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's time; under the Empire it is familiar to all readers of Seneca or Martial, but in a form which was open to much criticism and satire.

The client of the Empire was a degraded being; of the client in the last age of the Republic we only know that he existed, and could be useful to his _patronus_ in many ways,--in elections and trials especially;[420] but we do not hear of his pressing himself on the attention of his patron every morning, or receiving any "sportula." All the same, the number of persons, whether clients in this sense or in the legal sense, or messengers, men of business, and ordinary callers, who would want to see a man like Cicero before he left his house in the morning, would beyond doubt be considerable.