Publicola

But when they made no answer, though he put his question to them thrice, he turned to the lictors and said: It is yours now to do the rest. These straightway seized the young men, tore off their togas, bound their hands behind their backs, and scourged their bodies with their rods.

The rest could not endure to look upon the sight, but it is said that the father neither turned his gaze away, nor allowed any pity to soften the stern wrath that sat upon his countenance, but watched the dreadful punishment of his sons until the lictors threw them on the ground and cut off their heads with the axe. Then he rose and went away, after committing the other culprits to the judgement of his colleague.[*](With this account, compare Livy, ii. 5, 5-9. Brutus looked on eminente animo patrio inter publicae poenae ministerium. ) He had done a deed which it is difficult for one either to praise or blame sufficiently.

For either the loftiness of his virtue made his spirit incapable of suffering, or else the magnitude of his suffering made it insensible to pain. In neither case was his act a trivial one, or natural to a man, but either god-like or brutish. However, it is right that our verdict should accord with the reputation of the man, rather than that his virtue should be discredited through weakness in the judge. For the Romans think that the work of Romulus in building the city was not so great as that of Brutus in founding and establishing its form of government.

After Brutus had left the forum at this time, for a long while consternation, horror, and silence prevailed among all who remained, as they thought of what had been done. But soon the weakness and hesitation of Collatinus gave the Aquillii fresh courage; they demanded time in which to make their defence, and the surrender of Vindicius to them, since he was their slave, and ought not to be in the hands of their accusers.