Pro P. Sulla

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. What followed? What did I do next? As I knew that the information was by these means entered among the public documents, but yet that those records would be kept in the custody of private individuals, according to the customs of our ancestors, I did not conceal it; I did not keep it at my own house; but I caused it at once to be copied out by several clerks, and to be distributed everywhere, and published and made known to the Roman people. I distributed it all over Italy, I sent copies of it into every province; I wish no one to be ignorant of that information, by means of which safety was procured for all.

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 comitia, which were held by me; we saw Autronius that day in the Campus. And why do I say we saw? I myself saw him (for you at that time, O judges, had no anxiety, no suspicions; I, protected by a firm guard of friends at that time, checked the forces and the endeavours of Catiline and Autronius).

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' [*](This was the name of a street.) street, to the house of Marcus Lecca, that night which followed the sixth of November; in my consulship? that night which of all the moments of the conspiracy was the most terrible and the most miserable. Then the day in which Catiline should leave the city, then the terms on which the rest should remain behind, then the arrangement and division of the whole city, with regard to the conflagration and the massacre, was settled. Then your father, O Cornelius, as he afterwards confessed, begged for himself that especial employment of going the first in the morning to salute me as consul, in order that, laving been admitted, according to my usual custom and to the privilege which his friendship with me gave him, he might slay me in my bed.

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