He said they that were serious in ridiculous matters would be ridiculous in serious affairs. - Plutarch

To seek power by servility to the people is a disgrace, but to maintain it by terror, violence, and oppression is not a disgrace only, but an injustice.

Others have seen the assassination as a useful reminder of the futility of such attempts at direct action. For what did it achieve? If the assassins had really wanted to quash the rise of one-man rule in Rome, if they wanted to kill the tyranny as well as the tyrant, they were strikingly unsuccessful.

Basically, he used to say, the term cheap did not apply to something inessential: even if something cost only an as, you should regard it as something expensive if it was not something you needed- Cato the Elder