M. Tullius Cicero, Cato the Elder: on old age
William Armistead Falconer, Ed.

[26] A pleasure, rather than a bore, say I. For just as wise men, when they are old, take delight in the society of youths endowed with sprightly wit, and the burdens of age are rendered lighter to those who are courted and highly esteemed by the young, so young men find pleasure in their elders, by whose, precepts they are led into virtue's paths; nor indeed do I feel that I am any less of a pleasure to you than you are to me. But you see how old age, so far from being feeble and inactive, is even busy and is always doing and effecting something— that is to say, something of the same nature in each case as were the pursuits of earlier years. And what of those who even go on adding to their store of knowledge? Such was the case with Solon, whom we see boasting in his verses that he grows old learning something every day.¹ And I have done the same, for in my old age I have learned Greek, which I seized upon as eagerly as if I had been desirous of satisfying a long-continued thirst, with the result that I have acquired first-hand the information which you see me using in this discussion by way of illustration. And when I read what Socrates² had done in the case of the lyre, an instrument much cultivated by the ancients, I should have liked to do that too, if I could; but in literature I have certainly laboured hard.