[16]
But your nobility, O Servius Sulpicius, although it is most eminent yet it is known rather
to men versed in literature and history, but not much so to the people and to the voters. For
your father was in the rank of the knights, your grandfather was renowned for no conspicuous
action. So that the recollection of your nobility is to be extracted not from the modern
conversation of men, but from the antiquity of annals. So that I also am accustomed to class
you in our number, because you by your own virtue and industry, though you are the son of a
Roman knight, have yet earned the being considered worthy of the very highest advancement. Nor
did it ever seem to me that there was less virtue in Quintus Pompeius, a new man and a most
brave man, than in that most high-born man, Marcus Aemilius. Indeed, it is a proof of the same
spirit and genius, to hand down to his posterity, as Pompeius did, an honourable
name, which he had not received from his ancestors; and, as Scaurus did, to renew the
recollection of his family which was almost extinct.
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