Cicero

The proposal of Caesar was merciful and its author a very able speaker, and Cicero added no little weight to it. For when he rose to speak himself,[*](The fourth oration in Catilinam .) he handled the subject in both ways, now favouring the first proposal and now that of Caesar. All his friends, too, thinking that Caesar’s proposal was an advantageous one for Cicero, who would be less subject to censure if he did not put the conspirators to death, chose the second proposal rather,

so that Silanus also changed his position and excused himself by saying that even his proposal had not meant death: for extremest punishment, in the case of a Roman senator, meant the prison. Lutatius Catulus was the first to oppose the opinion which Caesar had given; then Cato followed him, helping by the vehemence of his speech to fix suspicion upon Caesar, and filled the senate with angry resolution, so that a decree of death was passed upon the conspirators.

As regarded the confiscation of their property, however, Caesar made opposition, deeming it wrong that the merciful part of his own proposal should be rejected and the one part that was most severe adopted. And when many of the senators insisted upon it, he invoked the aid of the tribunes, but they would not listen to his appeal; Cicero himself, however, yielded the point, and remitted that part of the vote which called for confiscation.

Then he went with the senate to fetch the conspirators. These were not all in the same place, but different praetors had different ones under guard. And first he took Lentulus from the Palatine hill and led him along the Via Sacra and through the middle of the forum, the men of highest authority surrounding him as a body-guard, and the people shuddering at what was being done and passing along in silence, and especially the young men, as though they thought they were being initiated with fear and trembling into some ancient mysteries of an aristocratic regime.

When Cicero had passed through the forum and reached the prison, he delivered Lentulus to the public executioner with the order to put him to death. Then Cethegus in his turn, and so each one of the others, he brought down to the prison and had him executed. And seeing that many members of the conspiracy were still assembled in the forum in ignorance of what had been done and waiting for night to come, with the idea that the men were still living and might be rescued, he cried out to them with a loud voice and said: They have lived. For thus the Romans who wish to avoid words of ill omen indicate death.