of
mental sagacity, or whether they perhaps indulged in closer application
to study, or whether they were assisted in their progress by both these
things, one thing we are perfectly clear about, that their successors
are barely capable of discussing the discoveries of their forerunners,
and of acquiring those things as pupils which the ancients dug out by
difficult efforts of discovery. For as we read that the men of old
were of a more excellent degree of bodily development than modern times
are found to produce, it is by no means absurd to suppose that most of
the ancients were distinguished by brighter faculties, seeing that in
the labours they accomplished of both kinds they are inimitable by
posterity. And so Phocas writes in the prologue to his Grammar:

Since all things have been said by men of sense
The only novelty is--to condense.

But in truth, if we speak of fervour of learning and diligence in
study, they gave up all their lives to philosophy; while nowadays our
contemporaries carelessly spend a few years of hot youth, alternating
with the excesses of vice, and when the passions have been calmed, and
they have attained the capacity of discerning truth so difficult to
discover, they soon become involved in worldly affairs and retire,
bidding farewell to the schools of philosophy. They offer the fuming
must of their youthful intellect to the difficulties of philosophy,
and bestow the clearer wine upon the money-making business of life.
Further, as Ovid in the first book of the De Vetula justly complains:

The hearts of all men after gold aspire;
Few study to be wise, more to acquire:
Thus, Science! all thy virgin charms are sold,
Whose chaste embraces should disdain their gold,
Who seek not thee thyself, but pelf through thee,
Longing for riches, not philosophy.

And further on:

Thus Philosophy is seen
Exiled, and Philopecuny is queen,

which is known to be the most violent poison of learning.

How the ancients indeed regarded life as the only limit of study, is
shown by Valerius, in his book addressed to Tiberius, by many examples.
Carneades, he says, was a laborious and lifelong soldier of wisdom:
after he had lived ninety years, the same day put an end to his life
and his philosophizing. Isocrates in his ninety-fourth year wrote a
most noble work. Sophocles did the same when nearly a hundred years
old. Simonides wrote poems in his eightieth year. Aulus Gellius