XIX. At daybreak[189] Cicero, assembling the Senate at the temple of Concord, read the letters and examined the informers. Silanus Junius also said that some persons had heard Cethegus say, that three consuls and four prætors were going to be killed. Piso, a man of consular rank, gave evidence to the same effect. Caius Sulpicius, one of the prætors, being sent to the house of Cethegus, found there many missiles and arms, and a great quantity of swords and knives newly sharpened. At length the Senate having by a vote promised a pardon to the man of Croton on condition of his giving information, Lentulus being convicted abdicated his office, for he happened to be prætor, and laying down his robe with the purple hem before the Senate assumed a dress suitable to the occasion. Lentulus and his associates were delivered up to the prætors to be kept in custody, but without chains. It was now evening, and the people in crowds were waiting about the temple, when Cicero came forth and told the circumstance to the citizens, by whom he was conducted to the house of a neighbouring friend, for his own house was occupied by the women who were celebrating the mysterious rites to a goddess whom the Romans called Bona,[190] and the Greeks call Gynæceia. A sacrifice is made to the goddess annually in the house of the consul by his wife or his mother in the presence of the Vestal Virgins. Cicero, going into the house, deliberated with a very few persons what he should do with the men: for he had some scruples about inflicting the extreme punishment and that which was due to such great crimes; and he hesitated about it both from the humanity of his disposition, and because he feared that he might seem to be too much elated with his power and to be handling severely men who were of the highest rank and had powerful friends in the State; and if he treated them leniently, he dreaded danger from them. For he considered that they would not be well content if they were punished short of death, but would break forth in all extravagance of audacity and add fresh indignation to their old villainy; and that he should be judged a coward and a weak man, especially as the many had by no means a good opinion of his courage.