philisophical discussion, and enjoy it more. so do not refuse me. Spend your time with these young men, but spare some for visiting your your old friends here.”
“Indeed, Cephalus,” I said, “I enjoy talking with very old men. I consider that they have gone before us along a road which we must all crave! in our turn, and it is that we should ask them of the nature of that road, whether it be rough and difficult, or and smooth. You, Cephalus, are now at the time of life which the poets call ‘old age the threshold,’ and I should particularly like to ask your thoughts on this question. Is it a painful period of life, or what is your news of it?”
“I will give you my own opinion gladly, Socrates,” he 329 said. “You know some of us old men are often together, true to the old proverb. Now most of the company whenever they meet lament their wretched lot. They long for the pleasures of youth, and call to mind the delights of love, and drink and feasting, and so on. They complain that they are as men who have lost a great treasure, who once lived well, and now don't live at all; and some of them bewail the insults which their kinsfolk upon their years, and therefore they decry old age for all the evils it has upon them. But in my opinion, Socrates, they don't really see what is wrong. If they were right, then I too, and all who have come to my time of life, would by reason of old age have suffered as they have; but as a matter of fact, I have met many whose experience is different. Take the poet Sophocles, for example. I was with him once, when some one asked him: 'How do you stand, Sophocles, in respect to the pleasures of sex. Are you still capable of intercourse?” “Hush, sir,” he said. “It gives me the test joy to have escaped the clutches of that fierce and savage matter.” I thought then that he spoke wisely, and I think so still, for certainly old age brings great peace and freedom from passions such as these. When the desires grow less intense and slacken, most certainly it is as Sophocles says: it means release from masters
many and ravening. But all these troubles, their complaints
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