From How to Grow Old, by Marcus Tullius Cicero. The work was written in 44 b.c. and was published in a new edition this month by Princeton University Press. Translated from the Latin by Philip Freeman.

A common objection to growing older is that the pleasures of the flesh fade away. If this is true, it is indeed a glorious gift that age frees us from youth’s most destructive failing. Listen to the ancient words of that most distinguished man, Archytas of Tarentum, who said that the most fatal curse given to men by nature…