Seneca · On the degeneracy of the age

Letters 97.9

Therefore, you need not believe that it is we who have yielded most to lust and least to law. For the young men of to-day live far more simple lives than those of an epoch when a defendant would plead not guilty to an adultery charge before his judges, and his judges admit it before the defendant, when debauchery was practised to secure a verdict, and when Clodius, befriended by the very vices of which he was guilty, played the procurer during the actual hearing of the case. Could one believe this? He to whom one adultery brought condemnation was acquitted because of many.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 97.9, translated by Richard Mott Gummere