Laudator Temporis Acti

Cicero, Letters to Friends 9.24.3 (tr. D.R. Shackleton Bailey):

And really, my dear Paetus, all joking apart I advise you, as something which I regard as relevant to happiness, to spend time in honest, pleasant, and friendly company. Nothing becomes life better, or is more in harmony with its happy living. I am not thinking of physical pleasure, but of community of life and habit and of mental recreation, of which familiar conversation is the most effective agent; and conversation is at its most agreeable at dinner parties. In this respect our countrymen are wiser than the Greeks. They use words meaning literally 'co-drinkings' or 'co-dinings,' but we say 'co-livings,' because at dinner parties more than anywhere else life is lived in company.

et mehercule, mi Paete, extra iocum moneo te, quod pertinere ad beate vivendum arbitror, ut cum viris bonis, iucundis, amantibus tui vivas. nihil est aptius vitae, nihil ad beate vivendum accommodatius. nec id ad voluptatem refero sed ad communitatem vitae atque victus remissionemque animorum, quae maxime sermone efficitur familiari, qui est in conviviis dulcissimus, ut sapientius nostri quam Graeci; illi 'συμπόσια' aut 'σύνδειπνα,' id est compotationes aut concenationes, nos 'convivia,' quod tum maxime simul vivitur.