Laudator Temporis Acti

Ronald Syme, "The Allegiance of Labienus," in his Roman Papers, I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 62-75 (at 62):

[T]he last Labienus of whom history has record, a vigorous orator towards the end of the reign of Augustus, was a sour and embittered character, refusing to emulate the docile troop of his contemporaries in their alacrity to profit from the new order in State and society.¹ 'Summa egestas erat, summa infamia, summum odium.' Labienus was truculent and ferocious. They called him 'Rabienus'. He also wrote history, in subject and treatment unacceptable to the government. When the Senate, solicitous for order, truth, and propriety, dutifully decreed that the offensive books should be consigned to public conflagration, the author retired to his family sepulchre, taking the manuscript with him, and put an end to his life.

¹ On the whole family of the Labieni, cf. Münzer, RE xii, coll. 257 ff. The principal evidence about the orator and historian T. Labienus is supplied by Seneca, Controversiae x, praef 4 ff.

Seneca, Controversiae 10.praef 4-8 (tr. T.J. Cornell):

(4) You ask about Titus Labienus. He declaimed, not in public, but nevertheless outstandingly. He did not admit the people, both because this practice had not yet been introduced, and because he considered it disgraceful and a sign of frivolous boasting. For he affected a censorious attitude, although he was quite different in his own character. A great orator who had struggled against many obstacles, he attained a reputation for genius among men who had to admit it against their will. His lot was extreme poverty; extreme notoriety, extreme hatred. Great indeed must be the eloquence that pleases even those who do not want to hear it, and since it is men's favour that recognizes and encourages genius, how great must be the force that breaks through against all obstructions! There was no one who did not attribute much to his genius, while levelling every charge against the man.

(5) His tone was that of the ancient oratory; his vigour that of the new; his elegance was halfway between that of our age and that of the one before, so that both sides could claim him as one of their own. His free speech was so great that it went beyond the name of freedom, and because he tore into classes and individuals without discrimination, he was nicknamed Rabienus. Despite his vices his heart was great, and violent like his genius, and it had not yet laid down its Pompeian passions even in a time of such lasting peace. For him a new penalty was devised for the first time; for it was brought about through the agency of his enemies that all his books should be burnt. It was something new and unheard-of, that punishment should be inflicted on literary works.

(6) By Hercules, it is a good thing for the public that the cruelty that turns to punishment of intellectual activity was invented after Cicero's time. What would have happened if the Triumvirs had wanted to proscribe Cicero's genius? The immortal gods are slow but sure avengers of the human race, and have directed great punishments on to the heads of those who invented them; by a most just exchange of suffering, each man often makes amends through his own punishment for what he has contrived for others. What mad insanity is driving you, you deranged fools? Presumably known cruelty is not enough for punishment. Seek out new ways for yourselves to perish, and if there is anything that Nature has removed from all suffering, such as the genius or memory of a name, see how you might make it vulnerable to the same evils as the body.

(7) How great is the savagery that puts a torch to literature and inflicts punishments on monuments of scholarship, and how dissatisfied with other targets! Thank heavens those punishments of genius began in the age when genius itself had come to an end! The man who had pronounced this verdict on the works of Labienus was afterwards still alive when his own writings were burnt—not a bad punishment, this time, because it was his. Labienus did not tolerate this insult, nor did he wish to outlive his own genius. He commanded that he be carried into the tomb of his ancestors and locked inside, presumably fearing that the fire that had been applied to his reputation might be denied to his body: he not only finished himself off, but buried himself too.

(8) I remember an occasion during a recitation of his history when he rolled up a substantial part of the book and said: 'These parts that I am omitting will be read after my death.' How much free expression did they contain, for even Labienus to be afraid of it! A nice remark of Cassius Severus, a man hateful to Labienus, was reported at the time when Labienus' books were burnt by decree of the senate: 'Now the proper thing would be for me to be burnt alive: I have learnt them by heart.'