Cassius Severus, a fearless fighter for freedom of speech, was sharply eloquent against the new governmental order, which finally saw him exiled and his works banned after his death.
On the other hand, Marcus Aper and Vipstanus Messalla had different opinions regarding oratory and its contemporary state in ancient Rome.
But in the Dialogus de oratoribus of Tacitus, these two men are unanimous at one point in stating that Cassius Severus has had no contribution on the change in oratory from the days of Cicero.
In the words of Messalla: If (Cassius) were compared to those who were later, he can be called an orator, although the greater part of these books contain more bile than blood.
For he was the first who, having despised good composition, with no sense of modesty or shame in his diction, and even disorderly and generally thrown off his feet by the very weapons he used due to his eagerness to strike, did not fight but bickered.
All three authors are ambivalent towards him, regarding him to be talented and witty (Quintilian calls him compulsory reading) but at times as too passionate and thus often inordinate and ridiculous.
Tacitus uses him as an example to explain the "boundary" between the rhetoric of the Republic and the Principate,[2] and in his Annals he called him: A man of mean origin and a life of crime, but a powerful pleader, [who brought his exile] on himself, by his persistent quarrelsomeness.
[3]Tacitus raises another issue in oratory-a need for sensitive balance between sharp wit and its abuse in which Cassius Severus was at fault.
It can be well comprehended from the quote taken from Paul Plass' Wit and Writing of History: The Rhetoric of Historiography in Imperial Rome.
Then I decided to avenge Cicero on Cestius; in the forum I summoned him to court before the praetor, and when I had satisfied myself with jokes and insults, I demanded that he be indicted.
He stopped the publication of senatorial protocols, poisonous pamphlets; curtailed all oral and written criticism, started book burning in the name of ecclesiastical requirement, made new laws on censorship and so on.
[7][8] He established a valid point regarding the declamations-the pale classroom recitations and the Forum Romanum-Rome's traditional rough and ready school for lawyers and magistrates.
He had commented: "The school is a mere training ground, the Forum real arena...what good can there possibly be in a classroom imitation of a trial.
His support for Labienus meant that it was only a matter of time before Cassius Severus was brought to account and his books too were to be reduced to ashes.
The Roman Senate by a formal senatus consultum added the penalty of exile to him on the island of Crete but his property remained unconfiscated.