Pro P. Sulla

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.