Note 76 — Chapter VI · FREETHOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME

That the mental paralysis connects causally with the political conditions will perhaps not now be denied. A censorship of the written word belongs congenitally to autocracy; and only the personal magnanimity of Cæsar and the prudence of Augustus delayed its development in Rome. Soon it became an irresistible terrorism. Even Cæsar, indeed, so far forgot one of the great rules of his life as to impeach before the Senate the tribunes who had quite justifiably prosecuted some of the people who had hailed him as king;76 and the fact that the Senate was already slavish enough to eject them gives the forecast of the future. Augustus long showed a notable forbearance to all manner of verbal opposition, and even disparagement; but at length he also began to prosecute for private aspersions,77 and even to suppress histories of a too critical stamp. Tiberius began his reign with the high-pitched sentiment that “in a free State tongue and mind should be free”;78 and for a time he bore himself with an exemplary restraint; but he too, in turn, took the colour of his place, and became murderously resentful of any semblance of aspersion on himself.79 The famous sentiment ascribed to him in the Annals of Tacitus, Deorum injuriae diis curae80—“the Gods’ wrongs are the Gods’ business”—is not noted by Suetonius, and has an un-Roman sound. What Suetonius tells is81 that he was “very negligent concerning the Gods and religions,” yet addicted to the astrologers, and a believer in fate. The fact remains that while, as aforesaid, there must have been still a number of unbelievers, there is no sign after Lucretius of any Roman propaganda against religion; and the presumption is that the Augustan policy of promoting the old cults was extended to the maintenance of the ordinary Roman view that disrespect to the Gods was a danger to the State. In the reign of Nero we find trace of a treatise De religionis erroribus by Fabricius Vejento,82 wherein was ridiculed the zeal of the priests to proclaim mysteries which they did not understand; but, whether or not its author was exiled and the book burnt on their protest, such literature was not further produced.83