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This severity of yours, replied Maternus, would be quite a blow to us, had
not our controversy from its frequency and familiarity become by this time
almost a regular practice. You, in fact, never cease from abusing and
inveighing against poets, and I, whom you reproach with neglect of my
professional duties, every day undertake to plead against you in defence of
poetry. So I am all the more delighted at the presence of a judge who will
either forbid me for the future to write verses, or who will compel me by
his additional authority to do what I have long desired, to give up the
petty subleties of legal causes, at which I have toiled enough, and more
than enough, and to cultivate a more sacred and more stately
eloquence.
Complete Works of Tacitus. Tacitus. Sara Bryant. edited for Perseus. New York. : Random House, Inc. Random House, Inc. 1942.