The Best of the Worlds Classics, Restricted to prose | Page 8

if it does not
abundantly possess them, is not altogether destitute. As he is more
delighted with Turpio Ambivius, who is spectator on the foremost
bench, yet he also is delighted who is in the hindmost; so youth having
a close view of pleasures is perhaps more gratified; but old age is as
much delighted as is necessary in viewing them at a distance. However,
of what high value are the following circumstances, that the soul, after
it has served out, as it were, its time under lust, ambition, contention,
enmities, and all the passions, shall retire within itself, and, as the
phrase is, live with itself? But if it has, as it were, food for study and
learning, nothing is more delightful than an old age of leisure. I saw
Caius Gallus, the intimate friend of your father, Scipio, almost expiring
in the employment of calculating the sky and the earth. How often did
daylight overtake him when he had begun to draw some figure by night,
how often did night, when he had begun in the morning! How it did
delight him to predict to us the eclipses of the sun and the moon, long
before their occurrence! What shall we say in the case of pursuits less
dignified, yet, notwithstanding, requiring acuteness! How Nævius did
delight in his Punic war! how Plautus in his Truculentus! how in his
Pseudolus! I saw also the old man Livy,[15] who, tho he had brought a
play upon the stage six years before I was born, in the consulship of
Cento and Tuditanus, yet advanced in age even to the time of my youth.
Why should I speak of Publius Licinius Crassus' study both of
pontifical and civil law? or of the present Publius Scipio, who within

these few days was created chief pontiff? Yet we have seen all these
persons whom I have mentioned, ardent in these pursuits when old men.
But as to Marcus Cethegus, whom Ennius rightly called the "marrow of
persuasion," with what great zeal did we see him engage in the practise
of oratory, even when an old man! What pleasures, therefore, arising
from banquets, or plays, or harlots, are to be compared with these
pleasures? And these, indeed, are the pursuits of learning, which too,
with the sensible and well educated, increase along with their age; so
that is a noble saying of Solon, when he says in a certain verse, as I
observed before, that he grew old learning many things every day--than
which pleasure of the mind, certainly, none can be greater.
I come now to the pleasures of husbandmen, with which I am
excessively delighted, which are not checked by any old age, and
appear in my mind to make the nearest approach to the life of a wise
man. For they have relation to the earth, which never refuses command,
and never returns without interest that which it hath received; but
sometimes with less, generally with very great interest. And yet for my
part it is not only the product, but the virtue and nature of the earth
itself that delight me, which, when in its softened and subdued bosom it
has received the scattered seed, first of all confines what is hidden
within it, from which harrowing, which produces that effect, derives its
name (occatio); then, when it is warmed by heat and its own
compression, it spreads it out, and elicits from it the verdant blade,
which, supported by the fibers of the roots, gradually grows up, and,
rising on a jointed stalk, is now enclosed in a sheath, as if it were of
tender age, out of which, when it hath shot up, it then pours forth the
fruit of the ear, piled in due order, and is guarded by a rampart of
beards against the pecking of the smaller birds. Why should I, in the
case of vines, tell of the plantings, the risings, the stages of growth?
That you may know the repose and amusement of my old age, I assure
you that I can never have enough of that gratification. For I pass over
the peculiar nature of all things which are produced from the earth;
which generates such great trunks and branches from so small a grain
of the fig or from the grape-stone, or from the minutest seeds of other
fruits and roots; shoots, plants, twigs, quicksets, layers, do not these
produce the effect of delighting any one even to admiration? The vine,

indeed, which by nature is prone to fall, and is borne down to the
ground, unless it be propt, in order to raise itself up, embraces with its
tendrils, as it were with hands, whatever it meets with, which, as it
creeps with manifold and wandering course, the skill of the
husbandmen