ONE evening in 1778, Samuel Johnson and his biographer, James Boswell, had an argument about old age. Boswell, the younger of the pair, saw it as something to look forward to; for “He who is never an old man, does not know the whole of human life.” But, at 69, Dr Johnson was sceptical: he feared “the evils of old age”, asking his friend, “Would you have the gout? Would you have decrepitude?”

For Barbara Rosenwein, Professor Emerita at Loyola University, Chicago, and a pioneering historian of emotions, this bad-tempered exchange offers a valuable glimpse of historical feelings. In Winter Dreams, she explores both how societies treated their elderly, and how old people in the past felt about ageing — a subject that has too often been ignored, partly owing to the popular belief that everyone died young.

In reality, anyone who survived childhood had a good chance of reaching 60 or more; so the problem of providing for the elderly is a very old one. Many ancient civilisations emphasised filial duty: fifth-century Athenians who neglected their parents could even lose their citizenship. Nevertheless, the poet Hesiod complained that the young “Treat their parents with disdain as soon as they are old Heartlessly finding fault with them in accents harsh and cold.”

Medieval Christians saw the elderly as deserving of charity. But the early modern emphasis on work turned them into a burden, leading to heart-rending pleas for support from vulnerable people such as Edward Messenger — a blind, lame octogenarian who could not afford to feed himself. Since the rise of the welfare state, such desperate poverty has declined. But, Simone de Beauvoir argued in 1970, too many old people were still “condemned to poverty, decrepitude, wretchedness and despair”.

Rosenwein writes movingly of the plight of such individuals, and familiar fears echo across the centuries. In his sixties, Seneca was resigned to physical decline, “But if it begins to attack my mind . . . then I will fling myself from the decayed and collapsing edifice.” Others warded off ageing with healthy living, cosmetics, and hair dye.

But some people enjoyed their old age. Petrarch continued to write, travel, and socialise, and Sarah, Lady Cowper (d. 1720), derived comfort from her family and her faith.

As Sappho reflected: “Being Human, one cannot escape old age.” But, by depicting old age in all its complexity and diversity, this compassionate and engaging book offers both historical insights and lessons for the present.

Dr Katherine Harvey is Research Fellow in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London.

Winter Dreams: A historical guide to old age
Barbara H. Rosenwein
Reaktion Books £20
(978-1-83639-091-6)
Church Times Bookshop £18