[32] However, what I find fault with most of all, is this: that you, with your abilities and your prudence, do not maintain the true interest of the republic, but believe, on the contrary, that those actions are not approved of by the Roman people, which, when I was consul, were done by all virtuous men, for the preservation of the common safety of all.
11 Do you believe that any one of those men who are here present, into whose favour you were seeking to insinuate yourself against their will, was either so wicked as to wish all these things to be destroyed, or so miserable as to wish to perish himself; and to have nothing which he wished to preserve? Is there any one who blames the most illustrious man of your family and name, who deprived his own son 1 of life in order to strengthen his power over the rest of his army; and do you blame the republic, for destroying domestic enemies in order to avoid being herself destroyed by them?
11 Do you believe that any one of those men who are here present, into whose favour you were seeking to insinuate yourself against their will, was either so wicked as to wish all these things to be destroyed, or so miserable as to wish to perish himself; and to have nothing which he wished to preserve? Is there any one who blames the most illustrious man of your family and name, who deprived his own son 1 of life in order to strengthen his power over the rest of his army; and do you blame the republic, for destroying domestic enemies in order to avoid being herself destroyed by them?
Pro P. Sulla. M. Tullius Cicero. Charles Duke Yonge (Translator). London. 1856.
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