This does not expressly address homosexual activity, but does
address the meaing of "natural" and "unnatural"
to a stoic philosopher.
The day has already begun to lessen. It has shrunk considerably,
but yet will still allow a goodly space of time if one rises,
so to speak, with the day itself. We are more industrious, and
we are better men if we anticipate the day and welcome the dawn;
but we are base churls if we lie dozing when the sun is high in
the heavens, or if we wake up only when noon arrives; and even
then to many it seems not yet dawn. Some have reversed the functions
of light and darkness; they open eyes sodden with yesterday's
debauch only at the approach of night, It is just like the condition
of those peoples whom, according to Vergil, Nature has hidden
away and placed in an abode directly opposite to our own:
When in our face the Dawn with panting steeds
Breathes down, for them the ruddy evening kindles
Her late-lit fires. [Georgics 1.250ff]
It is not the country of these men, so much as it is their life,
that is " directly opposite " to our own. There may
be Antipodes dwelling in this same city of ours who, in Cato's
words, "have never seen the sun rise or set." Do you
think that these men know how to live, if they do not know when to live ? Do these men fear death, if they have buried
themselves alive ? They are as weird as the birds of night. Although
they pass their hours of darkness amid wine and perfumes, although
they spend the whole extent of their unnatural waking hours in
eating dinners-and those too cooked separately to make up many
courses-they are not really banqueting; they are conducting their
own funeral services. And the dead at least have their banquets
by daylight.
But indeed to one who is active no day is long. So let us lengthen
our lives; for the duty and the proof of life consist in action.
Cut short the night; use some of it for the day's business. Birds
that are being prepared for the banquet, that they may be easily
fattened through lack of exercise, are kept in darkness; and similarly,
if men vegetate without physical activity, their idle bodies are
overwhelmed with flesh, and in their self-satisfied retirement
the fat of indolence grows upon them. Moreover, the bodies of
those who have sworn allegiance to the hours of a darkness have
a loathsome appearance. Their complexions are more alarming than
those of anaemic invalids; they are lackadaisical and flabby with
dropsy; though still alive, they are already carrion. But this,
to my thinking, would be among the least of their evils. How much
more darkness there is in their souls! Such a man is internally
dazed; his vision is darkened- he envies the blind. And what man
ever had eyes for the purpose of seeing in the dark ?
You ask me how this depravity comes upon the soul-this habit of
reversing the daylight and giving over one's whole existence to
the night ? All vices rebel against Nature; they all abandon the
appointed order. It is the motto of luxury to enjoy what is unusual,
and not only to depart from that which is right, but to leave
it as far behind as possible, and finally even take a stand in
opposition thereto. Do you not believe that men live contrary
to Nature (contra naturam) who drink fasting, who take wine into
empty veins, and pass to their food in a state of intoxication
? And yet this is one of youth's popular vices - to perfect their
strength in order to drink on the very threshold of the bath,
amid the unclad bathers; nay even to soak in wine and then immediately
to rub off the sweat which they have promoted by many a hot glass
of liquor ! To them, a glass after lunch or one after dinner is
bourgeois; it is what the country squires do, who are not connoisseurs
in pleasure. This unmixed wine delights them just because there
is no food to float in it, because it readily makes its way into
their muscles; this boozing pleases them just because the stomach
is empty.
Do you not believe that men live contrary to Nature who exchange
the fashion of their attire with women ? Do not men live contrary
to Nature who endeavour to look fresh and boyish at an age unsuitable
for such an attempt? What could be more cruel or more wretched
? Cannot time and man's testate ever carry such a person beyond
an artificial boyhood?a Do not men live contrary to Nature who
crave roses in winter, or seek to raise a spring flower like the
lily by means of hot-water heaters and artificial changes of temperature
? Do not men live contrary to Nature who grow fruit-trees on the
top of a wall ? Or raise waving forests upon the roofs and battlements
of t heir houses - the roots starting at a point to which it would
be outlandish for the tree-tops to reach ? Do not men live contrary
to Nature who lay the foundations of bathrooms in the sea and
do not imagine that they can enjoy their swim unless the heated
pool is lashed as with the waves of a storm ?
When men have begun to desire all things in opposition to the
ways of Nature, they end by entirely abandoning the ways of Nature.
They cry: " lt is daytime: let us go to sleep ! It is the
time when men rest: now for exercise, now for our drive, now for
our lunch ! Lo, the dawn approaches: it is dinner-time ! We should
not do as mankind do. It is low and mean to live in the usual
and conventional way I et us abandon the ordinary sort of day.
