Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 4 [240M]
“I want the tyrant to die thanks to the state. Let an angry citizen kill him. May he mix his curses with wounds, the sort a husband gives to an adulterer not those from an adulterer against a husband. You rush from your mistress’s kisses to a prize—I don’t want the tyrant-killer to act like a tyrant before he kills him. The Roman people do not want their enemy overcome by poison, they do not desire treason. I will honor a surprise tyrant-killer, but I will not honor an accidental or coerced one.”
Tyrannum cadere rei publicae volo: occidat illum civis iratus, misceat maledicta vulneribus, qualia in adulterum maritus <iacere solet, non qualia in maritum> adulter. Ab adulterae osculis ad praemium curris: nolo tyrannicida imitetur antequam occidat tyrannum. Populus Romanus veneno vinci hostem noluit, proditione noluit. Honorabo subitum tyrannicidium, non honorabo fortuitum, non coactum
