Book 2
17.121
From so many men of this kind a considerable crowd was drawn speedily and without difficulty to the party of Cassius in the forum. These, although bought, did not dare to praise the murder, because they feared Caesar’s reputation and doubted what course the rest of the people might take. So they shouted for peace as being for the public advantage, and with one accord recommended this policy to the magistrates, intending by this device to secure the safety of the murderers;The text of all the codices except the Vatican reads: παρεκάλουν (τέχνασμα τοῦτό ἐστι τῶν ἀνδροφονῶν) σοτηρίαν ἐπινοοῦντες; which means that this shouting for peace was a device of the murderers themselves. which is not unlikely, but it presents grammatical difficulties which led Schweighäuser to change the word ἐστι to ἐς τὴν and to reject the parenthesis, as Geslen had done before him. The Vatican codex has this very reading, as Mendelssohn points out. for there could be no peace without amnesty to them. While they were thus engaged the praetor Cinna, a relative of Caesar by marriage, made his appearance, advanced unexpectedly into the middle of the forum, laid aside his praetorian robe, as if disdaining the gift of a tyrant, and called Caesar a tyrant and his murderers tyrannicides. He extolled their deed as exactly like that of their ancestors, and ordered that the men themselves should be called from the Capitol as benefactors and rewarded with public honors. So spake Cinna, but when the hirelings saw that the unbought portion of the crowd did not agree with them they did not call for the men in the Capitol, nor did they do anything else but continually demand peace.
