Venustas Litterarum: For the latest news, consult ancient history.
Dedimus profecto grande patientiae documentum; et sicut vetus aetas vidit quid ultimum in libertate esset, ita nos quid in servitute, adempto per inquisitiones etiam loquendi audiendique commercio. Memoriam quoque ipsam cum voce perdidissemus, si tam in nostra potestate esset oblivisci quam tacere.
We have indeed given a grand proof of our subjection; just as ancient times witnessed the extremity of freedom, so do we witness the extremity of servitude—the very practice of speaking and listening having been done away with by informers. We would have lost our memory itself along with our voice, if it had been as much in our power to forget as to be silent.
Cornelius Tacitus, Life of Julius Agricola
The historian Cornelius Tacitus wanted to write a biography of his father-in-law, Julius Agricola, but needed first to petition the Emperor Domitian. As well as being a murderous reactionary, Domitian apparently resented virtue in others, and as Agricola had been a noted statesman and general of impeccable character, answered Tacitus with his veto. Tacitus later remarked that he would not have needed permission in the first place, had his planned biography consisted solely of invective.
In Rome during the imperial period it was best practice, if you wanted to pursue a career in public office, and avoid banishment or death while doing so, to avoid attracting the ire of the Emperor. Many of these absolute monarchs, knowing the fickleness of fortune, were inveterately paranoid; some, like Domitian, made liberal use terror, judicial murder, and networks of informers in order to tamp down all possible dissent and sedition.
Thus Tacitus—the cognomen itself means the silent—like so many other public figures fearing the wrath of the current tyrant, and like his father-in-law, about whom he later wrote gnarus sub Nerone temporum, quibus inertia pro sapientia fuit—canny of the times under Nero, in which inaction passed for wisdom—kept his more critical opinions to himself. He would have to await the reigns of thicker skinned and more liberally-minded Emperors before publishing his devastating historical anatomies of the corruption and abuse of power.
Sound at all familiar?
We have come a fair way, in two thousand years, in pure and applied science, but our polities are beset with the same old problems; power, once it starts accumulating in any particular individual or group, does not stop accumulating, and unchecked power never fails to stifle free expression. I suppose we should at least be thankful that the current powers that be are only assiduously censoring the internet, and have not yet proceeded to public executions.