On the Treatment of Assassins

What right did Gaius Julius Caesar’s assassins have to throw Rome into turmoil? For what reason did they believe that they could take the fate of the senate and the Roman people into their own hands? They had no right. This senate, including some of his assassins, voted Julius Caesar the position of Dictator and later Dictator for life. It is not for the few to take it upon themselves to oppose the decisions of this honored assembly. It is the basest hypocrisy to claim to honor our laws and customs while ignoring the decisions of our honored law makers. We cannot show leniency to men who would ignore the laws and edicts of this senate. Regardless of how any of you might feel about Julius Caesar and his policies, he was elected by this administrative body and you must agree that we cannot allow people to ignore Rome’s laws without consequences. We cannot set a precedent that some people have a right to ignore laws set to promote everyone’s safety and prosperity whenever they disagree.
I move that we put these anarchists on trial! We must keep order in the senate to set and example for the plebs. Some of the rioting will cease if we punish the men that have plunged us into turmoil due to their selfish and cowardly actions. The people saw Julius Caesar as their protector and loved him for it. They will not rest until we restore order and punish his murderers. If we simply let these assassins go free the people will riot and bring down those senators who they believe are responsible for the assassination and those who did nothing to punish them for their heinous crime. Are there any among this esteemed judicial body who wish to be pulled down and torn apart by a mod as Julius Caesar was; simply because we did not do our civic duty in punishing the murderers in our midst. It is shameful and cowardly enough that we did not immediately exile those men the moment Gaius Julius Caesar breathed his last.
Gaius Julius Caesar once gave clemency to many of the men who later assassinated him. How was his kindness repaid? It was repaid by betrayal by those whom he called friend and death. Why should we be lenient on men who took an extension of friendship and then conspired and brutally stabbed that friend? Is there any cause for us to trust them now? Brutus was such a friend to Julius Caesar that Caesar named him a secondary heir, seeing Brutus with his assassins must have been as a killing blow from the assassins’ knives. Brutus was dear to Caesar, and he gained Caesar’s trust while pretending to be loyal to our leader, how strong his betrayal. Dare we anger the gods further by not punishing men who committed murder to a man whose friendship they accepted, and at a sanctified temple? What sort of men are we if we condone their actions and do not punish them to the full extent we are able. We do not dare offer extend the hand of friendship to them again for it is a sure sign that they will turn on us all again. Even Cicero, who accepted Julius Caesar’s clemency, turned against a man he once extolled the virtues of and now praises the actions of these heretics. ‘
I ask that you do not condone these heresies and vote with me to return order to Rome and appease the gods by punishing Brutus and his fellow conspirators. We must expel them from Rome on pain of death to clean their taint from this city. Send them wandering far from the edges of the Roman provinces so they cannot spread their evil anywhere in our mighty empire. We cannot allow their disregard of our laws to go unpunished.