letters was not allowed to write to other officials. There were in the city, however, men who sent out two or more news-letters to patrons.
In the year 51 B.C., when Cicero left for Cilicia, his friend Caelius promised "to write a full and careful account" of all that went on in Rome. The latter, being "the laziest man in the world at writing letters," shifted the burden of his correspondence to the shoulders of one of these professional writers of news. Later, Cselius did find time to send this line: "If the news-letters do not give you what you want, let me know, for I do not want to spend my money only to bore you." Cicero's reply was, in modern phraseology, "Stop my paper!" He did not care for the sporting news of gladiatorial matches; he did not want the court news, chronicling the adjournment of trials; he did not read with interest, so he asserted, the news that wasn't fit to write—"such things as nobody ventured to tell" him when he was in Rome. What he desired was the political news of the city, and reports of occurrences where there was something especially affecting himself. In the last suggestion he gave to the professional journalist at Rome a tip which the modern school of journalism follows when it instructs its students to put names into the newspaper.
CAESARS AS JOURNALISTS
First place in Roman journalism, however, belongs to Julius Caesar, another friend of high-school days. One of his first acts after he became Consul in 60 B.C. was to issue a decree that the reports of the doings of the Senate should be daily written and published. Knowing the value of publicity, he hoped in this way to change the crooked politics of the time; at least, he was determined that no secret acts of the Senate should interfere with his plans. The result of Caesar's decree was the establishment of that precursor of the modern daily newspaper, Acta Diurna, or The Daily Acts. At first, this daily compilation was published on a whitened wooden board, called album (white). In other words, the Romans got their news in the Forum, much as we often get an epitome of the latest events by standing and watching the bulletin-boards of the modern newspaper.
