IV
THE PLEASURES OF AGE

Next we come to the third allegation against old age. This was its deficiency in sensual pleasures. But if age really frees us from youth’s most dangerous failing, then we are receiving a most blessed gift.

Let me tell you, my dear friends, what was said years ago by that outstandingly distinguished thinker, Archytas1 of Tarentum, the city at which I heard of his words when I was a young soldier serving under Fabius. ‘The most fatal curse given by nature to mankind’, said Archytas, ‘is sensual greed: this incites men to gratify their lusts heedlessly and uncontrollably, thus bringing about national betrayals, revolutions, and secret negotiations with the enemy. Lust will drive men to every sin and crime under the sun. Mere lust, without any additional impulse, is the cause of rape, adultery, and every other sexual outrage. Nature, or a god, has given human beings a mind as their outstanding possession, and this divine gift and endowment has no worse foe than sensuality. For in the realm of the physical passions there can be no room for self-control; where self-indulgence reigns, decent behaviour is excluded.

‘This can be made clear’, continued Archytas,’ if you think of someone enjoying the most delightful sensual pleasure imaginable. It will be generally agreed that during the process of enjoyment he is incapable of any rational, logical, or cerebral process. The consequence is that such pleasures are exceptionally repulsive and harmful. Indeed their substantial, prolonged indulgence will plunge the whole light of the spirit into darkness.’

Nearchus, a steadfast friend of Rome with whom I was staying at Tarentum, told me of the tradition that Archytas had put forward these views in conversation with Gaius Pontius the Samnite, father of the man who defeated our consuls Spurius Postumius and Titus Veturius Calvinus at the Caudine Forks.1 Nearchus added that the Athenian philosopher Plato was among those who heard the pronouncement; and I have verified that Plato² did come to Tarentum, in the year when Lucius Furius Camillus and Appius Claudius Crassinus were consuls.

Now, why have I gone into all this? To prove to you that, if logic and intelligence did not already enable us to avoid lustful pleasures, we ought to feel very grateful to old age for removing the desire to do what is wrong. For such feelings cloud a man’s judgement, obstruct his reasoning capacity, and blind his ntelligence: let sensuality be present, and a good life becomes impossible.

When I had to eject Lucius Quinctius Flanuninus from the Senate,³ this caused me great regret. He was brother of the famous Titus, and had been consul seven years previously. But an action of his, prompted by a sexual impulse, seemed to me to necessitate this degradation. At the time when he was consul in Gaul, a certain man convicted of a capital offence was in prison there. During a party, Lucius was urged by his mistress to execute this man; and he did as she asked him. While his brother was censor (immediately prior to my own tenure), Lucius avoided punishment. But since his scandalous capitulation to sensual pressure had dishonoured Roman rule as well as wronging an individual, Marcus Valerius Flaccus and myself felt quite unable to condone what he had done.

I was often told by my elders – who in turn claimed to have heard the story from old men when they were boys – that Gaius Fabridus Lusdnus was deeply impressed by something which, while on a mission to King Pyrrhus, he had learnt from Cineas the Thessalian.1 What Fabridus had been told was that there was an Athenian,² professing philosophical insight, who asserted that the standard by which all our actions should be judged was pleasure. When Fabridus reported this to Manius Curius Dentatus³ and Titus Coruncanius, they expressed the hope that the Samnites, and Pyrrhus himself, would accept this doctrine – for then they would abandon themselves to self-indulgence and become easier to defeat! Curius had been a dose friend of Publius Decius Mus who, while consul for the fourth time (five years before Curius held the office), had sacrificed his life for his country. Fabridus and Coruncanius knew him too, and all of them, to judge from the lives they led and from that deed of Decius, were convinced that certain things are naturally fine and noble in themselves and are sought after for their own sake; and that every decent man pursues such aims, and spurns and rejects material indulgence.

Why then do I have so much to say about pleasures of this kind? Because the weakening of temptation to indulge in them, far from supplying a pretext to reproach old age, is a reason for offering it the most cordial compliments. Age has no banquets, no tables piled high, no cups filled again and again. So it also avoids drunkenness, and indigestion, and sleepless nights!

However, the allurements of pleasure are admittedly hard to resist; they are ‘the bait of sin’,⁴ as Plato brilliantly calls them, which catch men like fish. If, then, we have to make them some concession, there is no reason why old age, though spared extravagant feasting, should not gratify itself with entertainments of a more modest nature. While I was a boy, I often saw how old Gaius Duellius,1 Marcus’s son – the first person ever to defeat the Carthaginians in a sea-battle – when he was returning home after a dinner-party used to enjoy being escorted by men carrying torches and playing flutes. Such behaviour from a private citizen was unprecedented, but his glorious reputation gave him that much licence.

