Deinde qui minus grauis esset iis senectus, si octingentesimum annum agerent quam [si] octogesimum ? This sentence has to do with people who complain that the evils of old age have come upon them all too soon. Cicero rejoins that they would be of exactly the same mind, even though they had a life ten times as long to look back upon.

Sentences of the form si sit … esset crop out at rare intervals in the literature of classical Latin, deviating so sharply from what might be called the standard forms of conditional speaking that they have commonly been regarded with more or less suspicion.

The discussion of the construction with usus est is conventionally bound up with that of opus est, and comparatively little attention has been given to the problem presented by the use of the ablative case with the former phrase. The tendency to pass lightly over this matter is due doubtless to the manifest etymological connexion between usus and utor, which leads to the assumption that the verbal noun would naturally follow the syntax of the verb.

In a note on this passage as far back as 1868, E. Wölmin 1 advanced the theory that the plural anulis is used here in a technical and stereotyped way as symbolic of equestrian rank. He is not sure whether such illogical use of the plural is to be found earlier than Tacitus or not.