The Best of the Worlds Classics, Restricted to prose | Page 6

old man in whom there is something of the
young; and he who follows this maxim, in body will possibly be an old
man, but he will never be an old man in mind.
I have in hand my seventh book of Antiquities; I am collecting all the
materials of our early history; of all the famous causes which I have
defended; I am now completing the pleadings;[9] I am employed on a
law of augurs, of pontiffs, of citizens. I am much engaged also in Greek
literature, and, after the manner of the Pythagoreans, for the purpose of
exercising my memory, I call to mind in the evening what I have said,
heard, and done on each day. These are the exercises of the
understanding; these are the race-courses of the mind; while I am
perspiring and toiling over these, I do not greatly miss my strength of

body. I attend my friends, I come into the senate very often, and
spontaneously bring forward things much and long thought of, and I
maintain them by strength of mind, not of body; and if I were unable to
perform these duties, yet my couch would afford me amusement, when
reflecting on those matters which I was no longer able to do, but that I
am able is owing to my past life; for, by a person who always lives in
these pursuits and labors, it is not perceived when old age steals on.
Thus gradually and unconsciously life declines into old age; nor is its
thread suddenly broken, but the vital principle is consumed by length of
time.
Then follows the third topic of blame against old age, that they say it
has no pleasures. Oh, noble privilege of age! if indeed it takes from us
that which is in youth the greatest defect. For listen, most excellent
young men, to the ancient speech of Archytas[10] of Tarentum, a man
eminently great and illustrious, which was reported to me when I, a
young man, was at Tarentum with Quintus Maximus. He said that no
more deadly plague than the pleasure of the body was inflicted on men
by nature; for the passions, greedy of that pleasure, were in a rash and
unbridled manner incited to possess it; that hence arose treasons against
one's country, hence the ruining of states, hence clandestine
conferences with enemies--in short, that there was no crime, no wicked
act, to the undertaking of which the lust of pleasure did not impel; but
that fornications and adulteries and every such crime were provoked by
no other allurements than those of pleasure. And whereas either nature
or some god had given to man nothing more excellent than his mind,
that to this divine function and gift, nothing was so hostile as pleasure;
since where lust bore sway, there was no room for self-restraint; and in
the realm of pleasure, virtue could by no possibility exist. And that this
might be the better understood, he begged you to imagine in your mind
any one actuated by the greatest pleasure of the body that could be
enjoyed; he believed no one would doubt but that so long as the person
was in that state of delight, he would be able to consider nothing in his
mind, to attain nothing by reason, nothing by reflection; wherefore that
there was nothing so detestable and so destructive as pleasure,
inasmuch as that when it was excessive and very prolonged, it
extinguished all the light of the soul.

Nearchus of Tarentum, our host, who had remained throughout in
friendship with the Roman people, said he had heard from older men
that Archytas held this conversation with Caius Pontius the Samnite,
the father of him by whom, in the Caudian[11] battle, Spurius
Postumius and Titus Veturius, the consuls, were overcome, on which
occasion Plato the Athenian had been present at that discourse; and I
find that he came to Tarentum in the consulship of Lucius Camillus and
Appius Claudius.[12] Wherefore do I adduce this? that we may
understand that if we could not by reason and wisdom despise pleasure,
great gratitude would be due to old age for bringing it to pass that that
should not be a matter of pleasure which is not a matter of duty. For
pleasure is hostile to reason, hinders deliberation, and, so to speak,
closes the eyes of the mind, nor does it hold any intercourse with virtue.
I indeed acted reluctantly in expelling from the senate Lucius Flaminius,
brother of that very brave man Titus Flaminius,[13] seven years after
he had been Consul; but I thought that his licentiousness should be
stigmatized. For that man, when he was Consul in Gaul, was prevailed
on at a banquet by a courtezan to behead one of those who were in
chains, condemned