Letter 97 — On the Degeneracy of the Age (§8)

“All this bargaining took place in the presence of Pompey and Caesar, of Cicero and Cato,—yes, that very Cato whose presence, it is said, caused the people to refrain from demanding the usual quips and cranks of naked actresses at the Floralia,—if you can believe that men were stricter in their conduct at a festival than in a court-room! Such things will be done in the future, as they have been done in the past; and the licentiousness of cities will sometimes abate through discipline and fear, never of itself.”