Moral Letters to Lucilius

​You are mistaken, my Lucilius, if you think that luxury and neglect of good morals, and other things which everyone objects to in his own times, are the vices of our age; these are the faults of men, not of times. No age has been free from blame. And if you begin to estimate the license of any age, I am ashamed to say that never was sin committed more openly than in the presence of Cato.

​Would anyone believe that money changed hands in that trial in which Publius Clodius was the defendant for that adultery which he had committed in secret with Caesar’s wife, violating the religious rites of that sacrifice which is said to be performed for the people, with all men so removed from the enclosure that even pictures of male animals are covered? And yet, money was given to the judges, and, what is even more shameful than this bargain, the outrages of matrons and noble youths were demanded in addition, in place of a written ledger.

​Less sin was committed by the crime itself than by the acquittal: the defendant of adultery distributed adulteries, and was not secure of his safety until he made his judges similar to himself. These things were done in that trial in which, if nothing else, Cato had given testimony. I will set down the very words of Cicero, because the matter exceeds belief ”He summoned them to him, he promised, he interceded, he gave money. And indeed now—O good gods, what a ruined business!—even the nights of certain women and introductions of noble youths were, for some judges, an addition to the heap of reward.”

​There is no time to complain about the price; there was more in the additions. “Do you want the wife of that strict man? I will give her. Do you want the wife of this rich man? I will guarantee her sleeping with you. Unless you commit adultery, condemn. That beautiful woman whom you desire will come. I promise you her night and will not delay; within the postponement of the trial, the credit of my promise will stand.” It is more to distribute adulteries than to commit them; this indeed is to give notice of dishonor to the mothers of families.

​These Clodian judges had asked the senate for a guard, which was not necessary except for those who were about to condemn, and they had obtained it. Therefore Catulus said to them elegantly, after the defendant was acquitted: “Why did you ask us for a guard? Was it so that your money might not be snatched from you?” Yet among these jokes, the adulterer before the trial, the pimp in the trial, went unpunished, escaping condemnation in a more shameful manner than he deserved.

​Do you believe that anything was more corrupt than those morals, in which lust could not be restrained by sacred rites, nor by courts of law, in which in that very inquiry which was conducted out of the ordinary course by a decree of the senate, more was committed than was being investigated? It was being investigated whether anyone could be safe after adultery; it appeared that without adultery one could not be safe.

​This was committed between Pompey and Caesar, between Cicero and Cato, that Cato, I say, during whose sitting the people are said to have refused to allow themselves to demand the Floralian sports of stripping prostitutes, if you believe that men then looked on more severely than they judged. And those things will happen and have happened; and the license of cities will sometimes settle down through discipline and fear, never of its own accord.

​There is no reason therefore for you to believe that we have allowed most to lust, and least to laws. For this youth of ours is far more frugal than that one, when the defendant denied adultery before the judges, while the judges confessed it before the defendant, when outrage was committed for the sake of judging the case, when Clodius, popular by the very vices by which he was guilty, practiced matchmaking in the very pleading of his cause. Would anyone believe this? He who was to be condemned for one adultery, was acquitted by many.