The Best of the Worlds Classics, Restricted to prose | Page 7

on a capital charge. He escaped in the censorship of
his brother Titus, who had immediately preceded me; but so profligate
and abandoned an act of lust could by no means be allowed to pass by
me and Flaccus, since with private infamy it combined the disgrace of
the empire.
I have often heard from my elders, who said that, in like manner, they,
when boys, had heard from old men, that Caius Fabricius was wont to
wonder that when he was ambassador to King Pyrrhus, he had heard
from Cineas the Thessalian that there was a certain person at Athens
who profest himself a wise man, and that he was accustomed to say that
all things which we did were to be referred to pleasure; and that hearing
him say so, Manius Curius and Titus Coruncanius were accustomed to
wish that that might be the persuasion of the Samnites and Pyrrhus[14]
himself, that they might the more easily be conquered when they had
given themselves up to pleasure. Manius Curius had lived with Publius
Decius, who, five years before the consulship of the former, had
devoted himself for the commonwealth in his fourth consulship.
Fabricius had been acquainted with him, and Coruncanius had also

known him, who, as well from his own conduct in life, as from the
great action of him whom I mention, Publius Decius, judged that there
was doubtless something in its own nature excellent and glorious,
which should be followed for its own sake, and which, scorning and
despising pleasure, all the worthiest men pursued....
But why do I refer to others? Let me now return to myself. First of all, I
always had associates in clubs; and clubs were established when I was
questor, on the Idæan worship of the great mother being adopted.
Therefore I feasted with my associates altogether in a moderate way,
but there was a kind of fervor peculiar to that time of life, and as that
advances, all things will become every day more subdued. For I did not
calculate the gratification of those banquets by the pleasures of the
body so much as by the meetings of friends and conversations. For well
did our ancestors style the reclining of friends at an entertainment,
because it carried with it a union of life, by the name "convivium"
better than the Greeks do, who call this same thing as well by the name
of "compotatio" as "concoenatio"; so that what in that kind (of
pleasures) is of the least value that they appear most to approve of.
For my part, on account of the pleasure of conversation, I am delighted
also with seasonable entertainments, not only with those of my own age,
of whom very few survive, but with those of your age, and with you;
and I give great thanks to old age, which has increased my desire for
conversation, and taken away that of eating and drinking. But even if
such things delight any person (that I may not appear altogether to have
declared war against pleasure, of which perhaps a certain limited
degree is even natural), I am not aware that even in these pleasures
themselves old age is without enjoyment. For my part, the presidencies
established by our ancestors delight me; and that conversation, which
after the manner of our ancestors, is kept up over our cups from the top
of the table; and the cups, as in the Symposium of Xenophon, small and
dewy, and the cooling of the wine in summer, and in turn either the sun,
or the fire in winter--practises which I am accustomed to follow among
the Sabines also--and I daily join a party of neighbors, which we
prolong with various conversation till late at night, as far as we can.
But there is not, as it were, so ticklish a sensibility of pleasures in old

men. I believe it; but then neither is there the desire. However, nothing
is irksome unless you long for it. Well did Sophocles, when a certain
man inquired of him advanced in age whether he enjoyed venereal
pleasures, reply, "The gods give me something better; nay, I have run
away from them with gladness, as from a wild and furious tyrant." For
to men fond of such things, it is perhaps disagreeable and irksome to be
without them; but to the contented and satisfied it is more delightful to
want them than to enjoy them; and yet he does not want who feels no
desire; therefore I say that this freedom from desire is more delightful
than enjoyment.
But if the prime of life has more cheerful enjoyment of those very
pleasures, in the first place they are but petty objects which it enjoys, as
I have said before; then they are those of which old age,