han any torture you can inflict. But men generally
recollect what comes last. When the punishment is severe, men will
remember the severity rather than the crime." He argues all this
extremely well. The speech is one of great ingenuity, whether the words
be the words of Sallust or of Caesar. We may doubt, indeed, whether the
general assertion he made as to death had much weight with the Senators
when he told them that death to the wicked was a relief, whereas life
was a lasting punishment; but when he went on to remind them of the Lex
Porcia, by which the power of punishing a Roman citizen, even under the
laws, was limited to banishment, unless by a plebiscite of the people
generally ordering death, then he was efficacious. He ended by proposing
that the goods of the conspirators should be sold, and that the men
should be condemned to imprisonment for life, each in some separate
town. This would, I believe, have been quite as illegal as the
death-sentence, but it would not have been irrevocable. The Senate, or
the people, in the next year could have restored to the men their
liberty, and compensated them for their property. Cicero was determined
that the men should die. They had not obeyed him by leaving the city,
and he was convinced that while they lived the conspiracy would live
also. He fully understood the danger, and resolved to meet it. He
replied to Caesar, and with infinite skill refrained from the expression
of any strong opinion, while he led his hearers to the conviction that
death was necessary. For himself he had been told of his danger; "but if
a man be brave in his duty death cannot be disgraceful to him; to one
who had reached the honors of the Consulship it could not be premature;
to no wise man could it be a misery." Though his brother, though his
wife, though his little boy, and his daughter just married were warning
him of his peril, not by all that would he be influenced. "Do you," he
says, "Conscript Fathers, look to the safety of the Republic. These are
not the Gracchi, nor Saturninus, who are brought to you for
judgment--men who broke the laws, indeed, and therefore suffered death,
but who still were not unpatriotic. These men had sworn to burn the
city, to slay the Senate, to force Catiline upon you as a ruler. The
proofs of this are in your own hands. It was for me, as your Consul, to
bring the facts before you. Now it is for you, at once, before night, to
decide what shall be done. The conspira