Letters 122.2

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.

It is not the country of these men, so much as it is their life, that is “directly opposite” to our own.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 122.2, translated by Richard Mott Gummere