1There follows the third charge against old age, that it lacks pleasures, as they say. 1O splendid gift of age, if indeed it takes from us what is most vicious in youth! 1For hear, excellent young men, an old speech of Archytas of Tarentum, a great and illustrious man above all others, which was handed down to me when I was a young man at Tarentum with Quintus Maximus. 1He used to say that no more deadly plague had been given to men by nature than bodily pleasure, in eager pursuit of which the passions were driven rashly and unbridled to possess it. 40From this, he said, sprang betrayals of one's country, from this the overthrow of states, from this secret conferences with the enemy; 40there was, in short, no crime, no evil deed, which the lust for pleasure did not drive men to undertake; 40debaucheries and adulteries and every such outrage were roused by no other enticements than those of pleasure; 40and since nature, or some god, had given man nothing more excellent than his mind, nothing was so hostile to this divine gift and present as pleasure.
41For when lust holds sway there is no room for self-control, nor can virtue have any footing at all in the realm of pleasure. 41So that this might be better understood, he used to bid his hearers imagine someone excited by as great a bodily pleasure as could possibly be felt; 41he thought it would be doubtful to no one that, for as long as he was enjoying himself in this way, he could achieve nothing by mind, nothing by reason, nothing by thought. 41Therefore nothing was so detestable and so pernicious as pleasure, since, when it was rather great and lasting, it put out all the light of the mind.
41Nearchus of Tarentum, my host, who had remained steadfast in friendship with the Roman people, used to say that he had heard from his elders that Archytas spoke these words with Gaius Pontius the Samnite, father of the man by whom the consuls Spurius Postumius and Titus Veturius were defeated in the battle of Caudium, and that Plato the Athenian had indeed been present at that conversation, who, I find, came to Tarentum in the consulship of Lucius Camillus and Appius Claudius. 42What is the point of this? 42That you might understand that, if we could not spurn pleasure by reason and wisdom, great thanks would be owed to old age, which brought it about that we did not wish for what we ought not.
42For pleasure hinders deliberation, is hostile to reason, blindfolds, so to speak, the eyes of the mind, and has no dealings with virtue. 42It was against my will that I expelled from the senate Lucius Flamininus, the brother of that bravest of men Titus Flamininus, seven years after he had been consul, but I thought that lust ought to be branded. 42For when he was consul in Gaul, he was prevailed upon at a banquet by a harlot to behead with the axe one of those who were in chains, condemned on a capital charge. 42He escaped while his brother Titus was censor, who had been my immediate predecessor, but neither Flaccus nor I could in any way approve so shameful and so abandoned a lust, which joined to private disgrace the dishonour of his command.