to prove equally efficient on all occasions; and to refrain from wishing to do anything harsh or frightful, if not out of vengeance for the past, at least as a measure of safeguard for the future. This, then, is enough to prove his excellence. He was so truly a scion of gods that he understood but one thing: to save those that could be saved.
But if you want more evidence, it lies in this, that he took care to have those who warred against him chastised by no other hands than his
own, and that he won back those who in former times had slipped away. He had amnesty granted to all who had been followers of Lepidus and Sertorius, and next arranged that safety should be afforded all the survivors among those proscribed by Sulla; somewhat later he brought them home from exile and bestowed honors and offices upon the children of all who had been slain by that tyrant. Greatest of all, he burned absolutely every one of the letters containing secret information that was found in the tent of either Pompey or Scipio, not reading or noticing any portion of them, in order that no one else might derive from them the power to play the rogue. That this was not only what he said, but what he did, his acts show clearly. No one as a result of those letters was even frightened, let alone suffering any great calamity. And no one knows those who escaped this danger except the men themselves. This is most astonishing and has nothing to surpass it, that they were spared before being accused, and saved before encount-
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