1For my part, because of my delight in conversation, I take pleasure even in banquets that begin early, and not only with those of my own age, of whom very few remain, but also with men of your age and with you, and I owe great thanks to old age, which has increased my eagerness for conversation and taken away that for drink and food. 1But if anyone delights even in those things — so that I may not seem to have declared war on pleasure altogether, of which there is perhaps a certain natural measure — I do not perceive that old age lacks feeling even for these very pleasures.
1For my part, I delight both in the masterships of the feast instituted by our ancestors, and in the conversation which, in the ancestral manner, is begun from the head of the table over the cups, and in cups, as in Xenophon's Symposium, small and dew-sprinkling, and in cool air in summer and in turn the sun or the fire in winter. 1These things I am accustomed to pursue even in the Sabine country, and every day I fill out a banquet with my neighbours, which we prolong with varied conversation as late into the night as we possibly can. 47But there is not so great a tickling, as it were, of pleasures in old men.
47I believe it, but neither is there the longing for them; 47and nothing is troublesome that you do not long for. 47Sophocles answered well when someone asked him, now that he was stricken in years, whether he still indulged in love: 'Gods forbid!' 47he said; 47'Indeed I have escaped from that as from a savage and raging master.' 47For to those who desire such things it is perhaps hateful and troublesome to go without them, but to those who are sated and filled it is more pleasant to go without than to enjoy; 47though indeed one who does not long for a thing does not go without it; 47therefore I say that this not longing is more pleasant.
48But if the prime of life enjoys those very pleasures more gladly, in the first place it enjoys trifling things, as we have said, and in the second, things which old age, even if it does not possess them in abundance, does not altogether lack. 48Just as the man who watches Turpio Ambivius in the front row takes more delight, but the man in the back row takes delight too, so youth, looking at pleasures close at hand, perhaps rejoices more, but old age too takes delight, watching them from afar, as much as is enough. 49But how much is it worth that the mind, having served out its campaigns, as it were, of lust, of ambition, of rivalries, of enmities, of all desires, should be with itself and, as the saying goes, live with itself!
49And if it has some fodder, so to speak, of study and learning, nothing is more pleasant than an old age of leisure. 49We used to see Gallus, your father's friend, Scipio, absorbed in the study of measuring almost the whole sky and earth. 49How often did daylight overtake him when he had begun to draw some figure at night, how often night when he had begun in the morning! 49How it delighted him to foretell to us long in advance eclipses of the sun and moon! 50What of lighter pursuits, which still demand a keen mind? 50How Naevius rejoiced in his Punic War, how Plautus in his Truculentus, how in his Pseudolus!
50I saw old Livius too, who, having produced a play six years before I was born, in the consulship of Cento and Tuditanus, lived on in years right up to my youth. 50Why should I speak of the zeal of Publius Licinius Crassus for both pontifical and civil law, or of that of our Publius Scipio here, who within these last few days has been made chief pontiff? 50And all these men whom I have mentioned we have seen as old men burning with these pursuits. 50And Marcus Cethegus, whom Ennius rightly called 'the marrow of persuasion', with what zeal we used to see him exercising himself in speaking, even as an old man!
50What pleasures, then, of feasts or games or harlots are to be compared with these pleasures? 50And these indeed are the pursuits of learning, which in men of good sense and good training grow along with their age, so that there is honour in that saying of Solon's, in a certain verse, as I said before, that he grows old learning many things each day; and than that pleasure of the mind there can surely be none greater.