sacrificing. For on the altar, where the fire seemed
wholly extinguished, a great and bright flame issued forth from the
ashes of the burnt wood; at which others were affrighted, but the holy
virgins called to Terentia, Cicero's wife, and bade her hasten to her
husband, and command him to execute what he had resolved for the good of
his country, for the goddess had sent a great light to the increase of
his safety and glory. Terentia, therefore, as she was otherwise in her
own nature neither tender-hearted nor timorous, but a woman eager for
distinction (who, as Cicero himself says, would rather thrust herself
into his public affairs than communicate her domestic matters to him),
told him these things, and excited him against the conspirators. So also
did Quintus his brother, and Publius Nigidius, one of his philosophical
friends, whom he often made use of in his most weighty affairs of state.

The next day, a debate arising in the senate about the punishment of the
men, Silanus, being the first who was asked his opinion, said, it was
fit that they should be all sent to prison, and there suffer the utmost
penalty. With him all agreed in order till it came to Caius Caesar, who
was afterwards dictator. He was then but a young man, and only at the
outset of his career, but had already directed his hopes and policy
to that course by which he afterwards changed the Roman state into a
monarchy.

When it came Caesar's turn to give his opinion, he stood up and proposed
that the conspirators should not be put to death, but their estates
confiscated, and their persons confined in such cities in Italy as
Cicero should approve, there to be kept in custody till Catiline was
conquered. To this sentence, as it was the most moderate, and he that
delivered it a most powerful speaker, Cicero himself gave no small
weight, for he stood up and, turning the scale on either side, spoke
in favor partly of the former, partly of Caesar's sentence. And all
Cicero's friends, judging Caesar's sentence most expedient for Cicero,
because he would incur the less blame if the conspirators were not put
to death, chose rather the latter; so that Silanus, also, changing his
mind, retracted his opinion, and said he had not declared for
capital, but only the utmost punishment, which to a Roman senator
is imprisonment. The first man who spoke against Caesar's motion was
Catulus Lutatius. Cato followed, and so vehemently urged in his speech
the strong suspici