I saw this, O judges, that unless, while the recollection of the senate on the subject was still fresh, I bore evidence to the authority and to the particulars of this information by public records, hereafter some one, not Torquatus, nor any one like Torquatus, (for in that indeed I have been much deceived,) but some one who had lost his patrimony, some enemy of tranquillity, some foe to all good men, would say that the information given had been different; in order the more easily, when some gale of odium had been stirred up against all virtuous men, to be able, amid the misfortunes of the republic, to discover some harbour for his own broken vessel. Therefore, having introduced the informers into the Senate, I appointed senators to take down every statement made by the informers, every question that was asked, and every answer that was given.
And what men they were! Not only
men of the greatest virtue and good faith, of which sort of men there are plenty in the senate,
but men, also, who I knew from their memory, from their knowledge, from their habit and rapidity
of writing, could most easily follow everything that was said. I selected Caius Cosconius, who
was praetor at the time; Marcus Messala, who was at the time standing for the praetorship;
Publius Nigidius, and Appius Claudius. I believe that there is no one who thinks that these men
were deficient either in the good faith or in the ability requisite to enable them to give an
accurate report.
And I took this precaution, though at so disturbed a time, and when all opportunities of acting were so sudden and so brief at the suggestion of some divine providence, as I said before, and not of my own accord, or of my own wisdom; taking care, in the first instance, that no one should be able to recollect of the danger to the republic, or to any individual, only as much as he pleased; and in the second place, that no one should be able at any time to find fault with that information, or to accuse us of having given credit to it rashly; and lastly, that no one should ever put any questions to me, or seek to learn anything from my private journals, lest I might be accused of either forgetting or remembering too much, and lest any negligence of mine should be thought discreditable, or lest any eagerness on my part might seem cruel.
But still, O Torquatus, I ask you, as your enemy was mentioned in the information, and as a
full senate and the memory of all men as to so recent an affair was a witness of that fact; as
my clerks would have communicated the information to you, my intimate friend and companion, if
you had wished for it, even before they had taken a copy of it; when you saw that there were any
incorrectnesses in it, why were you silent, why did you permit them? Why did you not make a
complaint to me or to some friend of mine? or why did you not at least, since you are so well
inclined to inveigh against your friends, expostulate passionately and earnestly with me? Do
you, when your voice was never once heard at the time, when, though the information was read,
and copied out, and published, you kept silence then,—do
Was the safety of any one of such consequence to me as to induce me to forget my own? or to make me contaminate the truth, which I had laid open, by any lie? Or do you suppose that I would assist any one by whom I thought that a cruel plot had been laid against the republic, and most especially against me the consul? But if I had been forgetful of my own severity and of my own virtue, was I so mad, as, when letters are things which have been devised for the sake of posterity, in order to be a protection against forgetfulness, to think that the fresh recollection of the whole senate could be beaten down by my journal?
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.
“Oh, but the son of Caius Cornelius accuses him, and
that ought to have the same weight as if his father had given information against him.” O wise
Cornelius,—the father; I mean—who left all the reward which is usually given for information,
but has got all the discredit which a confession can involve, through the accusation brought by
his son! However; what is it that Cornelius gives information of by the mouth of that boy? If it
is a part of the business which is unknown to me, but which has been communicated to Hortensius,
let Hortensius reply. If as you say, his statement concerns that crew of Autronius and Catiline,
when they intended to commit a massacre in the Campus Martius, at the consular
Is there,
then, any one who says that Sulla at that time had any idea of coming into the Campus? And yet,
if at that time he had united himself with Catiline in that society of wickedness, why did he
leave him? why was not he with Autronius? why, when their cases were similar, are not similar
proofs of criminality found? But since Cornelius himself even now hesitates about giving
information against him, he, as you say, contents himself with filling up the outline of his
son's information what then does he say about that night, when, according to the orders of
Catiline, he came into the Scythemakers'
At this time, when the conspiracy was at its height; when Catiline was starting for the army, and Lentulus was being left in the city; when Cassius was being appointed to superintend the burning of the city, and Cethegus the massacre; when Autronius had the part allotted to him of occupying Italy; when, in short, everything was being arranged, and settled, and prepared; where, O Cornelius, was Sulla? Was he at Rome? No, he was very far away. Was he in those districts to which Catiline was betaking himself? He was still further from them. Was he in the Camertine, Picenian, or Gallic district? lands which the disease, as it were, of that frenzy had infected most particularly. Nothing is further from the truth; for he was, as I have said already, at Naples. He was in that part of Italy which above all others was free from all suspicion of being implicated in that business.
