prefer these two things joined with injustice to living free with the best of right. Glorious scions of the Bruti, Aemilii, and Lutatii,[1] born to overthrow what their ancestors won by their prowess! For what did their forefathers defend against Pyrrhus, Hannibal, Philip and Antiochus, if not our liberty and our own hearthstones, and our privilege of submitting to nothing but the laws? All these things that caricature of Romulus[2] holds in his possession, as if they had been wrested from foreigners; and not content with the destruction of so many armies, consuls, and other leading men, whom the fortune of war had swept away, he grows more cruel at a time when success turns most men from wrath to pity. Nay, he alone of all within the memory of man has devised punishment for those yet unborn,[3] who are thus assured of outrage before they are of life. Worst of all, he has hitherto been protected by the enormity of his crimes, while you are deterred from trying to recover your liberty by the fear of a still more cruel slavery.
You must rouse yourselves, fellow citizens, and resist the tyrant, in order that he may not possess your spoils. You must not delay or look for help from prayers to the gods; unless haply you hope that Sulla is now weary or ashamed of his tyranny and that what he has criminally seized he will with still greater peril[4] resign. On the contrary, he has sunk so low that he thinks nothing glorious
- ↑ He refers to D. Junius Brutus, consul in 77, his colleague Mam. Aemilius Lepidus and Q. Lutatius Catulus, consul in 78.
- ↑ Since Sulla planned a reorganization of the state, he is compared with the founder of Rome.
- ↑ By providing that the children of the proscribed should not be allowed to hold office; see Velleius, 2. 28. 4 and Cat. xxxvii. 9.
- ↑ That is, greater than the risk which he ran in usurping his power.