Let us have a morning that is a special feature of ours, peculiar
to ourselves !" Such men are, in my opinion, as good as dead.
Are they not all but present at a funeral-and before their time
too - when they live amid torches and tapers? I re member that
this sort of life was very fashionable one time: among such men
as Acilius Buta, a person of praetorian rank, who ran through
a tremendous estate and on confessing his bankruptcy to Tiberius,
received the answer: "You have waked up too late ! "
Julius Montanus was once reading a poem aloud; he was a middling
good poet, noted for his friendship with Tiberius, as well as
his fall from favour. He always used to fill his poems with a
generous sprinkling of sunrises and sunsets. Hence, when a certain
person was complaining that Montanus had read all day long, and
declared that no man should attend any of his readings, Natta
Pinariusa remarked: " I couldn't make a fairer bargain than
this: I am ready to listen to him from sunrise to sunset ! "
Montanus was reading, and had reached the words:
"'Gins the bright morning to spread forth his flames clearburning:
the red dawn
Scatters its light; and the sad-eyed swallow returns to her nestlings
Bringing the chatterers' food, and with sweet bill sharing and
serving."
Then Varus, a Roman knight, the hanger-on of Marcus Vinicius,
and a sponger at elegant dinners which he earned by his degenerate
wit, shouted: " Bed-time for Buta ! " And later, when
Montanus declaimed:
"Lo, now the shepherds have folded their flocks, and the
slow-moving darkness
'Gins to spread silence o'er lands that are drowsily lulled into
slumber,"
this same Varus remarked: " What ? Night already ? I'll go
and pay my morning call on Buta ! " You
see, nothing was more notorious than Buta's upside-down manner
of life. But this life, as I said, was fashionable at one time.
And the reason why some men live thus is not because they think
that night in itself offers any greater attractions, but because
that which is normal gives them no particular pleasure; light
being a bitter enemy of the evil conscience, and, when one craves
or scorns all things in proportion as they have cost one much
or little, illumination for which one does not pay is an object
of contempt. Moreover, the luxurious person wishes to be an object
of gossip his whole life; if people are silent about him, he thinks
that he is wasting his time. Hence he is uncomfortable wherever
any of his actions escape notoriety.
Many men eat up their property, and many men keep mistresses.
If you would win a reputation among such persons, you must make
your programme not only one of luxury but one of notoriety; for
in such a busy community wickedness does not discover the ordinary
sort of scandal heard Pedo Albinovanus, that most attractive story-teller,
speaking of his residence above the town-house of Sextus Papinius.
Papinius belonged to the tribe of those who shun the light. "
About nine o'clock at night I hear the sound of whips. I ask what
is going on, and they tell me that Papinius is going over his
accounts. About twelve there is a strenuous shouting. I ask what
the matter is, and they say he is exercising his voice. About
two A.M. I ask the significance of the sound of wheels; they tell
me that he is off for a drive. And at dawn there is a tremendous
flurry-calling of slaves and butlers, and pandemonium among the
cooks. I ask the meaning of this also, and they tell me that he
has called for his cordial and his appetizer, after leaving
the bath. his dinner," said Pedo, " never went beyond
the day, for he lived very sparingly; he was lavish with nothing
but the night. Accordingly, if you believe those who call him
tight-fisted and mean, you will call him also a ' slave of the
lamp."
You should not be surprised at finding so many special manifestations
of the vices; for vices vary, and there are countless phases of
them, nor can all their various kinds be classified. The method
of maintaining righteousness is simple; the method of maintaining
wickedness is complicated, and has infinite opportunity to swerve.
And the same holds true of character; if you follow nature, character
is easy to manage, free, and with very slight shades of difference;
but the sort of person I have mentioned possesses badly warped
character, out of harmony with all things, including himself.
The chief cause,
however, of this disease seems to me to be a squeamish revolt
from the normal existence. Just as such persons mark themselves
off from others in their dress, or in the elaborate arrangement
of their dinners, or in the elegance of their carriages; even
so they desire to make themselves peculiar by their way of dividing
up the hours of their day. They are unwilling to be wicked in
the conventional way, because notoriety is the reward of their
sort of wickedness. Notoriety is what all such men seek- men who
are, so to speak, living backwards.
For this reason, Lucilius, let us keep to the way which Nature
has mapped out for us, and let us not swerve therefrom. If we
follow Nature, all is easy and unobstructed; but if we combat
Nature, our life differs not a whit from that of man who row against
the current. Farewell.
Source.
From: Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE):
Epistle CXXII:
On Darkness as A Veil for Wickedness [Loeb translation, 1925]
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