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18 that he may speak not only for his client but for himself. "On what seems to me shameful and intolerable, on what, as I think, will touch us all unless we provide against it, on this I will make my utterance in all the sincerity of my heart and from all the bitterness of my soul."

Of Sulla himself, whose carelessness and indifference allows creatures like Chrysogonus to batten on the Commonwealth, Cicero speaks with an apparent respect which really covers the sharpest censure. "Rascally freedmen," he says, "always try to throw the responsibility for their misdeeds on their patron; but all the world knows that many things have been done, of which Sulla is only half aware. Are we to approve then, if some such acts are passed over because he does not know about them? We cannot approve; but it cannot be helped. Jupiter reigns above; yet we have men injured, and cities ruined, and crops lost by hurricanes or floods or extremes of heat and cold. We do not attribute these mischiefs to the intention of the god, but to the force of circumstances and to the magnitude of the universe over which he has to preside, while we acknowledge his hand in the blessings we receive. And so it is with Sulla."

But if Cicero affects to screen Sulla under this contemptuous apology, he condescends to no half-measures when he deals with his favourite.

"Let the leaders of the party look to it, whether this be not a sad and shameful conclusion, that