Letters 114.2

Exactly as each individual man’s actions seem to speak, so people’s style of speaking often reproduces the general character of the time, if the morale of the public has relaxed and has given itself over to effeminacy. Wantonness in speech is proof of public luxury, if it is popular and fashionable, and not confined to one or two individual instances.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 114.2, translated by Richard Mott Gummere