45.
[130]
First of all, why the property of a virtuous citizen was sold? Next, why the property
of a man who was neither proscribed, nor slain in the garrisons of the opposite party,
were sold; when the law was made against them alone? Next, why were they sold long after
the day which is appointed by the law? Next, why were they sold for go little! And if he
shall choose, as worthless and wicked freedmen are accustomed to do, to refer all this
to his patrons, he will do himself no good by that For there is no one who does not know
that on account of the immensity of his business, many men did many things of which
Lucius Sulla knew very little.
[131]
Is it right, then,
that in these matters anything should be passed over without the ruler knowing it? It is
not right, O judges, but it is inevitable. In truth, if the great and kind Jupiter, by whose will and command the heaven, the
earth, and the seas are governed, has often by too violent winds, or by immoderate
tempests, or by too much heat, or by intolerable cold, injured men, destroyed cities, or
ruined the crops; nothing of which do we suppose to have taken place, for the sake of
causing injury, by the divine intention, but owing to the power and magnitude of the
affairs of the world; but on the other hand we see that the advantages which we have the
benefit of, and the light which we enjoy, and the air which we breathe, are all given to
and bestowed upon us by him; how can we wonder that Lucius Sulla, when he alone was
governing the whole republic, and administering the affairs of the whole world, and
strengthening by his laws the majesty of the empire, which he had recovered by arms,
should have been forced to leave some things unnoticed? Unless this is strange that
human faculties have not a power which divine might is unable to attain to.
[132]
But to say no more about what has happened already, cannot
any one thoroughly understand from what is happening now, that Chrysogonus alone is the
author and contriver of all this, and that it is he who caused Sextus Roscius to be
accused? this trial in which Erucius says that he is the accuser out of regard for
honour
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