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.