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Titus Cassius Severus, the most feared accuser of the Augustan age, was regarded by ancient critics as the first orator to break with the Ciceronian manner; his writings were burned by decree, and he died in exile on Seriphos. Seneca the Elder, Quintilian and Tacitus describe his power, bitterness and wit. The sayings collected by Heinrich Meyer in his Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta (1832) include his exclamation on bringing Nonius Asprenas to trial for poisoning, his retort when rebuked for his supporters’ abuse of a friend of Caesar, a threat to an opponent, and an insult against Fabius Maximus.
The fragments are brief but characteristic, showing the aggressive and sarcastic style that made Cassius Severus a byword for the new oratory of the early Empire. They also bear on the history of libel prosecutions, since Tacitus says that his defamatory writings prompted Augustus to treat such writings as treason. Seneca adds that he was better heard than read and that his speeches lost much in writing, which may help to explain why so little of them was quoted; the surviving remarks are mostly the sharp retorts for which he was remembered.
About this edition. The Latin text was transcribed for this library from a public-domain printed edition (edition: H. Meyer, Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta ab Appio inde Caeco et M. Porcio Catone usque ad Q. Aurelium Symmachum, Zurich 1832 (pp. 225-229)), using the scan and text recognition at the Internet Archive; the editor’s notes and critical apparatus are not reproduced. Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.