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Updated: May 23, 2025
We are now come to the Acta Diurna, Populi, Urbana or Publica, by all which names the same thing is meant. A. Gell. When about the year 131 B.C. the Annales were redacted into a complete form, the acta probably begun. These news comprised all the topics which we should find now-a-days in a daily paper.
The refrain of Carlyle's advice during the most active years of his criticism was, "Close thy Byron, open thy Goethe." We do so, and find that the refrain of Goethe's advice in reference to Byron is "nocturnâ versate manu, versate diurnâ."
It restrains not only trade, but education; it conserves exploded ideas and usages; it prefers not to grow, and looks with abhorrence upon change. Literature may be said to be dead in Rome. There is not only no free press there, but no press at all. The "Diario Romano" contains about as much news as the "Acta Diurna" of the ancient Romans, and perhaps less.
But it is scarcely possible for a mind endowed with any active curiosity to be long conversant with the Latin classics, without aspiring to know the Greek originals, whom they celebrate as their masters, and of whom they so warmly recommend the study and imitation; Vos exemplaria Graeca Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna.
I doubt whether at present such facts as those given by Petronius, in an extract from the latter, would now be permitted to be published. However, we know that Augustus prohibited the "Acta Diurna," and the "Diario Romano" exists still; so that some progress has been made. And it must be confessed that Tuscany is scarcely in advance of Rome in this respect; and Naples is behind both.
That in composing this excellent production, he availed himself of the most approved works of Grecian original, we may conclude from the advice which he there recommends: Vos exemplaria Graeca Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna. Make the Greek authors your supreme delight; Read them by day, and study them by night. Francis.
And thus we must account for a phenomenon, which we uphold to be a fact in the instance of Sicca, in the early summer of A.D. 250, even though it prove unaccountable, and history has nothing to say about it, and in spite of the Acta Diurna. The case, indeed, is different now. In these times, newspapers, railroads, and magnetic telegraphs make us independent of government messengers.
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