Note 76 — Chapter VI · FREETHOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME
Reading edition
W. A. Schmidt, who cites this act (Geschichte der Denk- und Glaubensfreiheit, pp. 31–33) as the beginning of the end of free speech in Rome, does not mention the detail given by Dio (xliv, 10), that Cæsar suspected the tribunes of having set on some of the people to hail him as king. But the unproved suspicion does not justify his course, which was a bad lapse of judgment, even if the suspicion were just. From this point a conspiracy against his life was natural. Cp. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, v, 432–33. as to the facts. ↑