Letter 86 — On Scipio’s Villa (§14)

“If what I am saying shall seem to you too pessimistic, charge it up against Scipio’s country-house, where I have learned a lesson from Aegialus, a most careful householder and now the owner of this estate; he taught me that a tree can be transplanted, no matter how far gone in years. We old men must learn this precept; for there is none of us who is not planting an olive-yard for his successor. I have seen them bearing fruit in due season after three or four years of unproductiveness.”