Seneca, Epistulae ad Lucilium 1.7:
“You ask me what I think chiefly to be avoided? A crowd. You cannot yet be safely entrusted to it. I will certainly confess my own weakness: I never bring back the habits which I took with me. Something which I previously ordered is disturbed, something which I previously banished simply returns. As it happens with the sick, whom a long illness has affected to such a degree that they can no longer go out without harm, so it happens with us whose minds are recovering from a long disease. Association with many people is a hateful thing: in the crowd, there is no one who will not commend his vice to us, or even impress and smear it upon us without our knowing. In every case, the greater the crowd with whom we mingle, the greater the danger. But nothing is so dangerous to good morals as to loiter around at a show, where our vices steal upon us all the more readily on account of their pleasure. What do you think I am saying? That I come back more avaricious, ambitious, and prone to luxury? Nay, rather, I return more cruel and inhumane because I have been among humans.”
