In the year of the consulship of Cornelius Cossus and Asinius Agrippa, Cremutius Cordus was arraigned on a new charge, now for the first time heard.He had published a history in which he had praised Marcus Brutus and called Caius Cassius the last of the Romans.His accusers were Satrius Secundus and Pinarius Natta, creatures of Sejanus.This was enough to ruin the accused; and then too the emperor listened with an angry frown to his defence, which Cremutius, resolved to give up his life, began thus:-"It is my words, Senators, which are condemned, so innocent am Iof any guilty act; yet these do not touch the emperor or the emperor's mother, who are alone comprehended under the law of treason.I am said to have praised Brutus and Cassius, whose careers many have described and no one mentioned without eulogy.Titus Livius, pre-eminently famous for eloquence and truthfulness, extolled Cneius Pompeius in such a panegyric that Augustus called him Pompeianus, and yet this was no obstacle to their friendship.Scipio, Afranius, this very Cassius, this same Brutus, he nowhere describes as brigands and traitors, terms now applied to them, but repeatedly as illustrious men.Asinius Pollio's writings too hand down a glorious memory of them, and Messala Corvinus used to speak with pride of Cassius as his general.Yet both these men prospered to the end with wealth and preferment.Again, that book of Marcus Cicero, in which he lauded Cato to the skies, how else was it answered by Caesar the dictator, than by a written oration in reply, as if he was pleading in court? The letters Antonius, the harangues of Brutus contain reproaches against Augustus, false indeed, but urged with powerful sarcasm; the poems which we read of Bibaculus and Catullus are crammed with invectives on the Caesars.Yet the Divine Julius, the Divine Augustus themselves bore all this and let it pass, whether in forbearance or in wisdom I cannot easily say.Assuredly what is despised is soon forgotten; when you resent a thing, you seem to recognise it.""Of the Greeks I say nothing; with them not only liberty, but even license went unpunished, or if a person aimed at chastising, he retaliated on satire by satire.It has, however, always been perfectly open to us without any one to censure, to speak freely of those whom death has withdrawn alike from the partialities of hatred or esteem.
Are Cassius and Brutus now in arms on the fields of Philippi, and am Iwith them rousing the people by harangues to stir up civil war? Did they not fall more than seventy years ago, and as they are known to us by statues which even the conqueror did not destroy, so too is not some portion of their memory preserved for us by historians? To every man posterity gives his due honour, and, if a fatal sentence hangs over me, there will be those who will remember me as well as Cassius and Brutus."He then left the Senate and ended his life by starvation.His books, so the Senators decreed, were to be burnt by the aediles; but some copies were left which were concealed and afterwards published.And so one is all the more inclined to laugh at the stupidity of men who suppose that the despotism of the present can actually efface the remembrances of the next generation.On the contrary, the persecution of genius fosters its influence; foreign tyrants, and all who have imitated their oppression, have merely procured infamy for themselves and glory for their victims.
That year was such a continuous succession of prosecutions that on the days of the Latin festival when Drusus, as city-prefect, had ascended his tribunal for the inauguration of his office, Calpurnius Salvianus appeared before him against Sextus Marius.This the emperor openly censured, and it caused the banishment of Salvianus.
Next, the people of Cyzicus were accused of publicly neglecting the established worship of the Divine Augustus, and also of acts of violence to Roman citizens.They were deprived of the franchise which they had earned during the war with Mithridates, when their city was besieged, and when they repulsed the king as much by their own bravery as by the aid of Lucullus.Then followed the acquittal of Fonteius Capito, the late proconsul of Asia, on proof that charges brought against him by Vibius Serenus were fictitious.Still this did not injure Serenus, to whom public hatred was actually a protection.Indeed any conspicuously restless informer was, so to say, inviolable; only the insignificant and undistinguished were punished.
About the same time Further Spain sent a deputation to the Senate, with a request to be allowed, after the example of Asia, to erect a temple to Tiberius and his mother.On this occasion, the emperor, who had generally a strong contempt for honours, and now thought it right to reply to the rumour which reproached him with having yielded to vanity, delivered the following speech:-"I am aware, Senators, that many deplore my want of firmness in not having opposed a similar recent petition from the cities of Asia.I will therefore both explain the grounds of my previous silence and my intentions for the future.Inasmuch as the Divine Augustus did not forbid the founding of a temple at Pergamos to himself and to the city of Rome, I who respect as law all his actions and sayings, have the more readily followed a precedent once approved, seeing that with the worship of myself was linked an expression of reverence towards the Senate.But though it may be pardonable to have allowed this once, it would be a vain and arrogant thing to receive the sacred honour of images representing the divine throughout all the provinces, and the homage paid to Augustus will disappear if it is vulgarised by indiscriminate flattery.