The decree of the senate, _videant consules, etc._, had come to be considered as reviving the full _imperium_ of the consul, and investing him with the power of life and death over all citizens. Cicero acted on this (questionable) constitutional doctrine. He endeavoured, indeed, to shelter himself under the authority of a senatorial vote. But the senate never had the power to try or condemn a citizen. It could only record its advice to the consul. The whole legal responsibility for the condemnation and death of the conspirators, arrested in consequence of these letters, rested on the consul. To our moral judgment as to Cicero's conduct it is of primary importance to determine whether or not these men were guilty: to his legal and constitutional position it matters not at all. Nor was that point ever raised against him. The whole question turns on whether the doctrine was true that the _senatus consultum ultimum_ gave the consul the right of inflicting death upon citizens without trial, _i.e._, without appeal to the people, on the analogy of the dictator _seditionis sedandæ causa_, thus practically defeating that most ancient and cherished safeguard of Roman liberty, the _ius provocationis_. The precedents were few, and scarcely such as would appeal to popular approval. The murder of Tiberius Gracchus had been _ex post facto_ approved by the senate in B.C. 133-2. In the case of Gaius Gracchus, in B.C. 121, the senate had voted _uti consul Opimius rempublicam defenderet_, and in virtue of that the consul had authorized the killing of Gaius and his friends: thus for the first time exercising _imperium sine provocatione_. Opimius had been impeached after his year of office, but acquitted, which the senate might claim as a confirmation of the right, in spite of the _lex_ of Gaius Gracchus, which confirmed the right of _provocatio_ in all cases. In B.C. 100 the tribune Saturninus and the prætor Glaucia were arrested in consequence of a similar decree, which this time joined the other magistrates to the consuls as authorized to protect the Republic: their death, however, was an act of violence on the part of a mob. Its legality had been impugned by Cæsar's condemnation of Rabirius, as _duovir capitalis_, but to a certain extent confirmed by the failure to secure his conviction on the trial of his appeal to the people. In B.C. 88 and 83 this decree of the senate was again passed, in the first case in favour of Sulla against the tribune Sulpicius, who was in consequence put to death; and in the second case in favour of the consuls (partisans of Marius) against the followers of Sulla. Again in B.C. 77 the decree was passed in consequence of the insurrection of the proconsul Lepidus, who, however, escaped to Sardinia and died there.