Moral essays. With an English translation by J.W. Basore

—ON ANGER, III. XVII. 4-xvin. 3for by the narrowness of his quarters he was forcedto use these instead of feet—his sides, too, a mass ofsores from rubbing, to those who beheld him hisappearance was no less disgusting than terrible, andha%ing been turned by his punishment into a monsterhe had forfeited even pity. Yet, while he whosuffered these things was utterly unlike a humanbeing, he who inflicted them was still less like one.Would to heaven that the examples of such crueltyhad been confined to foreigners, and that along withother vices from abroad the barbarity of torture andsuch venting of anger had not been imported into thepractices of Romans ! Marcus Marius, to whom thepeople erected statues in every street, whom theyworshipped \Wth offerings of frankincense and ^^'inethis man by the command of Lucius Sulla had hisankles broken, his eyes gouged out, his tongue andhis hands cut off, and little by little and limb by limbSulla tore him to pieces, just as if he could makehim die as many times as he could maim him. Andwho was it who executed tliis command ? Who butCatiline, abeady training his hands to every sort ofcrime ? He hacked him to pieces before the tombof Quintus Catulus, doing violence to the ashes ofthat gentlest of men, above which a hero—of evilinfluence, no doubt, yet popular and loved not somuch undeservedly as to excess—shed his blood3brop by drop. It was meet that a Marius shouldmffer these things, that a Sulla should give theorders, and that a Catihne should execute them, butwas not meet that the state should receive in herbreast the swords of her enemies and her protectorsilike. But why do I search out ancient crimes ?Duly recently Gains Caesar slashed with the scourge301