Letters 19.9

At this point I should like to quote a saying of Maecenas, who spoke the truth when he stood on the very summit: “There’s thunder even on the loftiest peaks.” If you ask me in what book these words are found, they occur in the volume entitled Prometheus. He simply meant to say that these lofty peaks have their tops surrounded with thunder-storms. But is any power worth so high a price that a man like you would ever, in order to obtain it, adopt a style so debauched as that? Maecenas was indeed a man of parts, who would have left a great pattern for Roman oratory to follow, had his good fortune not made him effeminate,—nay, had it not emasculated him! An end like his awaits you also, unless you forthwith shorten sail and,—as Maecenas was not willing to do until it was too late,—hug the shore!

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 19.9, translated by Richard Mott Gummere