they are insignificant things to enjoy, as I have said;
and in the second place, such as age is not entirely without, if it
does not possess them in profusion. Just as a man gets greater pleasure
from Ambivius Turpio if seated in the front row at the theatre than if
he was in the last, yet, after all, the man in the last row does get
pleasure; so youth, because it looks at pleasures at closer quarters,
perhaps enjoys itself more, yet even old age, looking at them from
a distance, does enjoy itself well enough. Why, what blessings are
these--that the soul, having served its time, so to speak, in the
campaigns of desire and ambition, rivalry and hatred, and all the
passions, should live in its own thoughts, and, as the expression goes,
should dwell apart! Indeed, if it has in store any of what I may call
the food of study and philosophy, nothing can be pleasanter than an
old age of leisure. We were witnesses to C. Gallus--a friend of your
father's, Scipio--intent to the day of his death on mapping out the sky
and land. How often did the light surprise him while still working out
a problem begun during the night! How often did night find him busy on
what he had begun at dawn! How he delighted in predicting for us solar
and lunar eclipses long before they occurred! Or again in studies of
a lighter nature, though still requiring keenness of intellect, what
pleasure Naevius took in his _Punic War_! Plautus in his _Truculentus_
and _Pseudolus_! I even saw Livius Andronicus, who, having produced
a play six years before I was born--in the consulship of Cento and
Tuditanus--lived till I had become a young man. Why speak of Publius
Licinius Crassus's devotion to pontifical and civil law, or of the
Publius Scipio of the present time, who within these last few days
has been created Pontifex Maximus? And yet I have seen all whom I have
mentioned ardent in these pursuits when old men. Then there is Marcus
Cethegus, whom Ennius justly called "Persuasion's Marrow"--with what
enthusiasm did we see him exert himself in oratory even when quite old!
What pleasures are there in feasts, games, or mistresses comparable to
pleasures such as these? And they are all tastes, too, connected with
learning, which in men of sense and good education grow with their
growth. It is indeed an honourable sentiment which Solon expresses in a
verse which I have quoted before--that he grew old learning many a fresh
lesson every day. Than that intellectual pleas