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.