“Men of wisdom, men endowed with the place and the power which you occupy, are bound to apply the appropriate remedies to the disease of which the State is sickening. There is no one of you but knows well, that the Roman people, which formerly had the reputation of being most placable towards its enemies, labours to-day under the curse of cruelty to its own children. Remove this cruelty from the State, gentlemen of the jury ; suffer it no longer to work its pleasure in this Commonwealth. It is a vice which is mischievous, not only in that it has swept off so many of our fellow-citizens under every circumstance of horror, but likewise because by the daily spectacle of painful sights it has made the tenderest hearts callous to the sense of pity. For when each hour we see or hear of some fresh atrocity, even though nature has made us mild of mood, familiarity with dreadful deeds plucks all feelings of humanity from our minds.” *
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Cicero and the Fall of the Roman Republic by J. L. Strachan-Davidson, M.A. Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. https://archive.org/details/ciceroandthefall014652mbp/page/n33/mode/2up (pp. 19-20)
Marcus Tullius Cicero ... 3 January 106 – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar and Academic Skeptic,[3] who vainly tried to uphold republican principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire.[4] His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics, and he is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.[5][6] He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in 63 BC. ... He was proscribed as an enemy of the state by the Second Triumvirate [because of his advocacy of Republican principles] and consequently [was] executed by soldiers operating on their behalf in 43 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero