His adulteries were
still before their eyes, but they must be patient where they had not
power. In other things that emperor was moderate enough; propriety
was generally secured, and the people entertained with public shows
and donatives, to make them more easily digest their lost liberty.
But Augustus, who was conscious to himself of so many crimes which
he had committed, thought in the first place to provide for his own
reputation by making an edict against lampoons and satires, and the
authors of those defamatory writings, which my author Tacitus, from
the law-term, calls famosos libellos.
In the first book of his Annals he gives the following account of it
in these words:- Primus Augustus cognitionem de famosis libellis,
specie legis ejus, tractavit; commotus Cassii Severi libidine, qua
viros faeminasque illustres procacibus scriptis diffamaverat. Thus
in English:- "Augustus was the first who, under the colour of that
law, took cognisance of lampoons, being provoked to it by the
petulancy of Cassius Severus, who had defamed many illustrious
persons of both sexes in his writings.
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