Page:Cicero - de senectute (on old age) - Peabody 1884.djvu/74

36 perhaps spring from a natural impulse, I would not have it understood that old age is not susceptible of them. I indeed enjoy the ancestral fashion of appointing a master of ceremonies for the feast, and the rules for drinking announced from the head of the table, and cups, as in Xenophon's Symposium, not over large, and slowly drunk, and the cool breeze for the dining-hall in summer, and the winter's sun or fire. Even on my Sabine farm I keep up these customs, and daily fill my table with my neighbors, prolonging our varied talk to the latest possible hour. But it is said that old men have less intensity of sensual enjoyment. So I believe; but there is no craving for it. You do not miss what you do not want. Sophocles very aptly replied, when