Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics) by Cicero Page A

opinion as Silanus; and so did fourteen ex-consuls. After that it was the turn of the praetors-elect to give their opinion. Caesar was called, and proposed a quite different punishment. Pointing out the dangerous precedent that execution would set, and hinting at the legal difficulties, he proposed instead life imprisonment: each conspirator would be held in a strongly fortified Italian town, and no one would ever be allowed to raise the question of their release. The proposal was completely impractical, as Cicero was quick to point out, and was in fact no more lawful than execution was. But it cleverly allowed Caesar to present himself before the senate as an implacable enemy of the conspirators, and then to appear before the people as the man who had attempted to save their lives. In this way he was able to enhance his status as a popular politician, an upholder of the rights of the people against the arbitrary power of magistrates. (Crassus, who was also believed to be sympathetic to Catiline, avoided committing himself to any view by staying at home.)
    After this, it was no longer at all clear what was the right thing to do, and various speakers sided either with Silanus or with Caesar; an ex-praetor, Tiberius Claudius Nero, proposed putting off a decision until Catiline had been defeated. Cicero then intervened: in his
Fourth Catilinarian
(
In Catilinam
IV), he reviewed the two proposals, made clear (but did not explicitly state) his own preference for that of Silanus, and pressed the senate to come to a decision before nightfall. He also asked it not to be influenced by the possible consequences of their decision for himself. Since the senate was technically only an advisory body, the responsibility for any action taken would lie entirely with Cicero—though a senatorial vote would naturally give him considerable moral backing. (Later, for example at
Phil
. 2.18, he would sometimes claim that he had merely obeyed the senate’s orders: this falsifies the constitutional position. His view that the conspirators had by their own actions forfeited their legal rights was equally spurious, though perhaps widely shared.)
    At this point Silanus made a second speech, and feebly explainedthat by ‘the extreme penalty’ he had really meant life imprisonment: effectively, he withdrew his proposal. Speaker after speaker then gave their support to Caesar’s proposal; one of these was Cicero’s brother Quintus, a praetor-elect, who did not want his brother to have an illegal course of action forced upon him. So a consensus emerged in favour of life imprisonment. Only Catulus seems not to have wavered in his support for execution.
    It was only now that the tribunes-elect, relatively junior members in the hierarchy, were called on to speak; and Cato, a young man who had recently demonstrated his uncompromising views at the trial of Murena, stood up. Castigating his brother-in-law Silanus for changing his mind (as a strict Stoic, Cato believed that changes of mind could not be justified), he bitterly attacked Caesar’s proposal, accused him of being in league with Catiline, reproached the senators for their squeamishness, and argued vigorously for execution as being in accordance with the spirit of Roman tradition (even though the situation itself was unparalleled). It was an extraordinary performance, all the more remarkable in view of Cato’s junior rank, and it marked him out to his contemporaries as a man of greatness. In his
Catiline
(51–2), Sallust gives his own versions of the speeches of both Caesar and Cato (he ignores the other ones, including Cicero’s, in order to concentrate on these two), and allows the reader to infer that these two men—utterly different, but equally brilliant—will go on to become the two defining talents of the closing era of the republic. (Plutarch,
Cat. Mi
. 23.1–2 is also an important source for Cato’s speech: it differs significantly from Sallust’s account, and is probably closer to