Page:Cicero - de senectute (on old age) - Peabody 1884.djvu/69

Rh with Caius Pontius the Samnite, father of the Pontius who defeated the consuls Spurius Postumius and Titus Veturius at the Caudine Forks, I learned from Nearchus of Tarentum, my host, a persistent friend of the Roman people, who said that he had heard it from his elders, Plato having been present when it was uttered, who, I find, came to Tarentum in the consulate of Lucius Camillus and Appius Claudius. To what purpose do I speak thus? That you may understand that, were we indeed unable by reason and wisdom to spurn pleasure, we ought to feel the warmest gratitude to old age for making what is opposed to our duty no longer a source of delight. For pleasure thwarts good counsel, is the enemy of reason, and, if I may so speak, blindfolds the eyes of the mind, nor has it anything in common with virtue. It was, indeed, with great reluctance that, seven years after his consulate, I expelled from the Senate Lucius Flamininus, the brother of that eminently brave man Titus Flamininus; but I thought that such vile conduct as his ought to be branded. For he, during his consulship in Gaul, was persuaded by the companion of his lust, at a banquet, himself to kill with an axe one of the prisoners in chains and under sentence of death. He escaped during the censorship of