of Pompeii there were found about a thousand lamps, obviously
used for illumination after dark.[416] But in spite of this and of the
invention of candelabra for extending the use of candles, it was never
possible for the Roman to turn night into day as we do in our modern
town-life. We must look on the lighting of the streets as quite an
exceptional event. This happened, for example, on the night of the
famous fifth of December 63 B.C., when Cicero returned to his house
after the execution of the conspirators; people placed lamps and
torches at their doors, and women showed lights from the roofs of the
houses.

An industrious man, especially in winter, when this want of artificial
light made time most valuable, would often begin his work before
daylight; he might have a speech to prepare for the senate, or a brief
for a trial, or letters to write, and, as we shall see, as soon as the
sun had well risen it was not likely that he would be altogether his
own master. Thus we find Cicero on a February morning writing to his
brother before sunrise,[417] and it is not unlikely that the soreness
of the eyes of which he sometimes complains may have been the result
of reading and writing before the light was good. In his country
villas he could do as he liked, but at Rome he knew that he would have
the "turba salutantium" upon him as soon as the sun had risen. Cicero
is the only man of his own time of whose habits we know much, but in
the next generation Horace describes himself as calling for pen and
paper before daylight, and later on that insatiable student the elder
Pliny would work for hours before daylight, and then go to the Emperor
Vespasian, who was also a very early riser.[418] After sunrise the
whole population was astir; boys were on their way to school, and
artisans to their labour.

If Horace is not exaggerating when he says (_Sat._ i. 1. 10) that
the barrister might be disturbed by a client at cock-crow, Cicero's
studies may have been interrupted even before the crowds came; but
this could hardly happen often. As a rule it was during the first two
hours (_mane_) that callers collected. In the old times it had been
the custom to open your house and begin your business at daybreak, and
after saluting your familia and asking a blessing of the household
gods, to attend to your own affairs and those of your clients.[419]
Although we are not told so explicitly, we must suppose that the same
practice held good in Cicero