Pro P. Sulla

For I will now proceed, after I have refuted all the charges against him, by an arrangement contrary to that which is usually adopted, to speak of the general course of life and habits of my client. In truth, at the beginning I was eager to encounter the greatness of the accusation, to satisfy the expectations of men, and to say something also of myself, since I too had been accused. But now I mast call you back to that point to which the cause itself, even if I said nothing, would compel you to direct all your attention. In every case, O judges, which is of more serious importance than usual, we must judge a good deal as to what every one has wished, or intended, or done, not from the counts of the indictment but from the habits of the person who is accused. For no one of us can have his character modeled in a moment, nor can any one's course of life be altered, or his natural disposition changed on a sudden.

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?