This little child entreats you, O judges, to allow him occasionally to congratulate his father, if not with his fortunes unimpaired, at least to congratulate him in his affliction. The roads to the courts of justice and to the forum are better known to that unhappy boy, than the roads to his playground or to his school. I am contending now, O judges, not for the life of Publius Sulla, but for his burial. His life was taken from him at the former trial; we are now striving to prevent his body from being cast out. For what has he left which need detain him in this life? or what is there to make any one think such an existence life at all? Lately, Publius Sulla was a man of such consideration in the state, that no one thought himself superior to him either in honour, or in influence, or in good fortune. Now, stripped of all his dignity, he does not seek to recover what has been taken away from him; but he does entreat you, O judge; not to take from him the little which fortune has left him in his disasters,—namely, the permission to bewail his calamities in company with his parent, with his children, with his brother; and with his friends.

It would be becoming for even you yourself, O Torquatus, to be by this time satisfied with the miseries of my client. Although you had taken nothing from Sulla except the consulship, yet you ought to be content with that for it was a contest for honour, and not enmity, which originally induced you to take up this cause. But now that, together with his honour, everything else has been taken from him,—now that he is desolate, crushed by this miserable and grievous fortune, what is there which you can wish for more? Do you wish to deprive him of the enjoyment of the light of day, full as it is to him of tears and grief, in which he now lives amid the greatest grief and torment? He would gladly give it up, if you would release him from the foul imputation of this most odious crime. Do you seek to banish him as an enemy, when, if you were really hard-hearted, you would derive greater enjoyment from seeing his miseries than from hearing of them?