It may seem surprising that Caesar does not express himself more energetically against the right claimed by the senate; but he would certainly have spoken in vain, for it was every senator's interest that the power of the senate should be recognised in its greatest extent, even though it should not be exercised in every particular case. [265] That is, the so-called thirty tyrants in the year B. C. 404. [266] _Ea_; for this accusative, see Zumpt, S 385. [267] _Damasippus_ was only a surname of the praetor M. Junius Brutus, who in the year B. C. 82 put to death a great many Roman nobles of the party of Sulla. [268] Namely, by Sulla, after he had been made dictator. [269] _Pleraque_; most of the ensigns and distinctions by which the magistrates were distinguished from private persons, especially the _toga praetexta_, _sella curulis_, _fasces_ (which were carried by the lictors), and, above all, the splendid procession of the _triumphatores_. [270] _Legibus_ is here a pleonasm, and might have been omitted. We must here repeat that Caesar makes an artful application of the circumstance that, in all the late criminal laws, the _interdictio aquae et ignis_ was fixed as the severest punishment, as if thereby a person had been simply permitted to withdraw from the republic. The _interdictio_ was a much more severe punishment, inasmuch as the person on whom it was inflicted lost all his rights as a citizen, and as every one was forbidden to receive him into his house, so that he was a complete outcast. Wherever these regulations were not carried into effect, and even in case a criminal made his escape before the sentence was pronounced, we can see nothing but an abuse of clemency. [271] _Quominus_ is here used because the leading clause conveys the idea of a hindrance; but _ne_ also might have been written. [272] _Per municipia_, 'among the municipia.' See Zumpt, S 301.