24.7
For he was not, like Lucius Lucullus and Metellus Pius in after times, too enfeebled by old age to serve the people, regarding the service of the state as a burdensome duty; nor did he, like Scipio Africanus before him, because of envious attacks upon his reputation, turn his back upon the people and make leisure his end and aim for the rest of his life;
24.8
but rather, as someone persuaded Dionysius to regard his sovereignty as his fairest winding-sheet, so he held public service to be the fairest privilege of old age. For recreation and amusement, when he had leisure therefor, he resorted to the writing of books and to farming.
25.1
He composed speeches, then, on all sorts of subjects, and histories, and as for farming, he followed it in earnest when he was young and poor,—indeed, he says he then had only two ways of getting money, farming and frugality,—but in later life he was only a theoretical and fancy farmer. He also composed a book on farming De re rustica. in which he actually gave recipes for making cakes and preserving fruit, so ambitious was he to be superior and peculiar in everything.
25.2
The dinners, too, which he gave in the country, were quite plentiful. He always asked in congenial country neighbours, and made merry with them, and not only did those of his own age find in him an agreeable and much desired companion, but also the young. For he was a man of large experience, who had read and heard much that was well worth repeating.
