Moral Letters to Lucilius

​I write this to you while lying in the very villa of Scipio Africanus, having venerated his shades and the altar, which I suspect to be the tomb of so great a man. I convince myself indeed that his soul returned to heaven, from which it came, not because he led great armies—for even the mad Cambyses had these and used his madness successfully—but because of his outstanding moderation and piety, which I judge to be more admirable in him when he left his country than when he defended it; either Scipio had to be in Rome, or Rome had to be in liberty.

”I wish,” he said, “to detract nothing from the laws, nothing from the institutions. Let the law be equal among all citizens. My country, make use of my benefit without me. I was the cause of liberty for you, I shall also be its proof; I depart, if I have grown more than is expedient for you.”

​Why should I not admire this greatness of mind, by which he withdrew into voluntary exile and relieved the city? Matters had been brought to such a point that either liberty would do injury to Scipio, or Scipio to liberty. Neither was lawful. And so he gave way to the laws and withdrew himself to Liternum, intending to charge his own exile to the commonwealth just as much as that of Hannibal.

​I saw a villa built of squared stone, a wall surrounding a wood, towers also raised on both sides for the defense of the villa, a cistern placed below the buildings and shrubbery, which could suffice for the use of even an army, a small bath, narrow and dark, according to ancient custom; for it did not seem hot to our ancestors unless it was dark. Therefore, a great pleasure stole over me as I contemplated the character of Scipio and our own.

​In this corner, that terror of Carthage, to whom Rome owes the fact that she was captured only once, used to wash his body weary from rustic labors. For he exercised himself with work and, as was the custom for the ancients, tilled the soil himself. Under this so humble roof he stood, this so cheap pavement supported him.

​But now, who is there who can bear to bathe in this way? One seems to oneself poor and dirty unless the walls have receded with large and precious circular slabs, unless Alexandrian marbles are inlaid with Numidian overlays, unless an elaborate border, varied in the manner of a painting, is woven around them on all sides, unless the vaulted ceiling is covered with glass, unless Thasian stone, once a rare sight in some temple, has enclosed our pools, into which we lower our bodies emptied by much sweating, unless silver taps have poured the water.

​And so far I am speaking of plebeian pipes; what when I come to the baths of freedmen? How many statues, how many columns supporting nothing, but placed for ornament for the sake of expense! How much water gliding down the steps with a crash! We have arrived at such a point of luxury that we do not want to tread on anything unless they are gems.

​In this bath of Scipio, there are very small chinks rather than windows cut out of the stone wall, so that they might admit light without weakening the fortification; but now they call baths “fit for cockroaches” if any are not so fitted as to receive the sun of the whole day through very wide windows, unless people are bathed and tanned at the same time, unless they look out from the tub upon fields and seas. And so, those things which had had a crowd and admiration when they were dedicated, are avoided and cast back into the number of ancient things, whenever luxury has invented something new with which to overwhelm itself.

​But formerly, baths were both few and adorned with no refinement. For why should a thing of a farthing, invented for use, not for pleasure, be adorned? Water was not poured from below, nor did it always run fresh as if from a hot spring, nor did they believe it mattered how clear the water was in which they deposited their dirt.

​But, good gods, how pleasing it is to enter those dark baths, smeared with common plaster, which you knew Cato the aedile, or Fabius Maximus, or one of the Cornelii, had regulated with his own hand? For the most noble aediles performed this duty too: of entering those places which received the public, and demanding cleanliness and a useful and healthy temperature—not this one which was recently invented, similar to a fire, so much so indeed that a slave convicted of some crime ought to be bathed alive. It seems to me to make no difference now whether a bath is on fire or is warm.