For P. Sulla (46-50)

I have been bearing with you, O Torquatus, for a long time. I have been bearing with you; and sometimes I, of my own accord, call back and check my inclination, when it has been provoked to chastise your speech. I make some allowance for your violent temper; I have some indulgence for your youth, I yield somewhat to our own friendship, I have some regard to your father. But unless you put some restraint upon yourself you will compel me to forget our friendship, in order to pay due regard to my own dignity. No one ever attempted to attach the slightest suspicion to me, that I did not defeat him; but I wish you to believe me in this;—those whom I think that I can defeat most easily, are not those whom I take the greatest pleasure in answering.

Do you, since you are not at all ignorant of my ordinary way of speaking, forbear to abuse my lenity. Do not think that the stings of my eloquence are taken away, because they are sheathed. Do not think that that power has been entirely lost, because I show some consideration for; and indulgence towards you. In the first place, the excuses which I make to myself for your injurious conduct, your violent temper; your age, and our friendship, have much weight with me; and, in the next place, I do not yet consider you a person of sufficient power to make it worth my while to contend and argue with you. But if you were more capable through age and experience, I should pursue the conduct which is habitual to me when I have been provoked; at present I will deal with you in such away that I shall seem to have received an injury rather than to have requited one.

Nor, indeed, can I make out why you are angry with me. If it is because I am defending a man whom you accusing, why should not I also be angry with you, who are accusing a man whom I am defending? “I,” say you, “am accusing my enemy.” And I am defending my friend. “But you ought not to defend any one who is being tried for conspiracy.” On the contrary, no one ought to be more prompt to defend a man of whom he has never suspected any ill, than he who has had many reasons for forming opinions about other men. “Why did you give evidence against others?” Because I was compelled. “Why were they convicted?” Because my evidence was believed. “It is behaving like a king to speak against whomsoever you please and to defend whomsoever you please.” Say, rather, that it is slavery not to be able to speak against any one you choose and to defend any one you choose. And if you begin to consider whether it was more necessary for me to do this or for you to do that, you will perceive that you could with more credit fix a limit to your enmities than I could to my humanity.

But when the greatest honours of your family were at stake, that is to say, the consulship of your father that wise man your father was not angry with his most intimate friends for defending and praising Sulla. He was aware that this was a principle handed down to us from our ancestors that we were not to be hindered by our friendship for any one from warding off dangers from others. And yet that contest was far from resembling this trial. Then, if Publius Sulla could he put down, the consulship would be procured for your father as it was procured, it was a contest of honour you were crying out, that you were seeking to recover what had been taken from you, in order that, having been defeated in the Campus Martius, you might succeed in the forum. Then those who were contending against you for Sulla's safety your greatest friends, with whom you were not angry. On, that account, deprived you of the consulship, resisted your acquisition of honour; and yet they did so without any rupture of your mutual friendship, without violating any duty according to ancient precedent and the established principles of every good man.

But now what promotion of yours am I opposing? or what dignity of yours am I throwing obstacles in the way of? what is there which you can at present seek from this proceeding? Honour has been conferred on your father; the insignia of honour have descended to you. You, adorned with his spoils, come to tear the body of him whom you have slain; I am defending and protecting him who is lying prostrate and stripped of his arms. And on this you find fault with me, and are angry because I defend him. But I not only am not angry with you, but I do not even find fault with your proceeding. For I imagine that you have laid down a rule for yourself as to what you thought that you ought to do, and that you have appointed a very capable judge of your duty.