United States or Belgium ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
While there he wrote many of the treatises that have come down to us, besides others that are lost. The earliest in all probability is the Consolatio ad Marciam, addressed to the daughter of Cremutius Cordus, which seems to have been written even before his exile. Next come two other Consolationes. The first is addressed to Polybius, the powerful freedman of Claudius.
A writer of some mark was CREMUTIUS CORDUS, whose eloquent account of the rise of the Empire cost him his life: in direct defiance of the fashionable cant of the day he had called Cassius "the last of the Romans."
One of the Imperator's veterans aided the faithful servant." Here Archibius sank back again among the cushions, adding in explanation: "Cordus, the man's name was Servius Cordus. He fared well later. The Queen provided for him. The others? Fate overtook them all soon enough. Theodotus was condemned by Brutus to a torturing death.
It soon became high-treason, or an anti-revolutionary crime, for Cremutius Cordus to call Brutus and Cassius the last of the Romans; a counter-revolutionary crime in a descendant of Cassius to possess a portrait of his ancestor; a counter-revolutionary crime in Mamercus Scaurus to write a tragedy in which there were lines capable of a double meaning; a counter- revolutionary crime in Torquatus Silanus to be extravagant; a counter- revolutionary crime in Pomponius, because a friend of Sejanus had sought an asylum in one of his country houses; a counter-revolutionary crime to bewail the misfortunes of the time, for this was accusing the government; a counter-revolutionary crime for the consul Fusius Geminus to bewail the sad death of his son.
The like accident befel Cremutius Cordus, who being accused of having in his books commended Brutus and Cassius, that dirty, servile, and corrupt Senate, worthy a worse master than Tiberius, condemned his writings to the flame. He was willing to bear them company, and killed himself with fasting.
But I return to my undertaking. Whilst Cornelius Cossus and Asinius Agrippa were Consuls, Cremutius Cordus was arraigned for that, "having published annals and in them praised Brutus, he had styled Cassius the last of the Romans:" a new crime, then first created.
A fourth treatise on Consolation is addressed to Marcia, a respectable and opulent lady, the daughter of Cremutius Cordus, by whose death she was deeply affected. The author, besides many consolatory arguments, proposes for her imitation a number of examples, by attending to which she may be enabled to overcome a passion that is founded only in too great sensibility of mind.
The fact that verse-writing was an innocuous way of spending one's leisure doubtless drove many to it. CODRUS, or Cordus, was the author of an ambitious epic, the Theseid, composed on the scale, but without the wit, of the Thebaid. The stage, too, engaged many writers.
The writings of Titus Labienus, Cordus Cremutius, and Cassius Severus, which had been suppressed by an act of the senate, he permitted to be drawn from obscurity, and universally read; observing, "that it would be for his own advantage to have the transactions of former times delivered to posterity."
One of the Imperator's veterans aided the faithful servant." Here Archibius sank back again among the cushions, adding in explanation: "Cordus, the man's name was Servius Cordus. He fared well later. The Queen provided for him. The others? Fate overtook them all soon enough. Theodotus was condemned by Brutus to a torturing death.
Word Of The Day