A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

a celebrated orator and satirical writer, in the time of Augustus and Tiberius, is supposed by Weichert to have been born about B. C. 50. He is called in the Index of Authors to the thirty-fifth book of Pliny Longulanus, that is, a native of Longula, a town of Latium. He was a man of low origin and dissolute character, but was much feared by the severity of his attacks upon the Roman nobles. He must have commenced his career as a public slanderer very early, if he is the person against whom the sixth epode of Horace is directed, as is supposed by many ancient and modern commentators; He attracted particular attention by accusing of poisoning, in B. C. 9, Nonius Asprenas, the friend of Augustus, who was defended by Asinius Pollio (Suet.Aug. 56 ; Plin. H. N. 35.12. s.46; Quint. Inst. 10.1.23; Dio Cass.55.4). Towards the latter end of the reign of Augustus, Severus was banished by Augustus to the island of Crete on account of his libellous verses against the distinguished men and women at Rome; but as he still continued to write libels, he was deprived of his property in the reign of Tiberius, A. D. 24, and removed to the desert island of Seriphos, where he died in great poverty in the twenty-fifth year of his exile. Hieronymus places his death in A. D. 33, and if this be correct he was banished in A. D. 8. Cassius Severus introduced a new style of oratory, and is said, by the author of the Dialogue on Orators (cc. 19, 26), to have been the first who deserted the style of the ancient orators; and accordingly Meyer observes, that dividing the history of Roman oratory into three epochs, Cato would be the chief of the older school, Cicero of the middle period, and Severus of the later. The works of Severus were proscribed, but were permitted by Caligula to be read again. (Tac. Ann. 1.72, 4.21, de Orat. 19, 26 ; Senec. Controv. iii. init.; Quint. Inst. 10.1.116; Suet. Calig. 16, Vitell. 2 ; Plin. Nat. 7.10. s. 12; Macr. 2.4 ; Hieron. in Euseb. Chron. 2048 ; Weichert, De Lucii Varii et Cassii Parmensis Vita, Grimae, 1836, pp. 190-212, where the reader will find every thing that is known about Cassius Severus ; Drumann, Geschichte Roms, vol. ii. p. 161; Meyer, Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta, pp. 545-551, 2d ed.)