previous next
[3] The rest could not endure to look upon the sight, but it is said that the father neither turned his gaze away, nor allowed any pity to soften the stern wrath that sat upon his countenance, but watched the dreadful punishment of his sons until the lictors threw them on the ground and cut off their heads with the axe. Then he rose and went away, after committing the other culprits to the judgement of his colleague.1 He had done a deed which it is difficult for one either to praise or blame sufficiently.

1 With this account, compare Livy, ii. 5, 5-9. Brutus looked on ‘ ‘eminente animo patrio inter publicae poenae ministerium’.’

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (Bernadotte Perrin, 1914)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: