Back to On drunkenness

Moral Letters Vol II

Seneca

§ Section 5

On drunkenness

83:5

Book Subtitle: Seneca's timeless letters of advice and wisdom.

Book Description: The second volume of Seneca's moral letters to Lucilius. Each letter contains Seneca's advice and wisdom won from a life of Roman politics.

5.

Do you ask, for all that, how our race resulted to-day?

We raced to a tie,—something which rarely happens in a running contest.

After tiring myself out in this way (for I cannot call it exercise), I took a cold bath; this, at my house, means just short of hot.

I, the former cold-water enthusiast, who used to celebrate the new year by taking a plunge into the canal, who, just as naturally as I would set out to do some reading or writing, or to compose a speech, used to inaugurate the first of the year with a plunge into the Virgo aqueduct, have changed my allegiance, first to the Tiber, and then to my favourite tank, which is warmed only by the sun, at times when I am most robust and when there is not a flaw in my bodily processes.

I have very little energy left for bathing.