The images of the most illustrious families… were carried before it [the bier of Julia]. Those of Brutus and Cassius were not displayed; but for that reason they shone with preeminent luster.

Tacitus is describing the public funeral of Julia (Julia the Elder), daughter of Augustus and former wife of Agrippa and Tiberius. In Roman aristocratic funerals, wax ancestral masks (imagines) of notable forebears were traditionally displayed in procession to advertise lineage and political prestige. Tacitus notes that the imagines of many eminent houses were carried before Julia’s bier, but the masks of Brutus and Cassius—leaders of the assassination of Julius Caesar and symbols of republican resistance—were omitted, likely because their memory remained politically dangerous under the Principate. Tacitus’ point is that the very act of suppression made their fame more conspicuous.

The remark turns absence into a form of presence. By suppressing Brutus and Cassius, the authorities inadvertently highlight their symbolic power: what cannot be shown is precisely what most commands the imagination. Tacitus uses the funeral’s choreography to expose the politics of memory under autocracy—how the state attempts to curate public history, and how such curation can backfire. The “preeminent luster” is ironic: the forbidden republican exemplars shine more brightly because they are feared. More broadly, the line encapsulates Tacitus’s theme that repression often advertises what it seeks to erase, and that public ritual can become a subtle arena for dissent.