14.1
After he was chosen praetor, the conspiracy of Catiline was discovered; and while every other member of the senate voted for inflicting capital punishment on the accomplices in that crime,Lentulus, Cethegus, and others he alone proposed that the delinquents should be distributed for safe custody among the towns of Italy, their property being confiscated. He even struck such terror into those who were advocates of severity, by representing to them what universal odium would be attached to their memories by the Roman people, that Decius Silanus, consul-elect, did not hesitate to qualify his proposal, it not being very honourable to change it, by a lenient interpretation: as if it had been understood in a harsher sense than he intended,