And in
 this conspiracy, what union was ever so close as that between Autronius and Catiline, between
 Autronius and Lentulus? What combination was there ever between any men for the most virtuous
 purposes, so intimate as his connection with them for deeds of wickedness, lust and
 audacity?—what crime is there which Lentulus did not plot with Autronius?—what atrocity did
 Catiline ever commit without his assistance? while, in the meantime, Sulla not only abstained
 from seeking the concealment of night and solitude in their company, but he had never the very
 slightest intercourse with them, either in conversation or in casual meetings. The Allobroges, those who gave us the truest information on the most important
 matters, accused Autronius, and so did the letters of many men, and many private witnesses. All
 that time no one ever accused Sulla; no one ever mentioned his name. Lastly, after Catiline had
 been driven out or allowed to depart out of the city, Autronius sent him arms, trumpets, bugles,
 scythes, Some commentators propose fasces instead of falces here, and it would
 certainly make much better sense. standards, legions. He who was left in the city, but
 expected out of it though checked by the punishment of Lentulus, gave way at times to feelings
 of fear, but never to any right feelings or good sense. Sulla, on the other hand, was so quiet,
 that all that time he was at Naples, where it is not supposed that there were any men who were
 implicated in or suspected of this crime; and the place itself is one not so well calculated to
 excite the feelings of men in distress, as to console them. 
 On account, therefore, of this great dissimilarity between the men and the cases, I also
 behaved in a different manner to them both. For Autronius came to me, and he was constantly
 coming to me, with many tears, as a suppliant, to beg me to defend him, and he used to remind me
 that he had been my school-fellow in my childhood, my friend in my youth, and my colleague in
 the quaestorship. He used to enumerate many services which I had done him, and some also which
 he had done me. By all which circumstances, O judges, I was so much swayed and influenced, that
 I banished from my recollection all the plots which he had laid against me myself; that I forgot
 that Caius Cornelius had been lately sent by him for the purpose of killing me in my own house,
 in the sight of my wife and children. And if he had formed these designs against me alone, such
 is my softness and lenity of disposition, that I should never have been able to resist his tears
 and entreaties; but when the thoughts of my country, of your
 dangers, of this city, of all those shrines and temples which we see around us, of the infant
 children, and matrons, and virgins of the city occurred to me, and when those hostile and fatal
 torches destined for the entire conflagration of the whole city, when the arms which had been
 collected, when the slaughter and blood of the citizens, when the ashes of my country began to
 present themselves to my eyes, and to excite my feelings by the recollection, then I resisted
 him, then I resisted not only that enemy of his country, that parricide himself, but I withstood
 also his relations the Marcelli, father and son, one of whom was regarded by me with the respect
 due to a parent, and the other with the affection which one feels towards a son. And I thought
 that I could not, without being guilty of the very greatest wickedness, defend in their
 companion the same crimes which I had chastised in the case of others, when I knew him to be
 guilty. And, on the same principle, I could not endure to see
 Publius Sulla coming to me as a suppliant, or these same Marcelli in tears at his danger nor
 could I resist the entreaties of Marcus Messala, whom you see in court, a most intimate friend
 of my own. For neither was his cause disagreeable to my natural disposition nor had the man or
 the facts anything in them at variance with my feelings of clemency his name had never been
 mentioned, there was no trace whatever of him in the conspiracy; no information had touched him,
 no suspicion had been breathed of him. I undertook his cause, O Torquatus; I undertook it, and I
 did so willingly, in order that, while good men had always, as I hope, thought me
 virtuous and firm, not even bad men might he able to call me cruel.