historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

Chapter 8. The science of politics. The Institutiones politicae
power to elect, and the power to adjucate certain kinds of legal disputes that
Tacitus thought the Roman Senate possessed but that most senators did not
dare to use under the principate, afraid as they were to displease the princeps
and to suffer his wrath if they did. 125 Above all, however, the term refers to
‘the liberty of a senator’, as a member of the Senate, ‘to speak out on public
affairs’. 126 This becomes especially clear in the passage of the Annals to
which Boxhorn is referring. In that passage Tacitus records an attack on the
Roman senator Thrasea by ‘his disparagers’ for speaking against the Senate’s
decision to allow ‘to the community of the Syracusans to exceed the defined
number for gladitorial productions’. His detractors accused Thrasea of abusing
his ‘senatorial freedom’ in trivial matters. Although Thrasea’s response is
ambiguous it is clear that Tacitus recorded this ‘quite commonplace senate’s
decision’ to show that Thrasea, in contrast to most senators, made use of his
freedom of speech even in trivial matters, thus showing a free and independent
spirit instead of the servile attitude that characterised most Roman senators
at that time. 127 This makes it highly plausible that when Boxhorn speaks
of the freedom of the lower magistrates as a defence mechanism against the
malignity of ambitious princes and flatterers he means the freedom of lower
magistrates to discuss and voice their opinion about matters concerning the
commonwealth. 128
125 Curtis N. Johnson, “Libertas” and “Res Publica” in Cicero and Tacitus (Ph.D.-dissertation, University
Microfilms International; Ann Arbor, 1980), p. 147.
126 Ibidem, pp. 114-21, 147-49, 166, 179-209, with quote on p. 185.
127 Thrasea responded to the accusation that he, although not ignorant ‘of present cirumstances’,
‘was in fact honoring the fathers by making it clear that concern for important matters would not be
dissembled by those who turned their attention even to the most trivial’. Tacitus, The Annals, XIII.49.4, p.
270. See also Tacitus, The Annals, XIV.49.1, p. 297. ‘The free-speaking of Thrasea exploded the servitude
of others, and, after the consul had permitted a division, they went to vote in favor of his proposal.’ Tacitus,
Annalivm ab excessv divi Avgvsti libri, XIV.49. ‘Libertas Thraseae servitium aliorum rupit et postquam
discessionem consul permiserat, pedibus in sententiam eius iere …’
128 There are two other instances in the Institutiones politicae where Boxhorn defends the principle
of free speech. The first instance can be found in the chapter on majestas. There he holds that not everything
what is said can be counted as treason (crimen laesae majestatis). Referring to the famous example
of Cremutius Cordus who was charged of treason because he had claimed in a work that C. Cassius, one
of the murders of Julius Caesar, was ‘the last Roman’, Boxhorn distinguishes between the words of an
innocent speaker, and the words of a future perpetrator. Only the later should be prosecuted, the other
not, for he is, just as Cordus, ‘completely … innocent of deeds’. Boxhorn, Institutiones politicae, I.4, pp.
33-34, with quote on p. 33. Boxhorn quotes Tacitus, The Annals, IV.34.2, p. 138. The second instance can
be found in the chapter on the lower magistrates. In that chapter Boxhorn agrees with Gaius Maecenas
(c.70-8 BC), one of Augustus’s councillors, who had advised Augustus ‘that the power to advise should
be allowed to anyone’. Boxhorn, Institutiones politicae, I.8, p. 113. ‘Illi verò non sunt damnandi, qui diversas
in Rep. ab aliis habent sententias. Aliud enim est opinione errare, aliud voluntate dissidere. Monuit
id Mecaenas Agustum apud Dionem, l. 52. suasitque, linquendam esse cuilibit suadendi potentia.’ Cassius
Dio, Roman History, LII.37-40.
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