Tiberius, but it should have had something to gain from the fact that he was not blind to its charms: at the worst it cannot have required abnormal skill to avoid incurring a charge of _lèse-majesté_. The reign of the lunatic Caligula is of small importance, thanks to its extreme brevity. For all his madness he had considerable ability; he was ready of speech to a remarkable degree, though his oratory suffered from extravagant ornament[17] and lack of restraint. He had, however, some literary insight: in his description of Seneca's rhetoric as _merae commissiones_, 'prize declamations,' and 'sand without lime' he gave an admirable summary of that writer's chief weaknesses.[18] But he would in all probability have proved a greater danger to literature than Tiberius. It is true that in his desire to compare favourably with his predecessors he allowed the writings of T. Labienus, Cremutius Cordus, and Cassius Severus, which had fallen under the senate's ban in the two preceding reigns, to be freely circulated once more.[19] But he by no means abandoned trials for _lèse-majesté_. The rhetorician Carinas Secundus was banished on account of an imprudent phrase in a _suasoria_ on the hackneyed theme of tyrannicide.[20] A writer of an Atellan farce was burned to death in the amphitheatre[21] for a treasonable jest, and Seneca narrowly escaped death for having made a brilliant display of oratory in the senate.[22] He also seriously meditated the destruction of the works of Homer. Plato had banished Homer from his ideal state. Why should not Caligula? He was with difficulty restrained from doing the like for Vergil and Livy. The former, he said, was a man of little learning and less wit;[23] the latter was verbose and careless. Even when he attempted to encourage literature, his eccentricity carried him to such extremes that the competitors shrank in horror from entering the lists. He instituted a contest at Lugudunum in which prizes were offered for declamations in Greek and Latin. The prizes were presented to the victors by the vanquished, who were ordered to write panegyrics in honour of their successful rivals, while in cases where the declamations were decided to be unusually poor, the unhappy authors were ordered to obliterate their writings with a sponge or even with their own tongues, under penalty of being caned or ducked in the Rhone.[24]