Moral Letters to Lucilius

​When they have resolved to desire everything contrary to the custom of nature, at last they fall away from her entirely. “It is light: it is time for sleep. There is quiet: now let us exercise, now let us drive, now let us lunch. Already the light is coming closer; it is time for dinner. One ought not to do that which the crowd does. It is a mean thing to live by a worn and common path. Let the public day be abandoned: let a private and peculiar morning of our own be made.”

​But those men indeed are in the place of the dead to me. For how little are they removed from a funeral, and indeed an untimely one, who live by torches and wax tapers? We remember many who led this life at the same time, among whom was also Acilius Buta, of praetorian rank, to whom, after a huge patrimony had been consumed, when he confessed his poverty, Tiberius said: “You have woken up too late.”

​Julius Montanus was reciting a poem, a tolerable poet and well known both for his friendship with Tiberius and for his coldness. He very gladly inserted sunrises and sunsets. Therefore, when someone was indignant that he had recited the whole day, and said that one ought not to go to his recitations, Pinarius Natta said: “I can never act more generously: I am ready to hear him from sunrise to sunset.”

​When he had recited these verses: “Phoebus begins to bring forth his glowing flames, the ruddy day begins to spread itself, now the sad swallow, about to return to her chirping nest, begins to bring food, and administers it, divided, with her soft beak,” Varus, a Roman knight, a companion of Marcus Vinicius, a seeker of good dinners which he earned by the impudence of his tongue, cried out: “Buta is beginning to sleep.” Then, when he had immediately after recited:

” Now the shepherds have placed their herds in the stalls, now lazy night begins to give sleep-laden silence to the earth,” the same Varus said: “What do you say? Is it already night? I will go and greet Buta.” Nothing was better known than this life of his, turned in the opposite direction; which, as I said, many led at the same time.

​But the cause of living in this way for certain people is, not because they think that night itself has something more pleasant, but because nothing of the accustomed delights them, and the light is heavy to a bad conscience, and to one who desires or despises everything according as it is bought at a high or low price, the free light is an object of disgust. Besides, the luxurious want their life to be in people’s mouths while they live; for if it is silent, they think they are losing their labor. Therefore, they are in a bad mood whenever they do what escapes fame. Many eat up their estates, many have mistresses. In order to find a name among these, it is necessary to make a thing not merely luxurious, but remarkable; in so busy a city, common wickedness does not find rumors.

​We had heard Pedo Albinovanus telling—he was moreover a most elegant storyteller—that he had lived above the house of Sextus Papinius. He was of this crowd of light-shunners. “I hear,” he said, “around the third hour of the night, the sound of whips. I ask what he is doing; he is said to be receiving accounts. I hear around the sixth hour of the night a loud cry; I ask what it is; he is said to be exercising his voice. I ask around the eighth hour of the night what that sound of wheels means; he is said to be riding.”

”Around dawn, people run about, slaves are called, cellarers and cooks make a tumult. I ask what it is; he is said to have asked for honeyed wine and halica, and to have come out of the bath. His dinner,” he said, “exceeded his budget not at all, for he lived very frugally; he consumed nothing but the night. Therefore, believing those who call him avaricious and sordid, you,” he said, “will call him also a lychnobius.”

​You ought not to wonder if you find such great peculiarities of vices; they are diverse, they have innumerable faces, their kinds cannot be comprehended. Simple is the care of the right, manifold of the wrong, and it admits of however many new deviations. The same happens to characters; those of people following nature are easy, free, and have tiny differences; those of people distorted from this clash extremely both with all others and among themselves.

​Yet the chief cause of this disease seems to me to be a disgust of the common life. Just as they distinguish themselves from others by dress, by the elegance of dinners, by the neatness of carriages, so they want to separate themselves also by the arrangement of their times. They do not want to commit ordinary sins, they for whom the reward of sinning is infamy. This is what all those seek who, so to speak, live backwards.

​Therefore, Lucilius, we must keep the path which nature has prescribed, and not deviate from it; to those who follow it, all things are easy and unimpeded, but to those who struggle against it, life is no other than to those rowing against the stream. FAREWELL.