These rules were however materially modified in the execution.

The sentence of death was actually executed only against a very few of the numerous backsliders.

In the confiscation of the property of the fallen not only were the debts attaching to the several portions of the estate as well as the claims of the widows for their dowries paid off, as was reasonable.
But a portion of the paternal estate was left also to the children of the deceased.

Lastly not a few of those, who in consequence of those rules were liable to banishment and confiscation of property, were at once pardoned entirely or got off with fines, like the African capitalists who were impressed as members of the senate of Utica.
And even the others almost without exception got their freedom and property restored to them, if they could only prevail on themselves to petition Caesar to that effect; on several who declined to do so, such as the consular Marcus Marcellus, pardon was even conferred unasked, and ultimately in 710 a general amnesty was issued for all who were still unrecalled.
Amnesty The republican opposition submitted to be pardoned; but it was not reconciled.

Discontent with the new order of things and exasperation against the unwonted ruler were general.
For open political resistance there was indeed no farther opportunity-- it was hardly worth taking into account, that some oppositional tribunes on occasion of the question of title acquired for themselves the republican crown of martyrdom by a demonstrative intervention against those who had called Caesar king--but republicanism found expression all the more decidedly as an opposition of sentiment, and in secret agitation and plotting.