In the first book of his Annals he gives the following account of it in these words:—_Primus Augustus cognitionem de famosis libellis_, _specie legis ejus_, _tractavit_; _commotus Cassii Severi libidine_, _quâ viros fæminasque illustres procacibus scriptis diffamaverat_. Thus in English:—“Augustus was the first who, under the colour of that law, took cognisance of lampoons, being provoked to it by the petulancy of Cassius Severus, who had defamed many illustrious persons of both sexes in his writings.” The law to which Tacitus refers was _Lex læsæ majestatis_; commonly called, for the sake of brevity, _majestas_; or, as we say, high-treason. He means not that this law had not been enacted formerly (for it had been made by the Decemviri, and was inscribed amongst the rest in the Twelve Tables, to prevent the aspersion of the Roman majesty, either of the people themselves, or their religion, or their magistrates; and the infringement of it was capital—that is, the offender was whipped to death with the fasces which were borne before their chief officers of Rome), but Augustus was the first who restored that intermitted law. By the words “under colour of that law” he insinuates that Augustus caused it to be executed on pretence of those libels which were written by Cassius Severus against the nobility, but in truth to save himself from such defamatory verses. Suetonius likewise makes mention of it thus:—_Sparsos de se in curiâ famosos libellos_, _nec exparit_, _et magnâ curâ redarguit_. _Ac ne requisitis quidem auctoribus_, _id modo censuit_, _cognoscendum posthac de iis qui libellos aut carmina ad infamiam cujuspiam sub alieno nomine edant_. “Augustus was not afraid of libels,” says that author, “yet he took all care imaginable to have them answered, and then decreed that for the time to come the authors of them should be punished.” But Aurelius makes it yet more clear, according to my sense, that this emperor for his own sake durst not permit them:—_Fecit id Augustus in speciem_, _et quasi gratificaretur populo Romano_, _et primoribus urbis_; _sed revera ut sibi consuleret_: _nam habuit in animo comprimere nimiam quorundam procacitatem in loquendo_, _à quâ nec ipse exemptus fuit_. _Nam suo nomine compescere erat invidiosum_, _sub alieno facile et utile_. _Ergo specie legis tractavit_, _quasi populi Romani majestas infamaretur_. This, I think, is a sufficient comment on that passage of Tacitus. I will add only by the way that the whole family of the Cæsars and all their relations were included in the law, because the majesty of the Romans in the time of the Empire was wholly in that house: _Omnia Cæsar erat_; they were all accounted sacred who belonged to him. As for Cassius Severus, he was contemporary with Horace, and was the same poet against whom he writes in his epodes under this title, _In Cassium Severum_, _maledicum poctam_—perhaps intending to kill two crows, according to our proverb,