present day, Nestor nonetheless commands
respect from the Greek chiefs precisely because of his age. Indeed,
Agamemnon goes so far as to declare that if he had 10 men of his
quality advising him on strategy, Troy would soon be captured.
Nestor makes a second appearance in The Odyssey as Telemachos’s
host and is no less prone to speechifying than before. It is testimony
to Telemachos’s maturing social skills that he manages to extricate
himself from his palace without giving offence.
In Attic comedy, the elderly are often caricatured as irascible and
vituperative. A notable example is Philokleon, who appears in Aristophanes’
Wasps. Philokleon is depicted as a superannuated delinquent
who looks back wistfully on his youth with all the venom of
a frustrated old age.
Retirement or Death in Harness?
We have no means of knowing what percentage of the Greek
population was able to retire. Nor is there any way of estimating
to what extent the Greeks regarded retirement as an attractive or
even possible option. Probably most working Greeks soldiered on
until they died. Although we occasionally hear of the head of the
household handing over the management of his property to his
son, as Odysseus’s father Laertes appears to have done, we do not
know whether this was a widespread phenomenon. Nor is there
any hint as to the fate of elderly or infirm slaves. While domestics
such as nurses and pedagogues would probably have been treated
humanely in their declining years, the prospects for those who did
not have a personal relationship with their masters must have been
grim indeed.
Caring for the Elderly
The Greeks regarded the care of the elderly, which they called
gêroboskia, as a sacred duty, the responsibility for which rested exclusively
with the offspring. Greek law laid down severe penalties for
those who omitted to discharge their obligations. In Delphi, for
instance, anyone who failed to look after his parents was liable to be
put in irons and thrown into prison. In Athens, those who neglected
either their parents or their grandparents were fined and partially
deprived of their citizen rights. There were no public facilities for