lue and is to the
advantage of all. You must choose not what would satisfy Pompey, but
what is of benefit to the state. Not office seekers, but those who have
capacity should be appointed to the business in hand; the former exist
in very large numbers, but any other such man as my candidate you will
not find. You recall, further, how many reverses of a serious nature we
endured in the war against Sertorius through lack of a general, and that
we found no one else among young or old adapted to it except the man
before you; and that we sent him to the field in place of both consuls,
although at that time he had not yet reached a mature age and was not a
member of the senate. I should be glad if we did have many able men, and
if I ought to pray for such, I would so pray: since, however, this
ability does not depend on prayer or come of its own accord to any one,
but a man has to be born with a natural bent for it, to learn what is
pertinent and practice what is fitting and beyond everything to enjoy
good fortune, which would very rarely fall to the lot of the same man,
you must all unanimously, whenever such an one is found, both support
him and make the fullest use of him even if he does not wish it. Such
violence proves most noble both to him who exerts it and to him who
suffers it,--to the former because he would be preserved by it, and to
the latter because it would preserve the citizens, in whose behalf the
excellent and patriotic man would most readily give up both body and
soul.

[-28-] "Do you think that whereas this Pompey when a youth could conduct
campaigns, be general, increase our possessions, preserve those of our
allies, and acquire those of our adversaries, now, in the prime of life,
when every man fairly surpasses himself, with a mass of additional
experience gained from wars he could not prove most useful to you? Will
you reject, now that he has reached man's estate, him whom while iuvenis
you chose to lead? Will you not confide this campaign to the man, now
become a member of the senate, to whom while still a knight you
committed those wars? Will you not, now that you have most amply tested
his mettle, commit the present emergency, no less pressing than former
ones, to him for whom alone you asked in the face of those urgent
dangers ere you had applied any accurate test at all? Will you not send
out against the pirates one, now an ex-consul, whom before he could yet
properly hold office you elected agains