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6. Old Men or Senexes. Frequently these characters have a beautiful young ward who, often, they wish to marry (or wish to marry off to someone the ward doesn’t like) and it is the task of the hero, the male lead, often helped by a shrewd servant or slave (or similar figure) to outwit the senex and marry the girl. Sometimes the senex figure is actually married to a young wife and that poses numerous complications: the old husband is jealous, the young wife unsatisfied in various ways with a different perspective on life.
2013, John P. Anderson, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: The Curse of Kabbalah, volume 7, Universal Publishers, →ISBN, page 53:
Now for more about the four birds, explicitly identified with the four evangelists as the four old men or Senexes. Notice the repetition on four as the four Gospel books repeat much of the same history of Christ, perhaps as a result of an editorial effort to achieve uniformity.
2016, Stephen Glynn, The British School Film: From Tom Brown to Harry Potter, Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 90:
It concludes, though, not with an image of resigned heads or rebellious newcomers: instead, after the camera lifts for the final credits to the heavens—the only site for the senexes’ social and educational ideals?—it descends on the playing fields where the school’s ration-book-resourceful porter Rainbow (Edward Rigby) and his youthful assistant are seen collapsed under the frequently-removed rugby posts.
From Proto-Italic*seneks, reshaped from Proto-Indo-European*sénos(“old”). Sihler holds the former inflection to be a consonant stem *sē, senis, with some remodeled endings taken from the antonym iuvenis; others propose an o-stem *senos (but this leaves the remade nominative singular less clearly motivated). Nonetheless, the apparent discrepancy between the nominative senex and the oblique root sen- may reflect a Proto-Italic root *seneɣ-, which in Old Latin would yield senex in the nominative and *seneh- (later contracted to sen-) in the oblique. Cognates include Lithuaniansenis(“old man”), Ancient Greekἕνος(hénos), Old Irishsen, Proto-Brythonic*hen, Avestan𐬵𐬀𐬥𐬀(hana, “old”), Sanskritसन(sána) and Gothic𐍃𐌹𐌽𐌴𐌹𐌲𐍃(sineigs).
magno opere contemno, conlectum ex senibus desperatis, ex agresti luxuria, ex rusticis decoctoribus, ex eis qui vadimonia deserere quam illum exercitum maluerunt;
I thoroughly despise that army composed of desperate old men, of clownish profligates, and uneducated spendthrifts; of those who have preferred to desert their bail rather than that army
Late 4th century, Jerome [et al.], transl., edited by Roger Gryson, Biblia Sacra: Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (Vulgate), 5th edition, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, published 2007, →ISBN, 2:28:
et erit post haec effundam spiritum meum super omnem carnem et prophetabunt filii vestri et filiae vestrae senes vestri somnia somniabunt et iuvenes vestri visiones videbunt
And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:
At quae fida fuit nulli, post victa senecta ducit inops tremula stamina torta manu firmaque conductis adnectit licia telis tractaque de niveo vellere ducta putat. Hanc animo gaudente vident iuvenumque catervae Conmemorant merito tot mala ferre senem, Hanc Venus exalto flentem sublimis Olympo Spectat et, infidis quam sit acerba, monet.
Late 4th century, Jerome [et al.], transl., edited by Roger Gryson, Biblia Sacra: Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (Vulgate), 5th edition, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, published 2007, →ISBN, 2:22:
Heli autem erat senex valde et audivit omnia quae faciebant filii sui universo Israheli
Now Eli was very old, and heard all that his sons did unto all Israel;
^ Smith, Kirby Flower (1916) “Notes on Tibullus”, in The American Journal of Philology, volume 37, number 2, page 143
Further reading
“senex”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
“senex”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
senex in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
senex in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book, London: Macmillan and Co.
still quote a young (old) man: admodum adulescens, senex
