Why do we say "Variety is the spice of life"?

Meaning:

Doing a variety of different things makes life interesting.

Background:

This sentiment traces back to at least the first century BC, as recorded in the writings of Publilius Syrus: "No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety."

Publilius Syris was born in Syria around 85 BC and was brought to Italy as a slave, where his wit and talent won him the favor of his master who freed and educated him. Today, he is remembered for his moral sayings (known as sententiae in Latin), but in his time he was likely best known as a talented mime and improviser.

Samuel Johnson expressed a similar thought in one of a series of 103 essays bylined "The Idler" in the Universal Chronicle, a weekly magazine published in London between 1758-60. All but about a dozen of these essays were written by Johnson:

"The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence."

The expression was first recorded in the exact form we use it today in Book Two of The Task, a poem by William Cowper published in 1785:

Variety’s the very spice of life,
That gives it all its flavour.  We have run
Through every change that fancy, at the loom
Exhausted, has had genius to supply,
And, studious of mutation still, discard
A real elegance, a little used,
For monstrous novelty and strange disguise.

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