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They could not urge that they had been forced into war by their despots, for they had themselves chosen those very despots with the intention of going to war. After both parties had been heard, the Syracusans, according to custom, left the Senate-house.
In the place to which the Senate had been summoned stood a statue of Pompey. Cassius is said to have looked at it and silently invoked the dead man's help, and this though he was inclined to the skeptical tenets of Epicurus. Meanwhile Antony, who was firmly attached to Caesar and a man of great strength, was purposely kept in conversation outside the senate-house by Decimus Brutus.
In anticipation of a riot the temples on the Forum were occupied with guards. The Forum itself and the senate-house were in possession of Clodius and his gang. Clodius maintained that the proposal to be submitted to the people was itself illegal, and ought to be resisted by force. Fabricius, one of the tribunes, had been selected to introduce it.
At length, when he found the senate ripe for seconding his views, he entered the senate-house, adorned with all the ensigns of royalty, and, placing himself upon the throne, began to harangue them on the obscurity of the king's birth, and the injustice of his title. 12.
The senate-house itself was a convenient scene of operations. The conspirators met at supper the evening before at Cassius's house. Cicero, to his regret, was not invited. The plan was simple, and was rapidly arranged. Caesar would attend unarmed. The senators not in the secret would be unarmed also.
He likewise, out of his military spoils, constructed and decorated the House of Comitia and the Senate-house. He also settled the ceremonies of the proclamation of hostilities, and consecrated their righteous institution by the religious sanction of the Fetial priests, so that every war which was not duly announced and declared might be adjudged illegal, unjust, and impious.
When the thunders of Cicero's eloquence had driven Catiline from the Senate-house, and forced him to join his fellow-traitors, and so put himself in the position of levying open war against the state, it remained to deal with those influential conspirators who had been detected and seized within the city walls.
"Ay, marry, there is an university near a hundred years old; and there is a market-place, no fairer in the world, and at the four sides of it houses great as palaces; and there is a stupendous senate-house all covered with images, and at the head of them stands one of stout Herman Gryn, a soldier like thyself, lad." "Ay. Tell me of him! what feat of arms earned him his niche?" "A rare one.
With the Senate-house and its archives burnt as a funeral pile for Clodius, and the Forum in which he had to plead lined with soldiers who stopped him by their clang of arms instead of protecting him in his speech, it must have been acknowledged by Cicero that the old Republic was dead, past all hope of resurrection.
The Fathers received these proofs of clemency with the rapture which they deserved, and the Senate-house resounded with acclamations and blessings. Never had a formidable conspiracy been more quietly and effectually crushed. Marcus travelled through the provinces which had favoured the cause of Avidius Cassius, and treated them all with the most complete and indulgent forbearance.
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