Moral Letters to Lucilius

​The greatest praise of mildness is attributed to him; he spared the sword, abstained from blood, and showed what he was capable of by no other thing than by license; he corrupted this very praise of his by those delights of a most monstrous speech.

​For it is apparent that he was soft, not mild. These windings of composition, these inverted words, these strange thoughts—often great indeed, but enervated when they come forth—will make this manifest to anyone. His head was turned by too much good fortune. Which vice is accustomed to belong sometimes to the man, sometimes to the time.

​When good fortune has poured luxury far and wide, first the care of bodies begins to be more diligent. Then labor is spent on furniture. Then care is expended on the houses themselves, so that they may run out into the spaciousness of the countryside, so that the walls may shine with marble brought across the seas, so that the ceilings may be varied with gold, so that the brightness of the pavements may respond to the coffered ceilings. Then luxury is transferred to dinners, and there favor is sought from novelty and the change of the usual order, so that those things which are accustomed to close a dinner are placed first, so that what was given to those arriving is given to those departing.

​When the mind has become accustomed to loathing what is according to custom, and accustomed things are regarded by it as mean, it seeks what is new even in speech, and at one time recalls and brings forward ancient and obsolete words, at another invents unknown ones and distorts them, at another—a thing which has recently become frequent—bold and frequent metaphor is held for refinement.

​There are those who cut short their thoughts and hope for favor from this, if the sentence remains suspended and has made the hearer suspicious of itself. There are those who hold them back and stretch them out. There are those who do not merely approach the very edge of vice—for it is necessary for one attempting something grand to do this—but who love the vice itself. Therefore, wherever you see corrupted speech to please, there will be no doubt that morals also have declined from the right. Just as the luxury of banquets, just as that of clothes are signs of a sick state, so the license of speech, if only it is frequent, shows that the minds also, from which the words come forth, have fallen.

​Indeed you ought not to wonder that corrupted things are received not only by a meaner circle, but also by this more cultivated crowd; for these men differ from one another in their togas, not in their judgments. You can wonder more at this, that not only faulty things, but faults themselves are praised. For that has always happened: no talent has pleased without indulgence. Give me whomsoever you wish, a man of great name; I will tell what his age forgave him, what it knowingly overlooked in him. I will give you many to whom vices did not do harm, and some to whom they were beneficial. I will give, I say, men of the greatest fame and proposed among admirable things, whom if anyone corrects, he destroys; for thus vices are mingled with virtues, that they are about to break them along with themselves.

​Add now that speech does not have a fixed rule; the custom of the state, which has never stood long in the same condition, alters it. Many seek words from another age, and speak the Twelve Tables. Gracchus and Crassus and Curio are too cultivated and recent for them; they return even to Appius and Coruncanius. Some, on the contrary, while they wish for nothing except what is worn and common, fall into meanness.