Hebdomads

 On this day I complete my thirty-fifth year. I wasn't really sure how to feel about 35. I suppose I am now unambiguously in my mid-thirties. Adulthood is no longer a thing that can be procrastinated. It is already here. But other than that, I didn't have any particularly strong associations with this birthday. 

33 was a bigger milestone. The year of the crucifixion. 36 is the age at which Byron died in Greece—so I have that to look forward to. But I didn't have much to work with for 35. 

Until, that is, I read Macrobius. The late antique philosopher, in his classic manual of Pythagorean and Neoplatonic lore that proved deeply influential in the Middle Ages, the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, includes an account of the theory of the hebdomad, or rule of seven. 

According to this scheme, every group of seven years in a human life represents a crucial point of transition. At seven—so sayeth Macrobius—the child changes over from a young child to a less young child. Which I suppose is true—but the same could be said for six, or eight. 

Fourteen is legitimately often a point of transition—the dawning of adolescence. And so is 21—but only because we've made it that way. I guess we had some Neoplatonists in the legislature, when they decided that this curious and arbitrary number needed to be the cut-off for the drinking age. 

At 28—I can grant Macrobius this much—I became a year older than I had been at 27. It was an inflection point to that extent at least. But otherwise, I didn't notice so much of a change. 

And now, at 35—Macrobius tells me—I have entered upon true adulthood and virility. "At the thirty-fifth year the man attains the full vigor of his physical powers," as he puts it—according to the William Harris Stahl translation. 

I'm not sure I've noticed it so far. I wonder when it will set in. So far 35 seems marked, if anything, by slightly more of a paunch than 34. But in my defense, I spent the last weeks of 34 staying at a hotel with a free waffle breakfast.