{"id":2431,"date":"2020-08-22T17:21:27","date_gmt":"2020-08-22T22:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/?p=2431"},"modified":"2020-09-10T20:03:30","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T01:03:30","slug":"rewarding-merit-and-confronting-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/2020\/08\/22\/rewarding-merit-and-confronting-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Rewarding Merit and Confronting Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The only proposals in the senate that I have seen fit to mention are particularly praiseworthy or particularly scandalous ones.&nbsp; <strong>It seems to me a historian&#8217;s foremost duty to ensure that merit is recorded, and to confront evil deeds and words with the fear of posterity&#8217;s denunciations.<\/strong>&nbsp; But this was a tainted, meanly obsequious age.&nbsp; The greatest figures had to protect their positions by subserviency; and, in addition to them, all ex-consuls, most ex-praetors, even many junior senators competed with each other&#8217;s offensively sycophantic proposals.&nbsp; There is a tradition that whenever Tiberius left the senate-house he exclaimed in Greek, &#8216;Men fit to be slaves!&#8217; Even he, freedom&#8217;s enemy, became impatient of such abject servility.&#8221; Tacitus, <em>The Annals of Imperial Rome<\/em>, trans. Michael Grant (Penguin: London, 1996), p. 150.&nbsp; [Emphasis added]<\/p>\n<p>In this section of his work on imperial Rome, Tacitus examined the reign of Tiberius, who followed Caesar Augustus as ruler of the Roman empire.&nbsp; Tacitus clearly considered Tiberius to be tyrant and most of the politicians of Rome to be sycophants. He also understood that an historian must evaluate the actions of historical figures.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The only proposals in the senate that I have seen fit to mention are particularly praiseworthy or particularly scandalous ones.&nbsp; It seems to me a historian&#8217;s foremost duty to ensure that merit is recorded, and to confront evil deeds and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/2020\/08\/22\/rewarding-merit-and-confronting-evil\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,151],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-rome","category-tacitus","post_format-post-format-quote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2431"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2439,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2431\/revisions\/2439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.cune.edu\/matthewphillips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}