Even in the small old baths 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.