Moral Letters to Lucilius Section 12

Quas nunc quorundam voces futuras credis? Non invideo Scipioni; vere in exilio vixit, qui sic lavabatur. Immo, si scias, non cotidie lavabatur. Nam, ut aiunt, qui priscos mores urbis tradiderunt, brachia et crura cotidie abluebant, quae scilicet sordes opere collegerant, ceterum toti nundinis lavabantur. Hoc loco dicet aliquis: olim liquet mihi inmundissimos fuisse. Quid putas illos oluisse? Militiam, laborem, virum. Postquam munda balnea inventa sunt, spurciores sunt.

Car, au dire de ceux qui nous ont décrit les usages de la vieille Rome, on se lavait chaque jour les bras et les jambes, à cause des souillures contractées par le travail ; mais l’ablution du corps entier n’avait lieu qu’aux jours de marché. Sur quoi l’on va me dire : « Ils étaient donc bien sales ! Quelle odeur ils devaient avoir ! » Ils sentaient la guerre, le travail, l’homme enfin. Depuis que les bains sont devenus si nets, les corps sont plus souillés que jamais.

And how do you suppose certain persons will answer me? They will say: “I don’t envy Scipio; that was truly an exile’s life - to put up with baths like those!” Friend, if you were wiser, you would know that Scipio did not bathe every day. It is stated by those who have reported to us the old-time ways of Rome that the Romans washed only their arms and legs daily - because those were the members which gathered dirt in their daily toil - and bathed all over only once a week. Here someone will retort: “Yes; pretty dirty fellows they evidently were! How they must have smelled!” But they smelled of the camp, the farm, and heroism. Now that spick-and-span bathing establishments have been devised, men are really fouler than of yore.