etence or to gather any advantage, as others in large numbers
have displayed humaneness, the greatest evidence is that everywhere and
under all circumstances he showed himself the same: anger did not
brutalize him nor good fortune corrupt him; power did not alter, nor
authority change him. Yet it is very difficult when tested in so many
enterprises of such a scope and following one another in quick
succession at a time when one has been successful in some, is still
engaged in conducting others, and only suspects the existence of others,
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 encountering danger, and that not even he who
saved their lives learned who it was he pitied.

[-48-] "For these and all his other acts of lawmaking and
reconstruction, great in themselves, but likely to be deemed small in
comparison with those others into which one cannot enter minutely, you
loved him as a father and cherished him as a benefactor, you glorified
him with such honors as you bestowed on no one e