Nam Crispus iste et Marcellus, ad quorum exempla me vocas, quid habent in hac sua fortuna concupiscendum? quod timent, an quod timentur? quod, cum cotidie aliquid rogentur, ii quibus <non> praestant indignantur? quod adligati omni adulatione nec imperantibus umquam satis servi videntur nec nobis satis liberi? Quae haec summa eorum potentia est? tantum posse liberti  solent.
As for your Crispus and your Marcellus, whom you hold up to me as patterns for imitation, what is there about their boasted condition that we ought to covet? Is it the fear they feel, or the fear they inspire in others? Is it the fact that, besieged as they are from day to day by all sorts of petitions, they set the backs up of those whom they are unable to oblige? Or that, being constrained to curry favour in every direction, they can never show themselves either sufficiently servile to the powers that be, or sufficiently independent to us? And what does this great power of theirs amount to? Why, the Emperors freedmen often possess as much.
final_alignments\Tacitus_Dialogus.json