History after Liberty by Strunk Thomas;

Author:Strunk, Thomas;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press

The Principate and Book Burning

The rise of adulatio had ramifications for historians, not just for the senate.395 The Principate engaged in the persecution of writers and in censorship, whose random and erratic nature made it all the more terrifying and effective. Faced with this reality, poets, orators, and historians all had to adjust their style and content. Since the standards changed with each new regime, a writer would have only one way of determining what was acceptable, that is, by pressing the limits of what he thought was appropriate. Rather than take this risky course, most writers were prone to self-censorship or, even worse, flattery.

Tacitus begins his literary career with a reflection on the freedom of speech and historiography. In the Agricola, Tacitus cites the cases of Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius Senecio, who had praised Thrasea Paetus and Helvidius Priscus, respectively, in their biographies.396 Arulenus and Senecio were each prosecuted on capital charges for their writings under Domitian. In a public spectacle, their books were burned by their executioners in the comitium in the forum, that is, between the senate house and the rostra (Ag. 2.1; cf. Livy 40.29.14). Tacitus mentions these writers to draw a distinction between the Republic and the Principate by demonstrating the dangers involved in praising the virtues of the dead under the Principate, whereas under the Republic such praise was encouraged, as demonstrated by P. Rutilius Rufus and M. Aemilius Scaurus, who praised themselves in their memoirs and were not disparaged for it (1.3). Tacitus writes of the book burnings that accompanied the executions of the dissidents: “they thought that in that fire the voice of the Roman people and the liberty of the senate and the conscience of the human race were destroyed” (2.2).397 What Tacitus leaves out but implies is that the voice of the Roman people and the liberty of the senate and the conscience of the human race were actually not destroyed because he and authors like him would not let them be destroyed; rather, they would be restored and remembered.

As often, Tacitus found the seeds of the Principate’s outright tyranny in the reign of Augustus. Although Augustus has at times been exonerated from such hostility toward historiography and literature,398 Tacitus was correct to write that Augustus had first acted against words (Ann. 1.72.2–3), for it was under his principate that authors and their books were first condemned. Although the patron of poets and historians, Augustus was no patron of free speech.399 Once in power Augustus quickly ended Caesar’s practice of publishing the acta senatus, which possibly contained records of proceedings hostile to the regime (Suet. Caesar 20, Aug. 36.1).400 Under Augustus there was an attempt to prohibit the earlier freedom of expression in Roman wills, which became a popular means of publishing attacks on the regime (Aug. 56.1, 66.4).401 Upon attaining the position of pontifex maximus, Augustus burned several thousand scrolls of oracular and religious writings; only the Sibylline books were spared (31.1). The literary value of these works raises

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