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Aper having said this with his usual spirit and with vehemence
of utterance, Maternus replied good-humouredly with something of a smile. I
was preparing to attack the orators at as great length as Aper had praised
them, for I thought that he would leave his praises of them and go on to
demolish poets and the pursuit of poetry, but he appeased me by a sort of
stratagem, granting permission to those who cannot plead causes, to make
verses. For myself, though I am perhaps able to accomplish and effect
something in pleading causes, yet it was by the public reading of tragedies
that I first began to enter the path of fame, when in Nero's time I broke
the wicked power of Vatinius by which even the sanctities of culture were
profaned, and if at this moment I possess any celebrity and distinction I
maintain that it has been acquired more by the renown of my poems than of my
speeches. And so now I have resolved to throw off the yoke of my labours at
the bar, and for trains of followers on my way to and from the court and for
crowded receptions I crave no more than for the bronzes and busts which have
invaded my house even against my will. For hitherto I have upheld my
position and my safety better by integrity than by eloquence, and I am not
afraid of having ever to say a word in the senate except to avert peril from
another.
Complete Works of Tacitus. Tacitus. Sara Bryant. edited for Perseus. New York. : Random House, Inc. Random House, Inc. 1942.
