M. Tullius Cicero Pro P. Sulla 18

[18] On account, therefore, of this great dissimilarity between the men and the cases, I also behaved in a different manner to them both. For Autronius came to me, and he was constantly coming to me, with many tears, as a suppliant, to beg me to defend him, and he used to remind me that he had been my school-fellow in my childhood, my friend in my youth, and my colleague in the quaestorship. He used to enumerate many services which I had done him, and some also which he had done me. By all which circumstances, O judges, I was so much swayed and influenced, that I banished from my recollection all the plots which he had laid against me myself; that I forgot that Caius Cornelius had been lately sent by him for the purpose of killing me in my own house, in the sight of my wife and children. And if he had formed these designs against me alone, such is my softness and lenity of disposition, that I should never have been able to resist his tears and entreaties;