[7]
I see that as yet there are two opinions. One that of Decius Silanus, who thinks that those
who have endeavoured to destroy all these things should be punished with death the other,
that of Caius Caesar, who objects to the punishment of death, but adopts the most extreme
severity of all other punishment. Each acts in a manner suitable to his own dignity and to
the magnitude of the business with the greatest severity. The one thinks that it is not right
that those, who have attempted to deprive all or us and the while Roman people of life, to
destroy the empire, to extinguish the name of the Roman people, should enjoy life and the
breath of heaven common to us all, for one moment; and he remembers that this sort of
punishment has often been employed against worthless citizens in this republic. The other
feels that death was not appointed by the immortal gods for the sake of punishment, but that
it is either a necessity of nature, or a rest from toils and miseries; therefore wise men
have never met it unwillingly, brave men have often encountered it even voluntarily. But
imprisonment and that too perpetual, was certainly invented for the extraordinary punishment
of nefarious wickedness; therefore he proposes that they should be distributed among the
municipal towns. This proposition seems to have in it injustice if you command; it difficulty
if you request it.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.