I were unable
to perform these duties, yet my couch would afford me amusement, when
reflecting on those matters which I was no longer able to do, but that
I am able is owing to my past life; for, by a person who always lives
in these pursuits and labors, it is not perceived when old age steals
on. Thus gradually and unconsciously life declines into old age; nor
is its thread suddenly broken, but the vital principle is consumed by
length of time.

Then follows the third topic of blame against old age, that they say
it has no pleasures. Oh, noble privilege of age! if indeed it takes
from us that which is in youth the greatest defect. For listen, most
excellent young men, to the ancient speech of Archytas[10] of
Tarentum, a man eminently great and illustrious, which was reported to
me when I, a young man, was at Tarentum with Quintus Maximus. He said
that no more deadly plague than the pleasure of the body was inflicted
on men by nature; for the passions, greedy of that pleasure, were in a
rash and unbridled manner incited to possess it; that hence arose
treasons against one's country, hence the ruining of states, hence
clandestine conferences with enemies--in short, that there was no
crime, no wicked act, to the undertaking of which the lust of
pleasure did not impel; but that fornications and adulteries and every
such crime were provoked by no other allurements than those of
pleasure. And whereas either nature or some god had given to man
nothing more excellent than his mind, that to this divine function and
gift, nothing was so hostile as pleasure; since where lust bore sway,
there was no room for self-restraint; and in the realm of pleasure,
virtue could by no possibility exist. And that this might be the
better understood, he begged you to imagine in your mind any one
actuated by the greatest pleasure of the body that could be enjoyed;
he believed no one would doubt but that so long as the person was in
that state of delight, he would be able to consider nothing in his
mind, to attain nothing by reason, nothing by reflection; wherefore
that there was nothing so detestable and so destructive as pleasure,
inasmuch as that when it was excessive and very prolonged, it
extinguished all the light of the soul.

Nearchus of Tarentum, our host, who had remained throughout in
friendship with the Roman people, said he had heard from older men
that Archytas held this conversation with Caius Pontius the Samnite,
the father of h