For P. Sulla (70-72)

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?

I say nothing of the rest that there may be some end to my instances. I only ask you silently to recollect all those men who are proved to have been in this conspiracy. You will see that every one of those men was convicted by his own manner of life, before be was condemned by our suspicion. And as for Autronius himself, (since his name is the most nearly connected with the danger in which my client is, and with the accusation which is brought against him,) did not the manner in which he had spent all his early life convict him? He had always been audacious, violent profligate. We know that in defending himself in charges of adultery, he was accustomed to use not only the most infamous language, but even his fists and his feet. We know that he had been accustomed to drive men from their estates, to murder his neighbors, to plunder the temples of the allies, to disturb the courts of justice by violence and arms; in prosperity to despise every body, in adversity to fight against all good men; never to regard the interests of the republic, and not to yield even to fortune herself. Even if he were not convicted by the most irresistible evidence, still his own habits and his past life would convict him.

Come now, compare with those men the life of Publius Sulla, well known as it is to you and to all the Roman people; and place it, O judges, as it were before your eyes. Has there ever been any act or exploit of his which has seemed to any one, I will not say audacious, but even rather inconsiderate? Do I say any act? Has any word ever fallen from his lips by which any one could be offended? Yes, even in that terrible and disorderly victory of Lucius Sulla, who was found more gentle or more merciful than Publius Sulla? How many men's wives did he not save by begging them of Lucius Sulla! How many men are there of the highest rank and of the greatest accomplishments, both of our order and of the equestrian body, for whose safety he laid himself under obligations to Lucius Sulla! whom I might name, for they have no objection; indeed they are here to countenance him now, with the most grateful feelings towards him. But because that service is a greater one than one citizen ought to be able to do to another, I entreat of you to impute to the times the fact of his having such power, but to give him himself the credit due to his having exerted it in such a manner.