Taslima Nasreen being escorted by Rajasthan government officials to Rajasthan House in New Delhi

I ended my last column on a grim note, reflecting on exile as an instrument of punishment. It happened to the great Roman poet Ovid, and to Dante who wrote: “You will leave everything you love most: / this is the arrow that the bow of exile / shoots first. You will know how salty / another’s bread tastes and how hard it is to ascend and descend / another’s stairs . . .” In our time, the exile is often given shelter by other nations and communities, but it does not come without a price tag. Taslima Nasreen found that out recently and she will certainly not be the last.

Fire and exile: both fates befell the lawman Cassius Severus, who had the temerity to defend his colleague Labienus. In 8 A.D. Severus’ work was consigned to the flames, and he was banished to a remote island in Crete. He was given a chance to repent, but he fought fire with fire, pouring more invective upon the head of Augustus. A second trial by senate took place after the death of Augustus, and Severus was banished to the even more inhospitable Seriphos, where he died penniless in 32 A.D., after a quarter century of exile.

Finally, we come to the last of the three heroes I mentioned in the last column: Aulus Cremutius Cordus. This man was a Roman historian and the case between him and the Roman state in 25 A.D. was the most controversial of its time. The charge was literary treason, but the work in question was over a decade old and no offence was deemed to have been given when it had first been recited during the reign of Augustus. Suddenly though, passages in praise of Brutus and Cassius were discovered and considered treasonous.

In his stirring defence speech, Cordus said: “I will not cite the example of Greeks, with whom not only liberty, but even license remained unpunished, or if someone paid any attention, he avenged words with words. But one thing was        absolutely free and never objected to: freedom to speak or write about those, whom death had removed from the hatred of foes and the praise of their partisans”. He was expectedly found guilty, but instead of submitting to the sentence of his persecutors, he went on a fast till his death. Unmoved, the courts ordered copies of books seized from all over the city and given to the flames.

There is, however, a happy coda to these stories: in 37 A.D. Caligula, of all people, rehabilitated the three heroes, permitting the owning and reading of their works. A hunt for their works ensued and it was found that many of their friends had managed to save copies from the fire. I am reminded of the vagabond book-lovers in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, who memorised entire books and then burnt them, so that the true book could live on in their minds.

The author teaches English at Jadavpur University

(Source: Frederick H. Cramer. ‘Bookburning and Censorship in Ancient Rome’, Journal of the History of Ideas, April 1945)