“December is the month,” he begins his letter, “when the city [Rome] most especially gives itself up to riotous living (_desudat_). Free licence is allowed to the public luxury. Every place resounds with the gigantic preparations for eating and gorging, just as if,” he adds, “the whole year were not a sort of _Saturnalia_.” He contrasts with all this waste and gluttony the simplicity and frugality of Epikurus, who, in a letter to his friend Polyænus, declares that his own food does not cost him sixpence a day; while his friend Metrodorus, who had not advanced so far in frugality, expended the whole of that small sum:-- “Do you ask if that can supply due nourishment? Yes; and pleasure too. Not, indeed, that fleeting and superficial pleasure which needs to be perpetually recruited, but a solid and substantial one. Bread and pearl-barley (_polenta_) certainly is not luxurious feeding, but it is no little advantage to be able to receive pleasure from a simple diet of which no change of fortune can deprive one.... Nature demands bread and water only: no one is poor in regard to those necessaries.”[28] Again, Seneca writes:-- “How long shall we weary heaven with petitions for superfluous luxuries, as though we had not at hand wherewithal to feed ourselves? How long shall we fill our plains with huge cities? How long shall the people slave for us unnecessarily? How long shall countless numbers of ships from every sea bring us provisions for the consumption of a single month? An Ox is satisfied with the pasture of an acre or two: one wood suffices for several Elephants. Man alone supports himself by the pillage of the whole earth and sea. What! Has Nature indeed given us so insatiable a stomach, while she has given us so insignificant bodies? No: it is not the hunger of our stomachs, but insatiable covetousness (_ambitio_) which costs so much. The slaves of the belly (as says Sallust) are to be counted in the number of the lower animals, not of men. Nay, not of them, but rather of the dead.... You might inscribe on their doors, ‘These have anticipated death.’”--(_Ep._ lx.) The extreme difficulty of abstinence is oftentimes alleged:--