Later still, for various reasons, the old men drifted from a position of respect to one of ridicule. Undoubtedly they lend themselves to this; they are obstinate, foolish, prosy, boring, crotchety and unpleasant to look upon. Comic writers poked fun at these failings which are only too self-evident and showered ridicule upon them. Then as the majority of audiences is composed of young men, first of all because there are more young men than old, and secondly because old men do not often go to the theatre, authors of comic plays were certain of raising a laugh by turning old men into ridicule, or rather by exposing only their ridiculous characteristics. At Athens and at Rome and probably elsewhere, the old man was one of the principal grotesque characters. These things, as Rousseau pointed out, have a great effect upon morals. Once the old man became a recognised traditional stage-butt, his social authority had come to an end. In the _de Senectute_ it is obvious that Cicero is running counter to the stream in seeking to restore to favour a character about whom the public is indifferent and for whom all he can do is to plead extenuating circumstances. It is a remarkable fact that even in mediaeval epics, Charlemagne himself, the emperor of the flowing beard, often plays a comic part. The epic is invaded by the atmosphere of the fable. During the Renaissance, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the old man is generally, though not invariably, held up to ridicule. Moliere takes his lead from Aristophanes and Plautus rather than from Terence and is the scourge of old age as well as "the scourge of the ridiculous"; he pursues the old as a hound his prey and never leaves them in peace either in his poetry or his prose. We must do this much justice to Rousseau that both he and his child, the Revolution, tried to restore the old man to his former glory; he makes honourable mention of him in his writings, and she gives him important posts in public ceremonies and national fetes. Therein were received the ancient memories of Lacedaemon and of early Rome, combined with a form of reaction against the days of Louis XIV and Louis XV. But with the triumph of democracy the old man was finally banished to the limbo of discredited things. Montesquieu's advice was quite forgotten (see the context Laws, v, 8). He said that _in a democracy_ "nothing kept the standard of morals so high as that young men should venerate the old. Both profit by it, the young because they respect the old, and the old because they are confirmed in their respect for themselves" (for the respect of the young is an assistance to the self-respect of the aged).