One of the criteria of a liberal society is the quality of its wit and humour. That was high indeed in the last epoch of the Republic, with notable practitioners, sophisticated as well as coarse. There was no law of libel. Language knew no curb or limit: electoral contests, prosecutions in the courts, altercation or invective in the Senate. In personal abuse of opponents, an orator would bring up all types of crime and depravity.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Tuesday, March 21, 2023
No Curb or Limit
Ronald Syme, "Bastards in the Roman Aristocracy," in his Roman Papers, II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 510-517 (at 512):