They who were your counselors, who became acquainted with these things in your company,—they who were supposed to be themselves menaced with that danger, who gave no countenance to Autronius, who gave most important evidence against him,—are now defending Publius Sulla, are countenancing him by their presence here; now that he is in danger they declare that they were not deterred by the accusation of conspiracy from countenancing the others, but by the guilt of the men. But for the time of my consulship, and with respect to the charge of the greatest conspiracy, Sulla shall be defended by me. And this partition of the cause between Hortensius and me has not been made by chance, or at random, O judges, but as we saw that we were employed as defenders of a man against those accusations in which we might have been witnesses, each of us thought that it would be best for him to undertake that part of the case, concerning which he himself had been able to acquire some knowledge, and to form some opinions with certainty.

And since you have listened attentively to Hortensius, while speaking on the charge respecting the former conspiracy, now, I beg you, listen to this first statement of mine respecting the conspiracy which was formed in my consulship. When I was consul I heard many reports, I made many inquiries, I learnt a great many circumstances concerning the extreme peril of the republic. No messenger, no information, no letters, no suspicion ever reached me at any time in the least affecting Sulla. Perhaps this assertion ought to have great weight when coming from a man who as consul had investigated the plots laid against the republic with prudence, had revealed them with sincerity had chastised them with magnanimity and who says that he himself never heard a word against Publius Sulla and never entertained a suspicion of him. But I do not as yet employ this assertion for the purpose of defending him I rather use it with a view to clear myself in order that Torquatus may cease to wonder that I, who would not appear by the side of Autronius, am now defending Sulla.

For what was the cause of Autronius? and what is the cause of Sulla? The former tried to disturb and get rid of a prosecution for bribery by raising in the first instance a sedition among gladiators and runaway slaves, and after that as we all saw, by stoning people, and collecting a violent mob. Sulla, if his own modesty and worth could not avail him, sought no other assistance. The former, when he had been convicted, behaved in such a manner, not only in his secret designs and conversation, but in every look and in his whole countenance, as to appear an enemy to the most honourable orders in the state, hostile to every virtuous man, and a foe to his country. The latter considered himself so bowed down, so broken down by that misfortune, that he thought that none of his former dignity was left to him, except what he could retain by his present moderation.