What then
does he state in his information, or what does he allege—I mean Cornelius, or you who bring
these messages from him? He says that gladiators were bought, under pretence of some games to be
exhibited by Faustus, for the purposes of slaughter and tumult.—Just so;—the gladiators are
mentioned whom we know that he was bound to provide according to his father's will. “But he
seized on a whole household of gladiators; and if he had left that alone, some other troop might
have discharged the duty to which Faustus was bound.” I wish this troop could satisfy not only
the envy of parties unfavourable to him, but even the expectations of reasonable men. “He was in
a desperate hurry, when the time for the exhibition was still far off.” As if in reality, the
time for the exhibition was not drawing very near. This household of slaves
But there are letters of Faustus's extant, in which he begs
and prays Publius Sulla to buy gladiators, and to buy this very troop: and not only were such
letters sent to Publius Sulla, but they were sent also to Lucius Caesar, to Quintus Pompeius,
and to Gains Memmius, by whose advice the whole business was managed. But Cornelius
But Sittius was sent by him into further Spain; in order to excite sedition in that province. In the first place, O judges, Sittius departed, in the consulship of Lucius Julius and Caius Figulus, some time before this mad business of Catiline's, and before there was any suspicion of this conspiracy. In the second place, he did not go there for the first time, but he had already been there several years before, for the same purpose that he went now. And he went not only with an object but with a necessary object having some important accounts to settle with the king of Mauritania. But then, after he was gone, as Sulla managed his affairs as his agent he sold many of the most beautiful farms of Publius Sittius, and by this means paid his debts; so that the motive which drove the rest to this wickedness, the desire, namely, of retaining their possessions, did not exist in the case of Sittius, who had diminished his landed property to pay his debts.
But now, how incredible, how absurd is the idea that a man who wished to make a massacre at Rome, and to burn down this city, should let his most intimate friend depart, should send him away into the most distant countries! Did he so in order the more easily to effect what he was endeavoring to do at Rome, if there were seditions in Spain?—“But these things were done independently, and had no connection with one another.” Is it possible, then, that he should have thought it desirable, when engaged in such important affairs, in such novel and dangerous, and seditious designs, to send away a man thoroughly attached to himself, his most intimate friend, one connected with himself by reciprocal good offices and by constant intercourse? It is not probable that he should send a way, when in difficulty, and in the midst of troubles of his own raising, the man whom he had always kept with him in times of prosperity and tranquillity.
But is Sittius himself (for I must not desert the cause of my old friend and host) a man of such a character, or of such a family and such a school as to allow us to believe that he wished to make war on the republic? Can we believe that he, whose father when all our other neighbours and borderers revolted from us behaved with singular duty and loyalty to our republic, should think it possible himself to undertake a nefarious war against his country? A man whose debts we see were contracted not out of luxury but from a desire to increase his property which led him to involve himself in business and who, though he owed debts at Rome, had very large debts owing to him in the provinces and in the confederate kingdoms and when he was applying for them he would not allow his agents to be put in any difficulty by his absence but preferred having all his property sold and being stripped himself of a most beautiful patrimony, to allowing any delay to take place in satisfying his creditors.
And of men of that sort I never, O judges, had any fear when I was in the middle of that tempest which afflicted the republic. The sort of men who were formidable and terrible were those who clung to their property with such affection that you would say it was easier to tear their limbs from them than their lands but Sittius never thought that there was such a relationship between him and his estates, and therefore he cleared himself, not only from all suspicion of such wickedness as theirs, but even from being talked about not by arms, but at the expense of his patrimony.
But now, as to what he adds, that the inhabitants of Pompeii were excited by Sulla to join that conspiracy and that abominable wickedness, what sort of statement that I am quite unable to understand. Do the people of Pompeii appear to have joined the conspiracy? Who has ever said so? or when was there the slightest suspicion of this fact? “He separated then,” says he, “from the settlers, in order that when he had excited dissensions and divisions within, he might be able to have the town and nation of Pompeii in his power.” In the first place, every circumstance of the dissension between the natives of Pompeii and the settlers was referred to the patrons of the town, being a matter of long standing, and having been going on many years. In the second place, the matter was investigated by the patrons in such a way, that Sulla did not in any particular disagree with the opinions of the others. And lastly, the settlers themselves understand that the natives of Pompeii were not more denuded by Sulla than they themselves were.