[75]
I say nothing of the republic, to which Sulla has always been most devoted.
Did he wish these friends of his, being such men as they are, so attached to him, by whom his
prosperity had been formerly adorned, by whom his adversity is now comforted and relieved, to
perish miserably, in order that he himself might be at liberty to pass a most miserable and
infamous existence in company with Lentulus, and Catiline, and Cethegus, with no other
prospect for the future but a disgraceful death? That suspicion is not
consistent,—it is, I say, utterly at variance with such habits, with such modesty,
with such a life as his, with the man himself. That sprang up, a perfectly unexampled sort of
barbarity; it was an incredible and amazing insanity. The foulness of that unheard of wickedness broke out on a sudden, taking its rise from the countless vices of
profligate men accumulated ever since their youth.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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