Moral Letters to Lucilius

​The day has already felt its loss. It has shrunk considerably, yet in such a way that there is still ample space, if one rises, so to speak, with the day itself. He is more dutiful and better, who waits for it and welcomes the first light; base is he who lies half-asleep when the sun is high, whose waking begins at midday; and yet for many, this is still before dawn.

​There are some who have inverted the duties of light and night, and do not open eyes heavy with yesterday’s debauchery until night begins to approach. Just as is said to be the condition of those whom nature, as Vergil says, has placed opposite us, beneath our dwellings: “And when the early Dawn with panting steeds breathes on us first, for them the glowing Evening lights her belated lamps;” such is the life of these people, contrary to everyone, not because of their region, but because of their way of living. There are certain antipodes in the same city, who, as Marcus Cato says, have never seen the rising nor the setting sun.

​Do you think these people know how to live, who do not know when? And do these fear death, into which they have buried themselves while alive? They are as ill-omened as nocturnal birds. Although they pass their darkness in wine and perfume, although they consume the entire time of their perverted waking in feasts and indeed cooked in many courses, they are not banquetting, but performing their own funeral rites. For indeed, the memorial rites for the dead are celebrated during the day. But by Hercules, no day is long to one who is active. Let us extend our life; both its duty and its proof is action. Let night be restricted, and let something from it be transferred to the day.

​Birds which are prepared for banquets, so that they may easily grow fat while remaining motionless, are kept in the dark; thus, as they lie without any exercise, a swelling invades their sluggish body, and a proud shadow of fat grows up through inactive feeding. But the bodies of those who have dedicated themselves to the darkness are seen to be hideous. Indeed, their complexion is more suspicious than that of those suffering from disease, they are pale, weak, and vanishing, and in the living, the flesh is like that of a corpse. Yet I would call this the least of their evils. How much more darkness there is in their soul! It is stupefied within itself, it grows dark, it envies the blind. Who ever had eyes for the sake of darkness?

​You ask how this depravity of the soul arises, of aversion to the day and of transferring the whole of life into the night? All vices fight against nature, all abandon their due order. This is the purpose of luxury: to rejoice in perverted things, and not merely to depart from what is right, but to go as far away as possible, and then even to stand in direct opposition.

​Do they not seem to you to live contrary to nature who drink on an empty stomach, who receive wine into empty veins and proceed to food already drunk? And yet this is a frequent vice of young men, who cultivate their physical strength, so that almost on the very threshold of the bath, among naked men, they drink, or rather carouse, and immediately scrape off the sweat which they have provoked by frequent and burning potions. To drink after lunch or dinner is common; rustic heads of families do this, ignorant of true pleasure. That unmixed wine delights, which does not float upon food, but penetrates freely to the nerves; that drunkenness pleases, which comes upon an empty stomach.

​Do they not seem to you to live contrary to nature who exchange their clothing with women? Do they not live contrary to nature who aim to have their boyhood shine at an unnatural time? What can be more cruel or miserable? Will he never be a man, so that he may for a long time submit to a man? And when his sex’s humiliation ought to have rescued him, will not even his age rescue him?

​Do they not live contrary to nature who in winter long for the rose, and by the nourishing of warm waters and the proper change of temperatures force the lily, a spring flower, in the midst of winter? Do they not live contrary to nature who plant orchards on the tops of towers? Whose forests wave on the roofs and gables of houses, having their roots where they would have improperly sent their crests? Do they not live contrary to nature who cast the foundations of warm baths in the sea, and do not seem to themselves to swim luxuriously unless the hot pools are struck by waves and storms?