what Socrates says to Critobulus in that book:

"When that most gallant Lacedaemonian Lysander came to visit the Persian
prince Cyrus at Sardis, so eminent for his character and the glory of
his rule, bringing him presents from his allies, he treated Lysander
in all ways with courteous familiarity and kindness, and, among other
things, took him to see a certain park carefully planted. Lysander
expressed admiration of the height of the trees and the exact
arrangement of their rows in the quincunx, the careful cultivation
of the soil, its freedom from weeds, and the sweetness of the odours
exhaled from the flowers, and went on to say that what he admired was
not the industry only, but also the skill of the man by whom this had
been planned and laid out. Cyrus replied: 'Well, it was I who planned
the whole thing these rows are my doing, the laying out is all mine;
many of the trees were even planted by own hand.' Then Lysander, looking
at his purple robe, the brilliance of his person, and his adornment
Persian fashion with gold and many jewels, said: 'People are quite
right, Cyrus, to call you happy, since the advantages of high fortune
have been joined to an excellence like yours.'"

This kind of good fortune, then, it is in the power of old men to enjoy;
nor is age any bar to our maintaining pursuits of every other kind, and
especially of agriculture, to the very extreme verge of old age. For
instance, we have it on record that M. Valerius Corvus kept it up to his
hundredth year, living on his land and cultivating it after his active
career was over, though between his first and sixth consulships there
was an interval of six and forty years. So that he had an official
career lasting the number of years which our ancestors defined as coming
between birth and the beginning of old age. Moreover, that last period
of his old age was more blessed than that of his middle life, inasmuch
as he had greater influence and less labour. For the crowning grace of
old age is influence.

How great was that of L. Caecilius Metellus! How great that of Atilius
Calatinus, over whom the famous epitaph was placed, "Very many classes
agree in deeming this to have been the very first man of the nation"!
The line cut on his tomb is well known. It is natural, then, that a man
should have had influence, in whose praise the verdict of history is
unanimous. Again, in recent times, what a great man was Publius Crassus,
Pontifex Maximus, and his succ