Would to heaven that the examples of such cruelty had been confined to foreigners, and that along with other vices from abroad the barbarity of torture and such venting of anger had not been imported into the practices of Romans! Marcus Marius, to whom the people erected statues in every street, whom they worshiped with offerings of frankincense and wine — this man by the command of Lucius Sulla had his ankles broken, his eyes gouged out, his tongue and his hands cut off, and little by little and limb by limb Sulla tore him to pieces, just as if he could make him die as many times as he could maim him. And who was it who executed this command? Who but Catiline, already training his hands to every sort of crime? He hacked him to pieces before the tomb of Quintus Catulus, doing violence to the ashes of that gentlest of men, above which a hero — of evil influence, no doubt, yet popular and loved not so much undeservedly as to excess — shed his blood drop by drop. It was meet that a Marius should suffer these things, that a Sulla should give the orders, and that a Catiline should execute them, but it was not meet that the state should receive in her breast the swords of her enemies and her protectors alike. But why do I search out ancient crimes? Only recently Gaius Caesar slashed with the scourge and tortured Sextus Papinius, whose father had been consul, and Betilienus Bassus, his own quaestor and the son of his procurator, and others, both Roman senators and knights, all in one day — and not to extract information but for amusement. Then so impatient was he of postponing his pleasure — a pleasure so great that his cruelty demanded it without delay — that he decapitated some of his victims by lamplight, as he was strolling with some ladies and senators on the terrace of his mother’s gardens, which runs between the colonnade and the bank of the river. But what was the pressing need? What public or private danger was threatened by a single night’s delay? How small a matter it would have been if he had waited just till dawn, so as not to kill the senators of the Roman people in his pumps9!