Page:Areopagitica - John Milton (1644).djvu/14

 to a military roughnes, resembling most the Lacedæmonian guise, knew of learning little but what their twelve Tables, and the Pontifick College with their Augurs and Flamins taught them in Religion and Law, so unacquainted with other learning, that when Carneades and Critolaus, with the Stoick Diogenes comming Embassadors to Rome, tooke thereby occasion to give the City a tast of their Philosophy, they were suspected for seducers by no lesse a man then Cato the Censor, who mov'd it in the Senat to dismisse them speedily, and to banish all such Attick bablers out of Italy. But Scipio and others of the noblest Senators withstood him and his old Sabin austerity; honour'd and admir'd the men; and the Censor himself at last in his old age fell to the study of that whereof before hee was so scrupulous. And yet at the same time Nævius and Plautus the first Latine comedians had fill'd the City with all the borrow'd Scenes of Menander and Philemon. Then began to be consider'd there also what was to be don to libellous books and Authors; for Nævius was quickly cast into prison for his unbridl'd pen, and releas'd by the Tribunes upon his recantation: We read also that libels were burnt, and the makers punisht by Augustus. The like severity no doubt was us'd if ought were impiously writt'n against their esteemed gods. Except in these two points, how the world went in Books, the Magistrat kept no reckning. And therefore Lucretius without impeachment versifies his Epicurism to Memmius, and had the honour to be set forth the second time by Cicero so great a father of the Commonwealth; although himselfe disputes against that opinion in his own writings. Nor was the Satyricall sharpnesse, or naked plainnes of Lucilius, or Catullus, or Flaccus, by any order prohibited. And for matters of State, the story of Titus Livius, though it extoll'd that part which Pompey held, was not therefore suppresst by Octavius Cæsar of the other Faction. But that Naso was by him banisht in his old age, for the wanton Poems of his youth, was but a meer covert of State over some secret cause: and besides, the Books were neither banisht nor call'd in. From hence we shall meet with little else but tyranny in the Roman Empire, that we may not marvell, if not so often bad, as good Books were silenc't. I shall therefore deem to have bin large anough in producing what among the ancients was punishable to write, save only which, all other arguments were free to treat on.

By this time the Emperors were become Christians, whose discipline in this point I doe not finde to have bin more severe then what was