Averseris tu honori tuo sperata suffragia, renuntiarique te consulem iussisse contentus, liberae civitatis ne simulationem quidem serves; abstineas denique comitiis abstrusus atque abditus, quasi illic tibi non consulatus detur sed abrogetur imperium? Haec persuasio superbissimis dominis erat, ut sibi viderentur principes esse desinere, si quid facerent tamquam senatores.
Would you scorn the votes you hoped would confirm your election, and think it sufficient to be proclaimed consul by your own order, without preserving any semblance of a free state? Would you stand aloof from the elections, cowering in some hiding-place, as if they were not there to confer a consulship on you but to abrogate your supreme power? Earlier despots, in their overweening pride, held to their conviction that if ever they acted as senators, they would cease to be emperors in their own eyes.
final_alignments\Pliny_Younger_Panegyricus.json