Illegality, Caesar told them, would be followed by greater illegalities.
He reminded them how they had applauded Sylla, how they had rejoiced when
they saw their political enemies summarily despatched; and yet the
proscription, as they well knew, had been perverted to the license of
avarice and private revenge. They might feel sure that no such consequence
need be feared under their present consul: but times might change. The
worst crimes which had been committed in Rome in the past century had
risen out of the imitation of precedents, which at the moment seemed
defensible. The laws had prescribed a definite punishment for treason.
Those laws had been gravely considered; they had been enacted by the great
men who had built up the Roman dominion, and were not to be set aside in
impatient haste. Caesar therefore recommended that the estates of the
conspirators should be confiscated, that they themselves should be kept in
strict and solitary confinement dispersed in various places, and that a
resolution should be passed forbidding an application for their pardon
either to Senate or people.
The speech was weighty in substance and weightily delivered, and it
produced its effect.[18] Silanus withdrew his opinion. Quintus Cicero,
the consul's brother, followed, and a clear majority of the Senate went
with them, till it came to the turn of a young man who in that year had
taken his place in the house for the first time, who was destined to make
a reputation which could be set in competition with that of the gods
themselves, and whose moral opinion could be held superior to that of the
gods.
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