Conservation of corporal pleasures

Cicero wrote his work Cato Major de Senecture (Cato the Elder, on old age), during the years leading up to his death. After Caesar's victory over Pompey the great in 48 BC, Cicero, a convinced Republica, was forced to retire from public life. Using a light, bantering tone, cleverly juxtaposing a description of the situation with philosophical arguments, the author refutes the four major fautls reproached to old age.

If we have to make a few concessions to pleasure, since we find its attractions difficult to resist (Plato writes divinely that pleasure is "the bait of evil", apparently because men let themselves be caught like fish), old age can still appreciate the charms of moderate meals, even if it has to go without immoderate feasts. When I was a boy I often saw the venerable Gaius Duellius, son of Marcus, the first to defeat the Carthaginians on the sea, coming home from supper; his predilection was to be escorted by torchlight and a flute player. No other person had ever permitted himself that luxury; such was the freedom that glory conferred on him!

But why speak of others? I shall come back to myself. First of all, I have Always had fellow-companions. fraternities were constituted during my term of office, when the Idaean cult of the Great Mother was accepted; so I used to partake in banquets with my fellows in all simplicity, but there was a kind of warmth due to age which mellowed day by day; and, at these same dinners, I preferred the presence and conversation of my friends to the pleasures of the senses. Our ancestors were quite right when they described a group of friends gathered round a table as a convivium (living together), judging that a communion of life was implied; they did better than the Greeks, who referred to such a gathering as either "drinking together" or "eating together", seeming to give more value to what, inf fact, is the least important. Myself, being fond of conversation, also like lengthy meals, not only with men of my own age, of whom there are very few left, but also with your contemporaries, and especially with yourself, and I am very grateful to old age for having increased my fondness for conversation and taking away my taste for food and drink. And even if these pleasures are enjoyed (for I don't want to give the impression that I have declared total war on pleasure, of which the right amount may be conform with nature), I do not think that these same pleasures leave old age indifferent. For my part, I like the table to be presided over, a custom instituted by our ancestors, and the discourse pronounced glass in hand in the traditional way, from the most important seat. I like the glasses to be "tiny, distilling dewdrops" as in Xenophon's Banquet; I like the cool room in summer and conversely the sun or a fire in winter. I have kept up these custos even in Sabine: every day I gather neighbours round my table and we spin out our meals as far as possible into the night, by sundry conversation.