proposal, Silanus, that, before they were put to death, they should be
punished with the scourge? Was it because the Porcian law[245] forbids
it? But other laws[246] forbid condemned citizens to be deprived of
life, and allow them to go into exile. Or was it because scourging is
a severer penalty than death? Yet what can be too severe, or too
harsh, toward men convicted of such an offense? But if scourging be a
milder punishment than death, how is it consistent to observe the law
as to the smaller point, when you disregard it as to the greater?

But who it may be asked, will blame any severity that shall be
decreed against these parricides[247] of their country? I answer that
time, the course of events,[248] and fortune, whose caprice governs
nations, may blame it. Whatever shall fall on the traitors, will fall
on them justly; but it is for you, Conscript Fathers, to consider well
what you resolve to inflict on others. All precedents productive of
evil effects,[249] have had their origin from what was good; but when
a government passes into the hands of the ignorant or unprincipled,
any new example of severity,[250] inflicted on deserving and suitable
objects, is extended to those that are improper and undeserving of it.
The Lacedaemonians, when they had conquered the Athenians,[251]
appointed thirty men to govern their state. These thirty began their
administration by putting to death, even without a trial, all who were
notoriously wicked, or publicly detestable; acts at which the people
rejoiced, and extolled their justice. But afterward, when their
lawless power gradually increased, they proceeded, at their pleasure,
to kill the good and the bad indiscriminately, and to strike terror
into all; and thus the state, overpowered and enslaved, paid a heavy
penalty for its imprudent exultation.

Within our own memory, too, when the victorious Sylla ordered