For P. Sulla (67-69)

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.