But enough of others – let me return to myself! Now, to begin with, I have always had my friends at the club. I was quaestor at the time when the clubs were first established at Rome in honour of Cybele² and her newly introduced Idaean worship. I used to dine with these friends, quite modestly, and yet with a good deal of enjoyment, since I was young in those days; such delights became less vivid with advancing years. However, the gastronomic pleasures of those parties did not appeal to me so much as the company and conversation of my friends. The word our ancestors invented for a meal where friends meet was convivium, a ‘living together’, and they were quite right, because of its essential quality of a social reunion. The Greek terms ‘a drinking together’ and ‘feasting together’ are less satisfactory since they emphasize what is the least significant aspect of such occasions.

Personally, I am so fond of conversation that I even enjoy afternoon parties. At these I like meeting not only my contemporaries – of whom very few remain – but yours too, and you yourselves. I actually feel grateful to old age, because this has increased my enthusiasm for conversation but eliminated the desire for food and drink. However, since nature does perhaps authorize material pleasures within limits, I must not give the appearance of declaring war on them outright! Well then, granted that food and drink do appeal to some people, I see no reason why these tastes need be wholly lacking in the old.

I myself appreciate our long-established formalities of appointing toastmasters for such entertainments, and of starting the conversation at the head of the table after the wine has been brought in. I enjoy cups that are small enough ‘to bedew rather than drench’, as Xenophon put it in his Symposium: and I like my drinks well-cooled in summer and warmed in winter by sunshine or fire. Even when I am in the Sabine country I go to gatherings of this sort. Every day I take a meal with my neighbours; we talk on all manner of subjects, and prolong the party as late as possible into the night.

But the objection is that old people are no longer so enjoyably tickled by their senses. I agree – but they do not want to be either! No deprivation is any trouble if you do not miss what you have lost. When Sophocles was already well advanced in years someone asked him if he still made love. ‘Good heavens, no,’ he replied: ‘I have gladly made my escape from that barbarous, savage master.’1 Covet such things, and the lack of them may well be tiresome and annoying; but if you have had enough of them and are replete, to lack becomes more pleasant than to possess! Or rather, if you do not miss their absence, you cannot be said to lack them – and that is why I say that not missing them is best of all.

However, let us admit that youth exceeds age in its enjoyment of this particular kind of pleasure. Then two points need to be made. First of all, as I have already said, such pleasures are unimportant; and secondly, in any case, even if old age does not possess them in abundance, it is not wholly deficient in them. The spectators who appreciate Lucius Ambivius Turpio’s² acting most are those in the front row; but the back row also enjoys his performance. The same applies to the pleasures of sex: young people, who look on them at close quarters, may well find them more exciting, but old people too obtain as much satisfaction as they need by viewing them from afar.

When its campaigns of sex, ambition, rivalry, quarrelling, and all the other passions are ended, the human spirit returns to live within itself- and is well off. There is supreme satisfaction to be derived from an old age which has knowledge and learning to feed upon. I saw Gaius Sulpicius Gallus³ – your father’s friend, Scipio – engaged until his dying day in measuring, you might say, the whole heavens and the earth. Often at night he would begin constructing some chart, and dawn would surprise him still at work – or night would overtake him at a task he had begun as long ago as daybreak. He used to have the satisfaction of forecasting to us, far in advance, the eclipses of the sun and the moon.

Others, again, were engaged, during their later years, in intellectual work which, though less exacting, nevertheless required keenness of brain. Naevius, for instance, was happily absorbed in his Punic War,1 Plautus in The Savage and The Cheat. I myself saw Livius Andronicus² when he had reached a considerable age. He brought out a play six years before I was born – when Gaius Claudius Cento and Marcus Sempronius Tuditanus were consuls – but lived on until after I was grown up. And there is no need for me to recall to you Publius Licinius Crassus Dives,³ active in priestly and civil law, and our own Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum,⁴ who was appointed chief priest only a few days ago. I have seen every one of them enthusiastically engaged in these pursuits of theirs when well advanced in years. Marcus Cornelius Cethegus,⁵ again, whom Ennius rightly described as ‘the marrow of persuasiveness’: I can vouch myself for his technique as a public speaker, even after he had become an old man.

What pleasures from eating banquets or watching shows or consorting with mistresses are comparable with delights of such a kind? If a man is sensible and well-educated, his taste for intellectual pursuits like these increases with the years. So there is truth in that verse I just quoted, in which Solon observed that as he grew old he learnt much that was new every day. And surely the satisfactions of the mind are greater than all the rest!