Don't think their lives are actually long just because they complain that days drag on. Don't think so just because they grumble about how slowly the hours crawl by until dinner time. The truth is, whenever they're left without their usual busy work, they become restless and anxious. They don't know how to arrange their free time or what to do with it. So they rush to find some task to fill the void. All that empty time in between feels unbearable to them. By God, they would skip over it entirely if they could — just like they wish they could skip the days before a gladiator fight or some other show they're excited about. Any delay of what they want feels like torture to them.
Neither is it, as you might think, a proof of the length of their lives that they often find the days long, that they often complain how slowly the hours pass until the appointed time arrives for dinner: for whenever they are left without their usual business, they fret helplessly in their idleness, and know not how to arrange or to spin it out. They betake themselves, therefore, to some business, and all the intervening time is irksome to them; they would wish, by Hercules, to skip over it, just as they wish to skip over the intervening days before a gladiatorial contest or some other time appointed for a public spectacle or private indulgence: all postponement of what they wish for is grievous to them.