And
 even in regard to this very motion, who was there of us who had any fears of Sulla or Caecilius
 attempting to carry any point by violence? Did not all the alarm that existed at that time, all
 the fear and expectation of sedition, arise from the villainy of Autronius? It was his
 expressions and his threats which were bruited abroad; it was the sight of him, the multitudes
 that thronged to him, the crowd that escorted him, and the bands of his abandoned followers,
 that caused all the fear of sedition which agitated us. Therefore, Publius Sulla, as this most
 odious man was then his comrade and partner, not only in honour but also in misfortune, was
 compelled to lose his own good fortune, and to remain under a cloud without any remedy or
 alleviation. 
 At this point you are constantly reading passages from my letter, which I sent to Cnaeus
 Pompeius about my own achievements, and about the general state of the republic; and out of it
 you seek to extract some charge against Publius Sulla. And because I wrote that an attempt of
 incredible madness, conceived two years before, had broken out in my consulship, you say that I,
 by this expression, have proved that Sulla was in the former conspiracy. I suppose I think that
 Cnaeus Piso, and Catiline, and Vargunteius were not able to do any wicked or audacious act by
 themselves, without the aid of Publius Sulla! But even if any
 one had had a doubt on that subject before, would he have thought (as you accuse him of having
 done) of descending, after the murder of your father, who was then consul, into the Campus on
 the first of January with the lictors? This suspicion, in fact you removed yourself, when you
 said that he had prepared an armed band and cherished violent designs against your father, in
 order to make Catiline consul. And if I grant you this, then you must grant to me that Sulla,
 when he was voting for Catiline, had no thoughts of recovering by violence his own consulship,
 which he had lost by a judicial decision. For his character is not one, O judges, which is at
 all liable to the imputation of such enormous, of such atrocious crimes. 
For I will now proceed, after I have refuted all the charges against him, by an arrangement
 contrary to that which is usually adopted, to speak of the general course of life and habits of
 my client. In truth, at the beginning I was eager to encounter the greatness of the accusation,
 to satisfy the expectations of men, and to say something also of myself, since I too had been
 accused. But now I mast call you back to that point to which the cause itself, even if I said
 nothing, would compel you to direct all your attention. 
 In every case, O judges, which is of more serious importance than usual, we must judge a good
 deal as to what every one has wished, or intended, or done, not from the counts of the
 indictment but from the habits of the person who is accused. For no one of us can have his
 character modeled in a moment, nor can any one's course of life be altered, or his natural
 disposition changed on a sudden. Survey for a moment in your
 mind's eye, O judges, (to say nothing of other instances,) these very men who were implicated in
 this wickedness. Catiline conspired against the republic. Whose ears were ever unwilling to
 believe in this attempt on the part of a man who had spent his whole life, from his boyhood
 upwards, not only in intemperance and debauchery, but who had devoted all his energies and all
 his zeal to every sort of enormity, and lust, and bloodshed? Who marveled that that man died
 fighting against his country, whom all men had always thought born for civil war? Who is there
 that recollects the way in which Lentulus was a partner it of informers or the insanity of his
 caprices or his perverse and impious superstition, who can wonder that he cherished either
 wicked designs, or insane hopes? Who even thinks of Caius Cethegus and his expedition into Spain
 and the wound inflicted on Quintus Metellus Pius without seeing that a prison was built on
 purpose to be the scene of his punishment?