32.
Lately, Publius Sulla was a man of such consideration in the state, that no one thought
himself superior to him either in honour, or in influence, or in good fortune. Now, stripped
of all his dignity, he does not seek to recover what has been taken away from him; but he does
entreat you, O judge; not to take from him the little which fortune has left him
in his disasters,—namely, the permission to bewail his calamities in company with
his parent, with his children, with his brother; and with his friends.
[90]
It would be becoming for even you yourself, O Torquatus, to be by this time
satisfied with the miseries of my client. Although you had taken nothing from Sulla except the
consulship, yet you ought to be content with that for it was a contest for honour, and not
enmity, which originally induced you to take up this cause. But now that, together with his
honour, everything else has been taken from him,—now that he is desolate, crushed by
this miserable and grievous fortune, what is there which you can wish for more? Do you wish to
deprive him of the enjoyment of the light of day, full as it is to him of tears and grief, in
which he now lives amid the greatest grief and torment? He would gladly give it up, if you
would release him from the foul imputation of this most odious crime. Do you seek to banish
him as an enemy, when, if you were really hard-hearted, you would derive greater enjoyment
from seeing his miseries than from hearing of them?
[91]
Oh,
wretched and unhappy was that day on which Publius Sulla was declared consul by all the
centuries! O how false were the hopes! how fleeting the good fortune! how blind the desire!
how unreasonable the congratulations! How soon was all that scene changed from joy and
pleasure to mourning and tears, when he, who but a short time before had been consul elect,
had on a sudden no trace left of his previous dignity. For what evil was there which seemed
then to be wanting to him when he was thus stripped of honour, and fame, and fortune? or what
room could there be left for any new calamity? The same fortune continues to pursue him which
followed him from the first; she finds a new source of grief for him; she will not allow an
unfortunate man to perish when he has been afflicted in only one way, and by only one
disaster.
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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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