On the Virtues and on the Office of Ambassadors. Adressed to Caius (11-15)

For as they had never yet all together admired any emperor who had ever existed at that time, not expecting to have in future the possession, and use, and enjoyment of all private and public good things, but thinking that they actually had them already as a sort of superfluity of prosperity which happiness was waiting to fill to the brim:

accordingly now there was nothing else to be seen in any city, but altars, and victims, and sacrifices, and men clothed in white garments, and crowned with garlands, and wearing cheerful countenances, and displaying their joy by the brightness of their looks, and festivals, and assemblies, and musical contests, and horse-races, and revels, and feasts lasting the whole night long, with the music of the flute and of the lyre, and rejoicings, and holidays, and truces, and every kind of pleasure addressed to every one of the senses.

But in the eighth month a severe disease attacked Caius who had changed the manner of his living which was a little while before, while Tiberius was alive, very simple and on that account more wholesome than one of great sumptuousness and luxury; for he began to indulge in abundance of strong wine and eating of rich dishes, and in the abundant license of insatiable desires and great insolence, and in the unseasonable use of hot baths, and emetics, and then again in wine-bibbing and drunkenness, and returning gluttony, and in lust after boys and women, and in everything else which tends to destroy both soul and body, and all the bonds which unite and strengthen the two; for the rewards of temperance are health and strength, and the wages of intemperance are weakness and disease which bring a man near to death.

Accordingly, when the news was spread abroad that he was sick while the weather was still suitable for navigation (for it was the beginning of the autumn, which is the last season during which nautical men can safely take voyages, and during which in consequence they all return from the foreign marts in every quarter to their own native ports and harbours of refuge, especially all who exercise a prudent care not to be compelled to pass the winter in a foreign country); they, forsaking their former life of delicateness and luxury, now wore mournful faces, and every house and every city became full of depression and melancholy, their grief being now equal to and counterbalancing the joy which they experienced a short time before.