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Remember, O citizens, all civil dissensions, and not
only those which you have heard of but these also which you yourselves remember and have
seen. Lucius Sulla crushed Publius Sulpicius1; he drove from the city Caius
Marius the guardian of this city; and of many other brave men some he drove from the city,
and some he murdered. Cnaeus Octavius the consul drove his colleague by force of arms out of
the city; all this place was crowded with heaps of carcasses and flowed with the blood of
citizens; afterwards Cinna and Marius got the upper hand; and then most illustrious men were
put to death, and the spirits of the state were extinguished. Afterwards Sulla avenged the
cruelty of this victory; it is needless to say with what a diminution of the citizens and
with what disasters to the republic Marcus Lepidus disagreed with that most eminent and brave
man Quintus, Catulus. His death did not cause as much grief to the republic as that of the
others.
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1 Sulpicius procured a law to be passed for taking the command against Mithridates from Sulla and giving it to Marius; Sulla came to Rome with his army and slew Sulpicius, when Marius fled to Africa. Sulla made Octavius and Cinna consuls, who quarreled after he was gone, and Cinna went over to the party of Marius, who returned to Rome. Lepidus and Catulus were consuls the year after the death of Sulla, and they quarreled because Lepidus wished to rescind all the acts of Sulla. Lepidus was defeated, fled to Sardinia, and died there.
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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