To the Nations 1.17

As for the charges of obstinacy or presumption, if you put any forward, not even these stand outside a common comparison. The first obstinacy is the one reckoned second after the religion of God, that concerning Caesar's majesty: we are called irreligious toward the Caesars, because we neither propitiate their images nor swear by their genii. We are named enemies of the people. So be it, when from among you nations Caesars arise every day, Parthian, Median, and Germanic! Here let the Roman race see in whom the untamed and foreign nations are. Yet it is you who, from among our own people, conspire against our own rulers. We certainly acknowledge the Roman loyalty to the Caesars! No conspiracy ever broke out, no Caesar's blood left its stain in the senate or in the very palace, no majesty was ever usurped in the provinces! Syria still reeks with the stench of corpses; Gaul still does not wash in its Rhone. But I pass over the crimes of madness, since not even these allow the name of Roman. I will address the sacrileges of frivolity and recognize the irreverence of the native race itself: the festive lampoons that the statues know, those sly sayings now and then from the assembly, and the curses that ring in the circus. If not with arms, at least with your tongue you are always rebels. But it is another thing, I suppose, not to swear by Caesar's genius; for there is a question about the right to perjury, since you do not swear in good faith even by your gods. But we do not call the emperor a god; on this point, as the common saying goes, we make a face. Rather, you who call Caesar a god both mock him, by calling him what he is not, and curse him, because he does not wish to be what you call him. For he prefers to live rather than to become a god.