3.
[7]
And since you have at all times been covetous of glory and greedy of praise beyond all other
nations, you have to wipe out that stain, received in the former Mithridates War, which has
now fixed itself deeply and eaten its way into the Roman name, the stain arising from the fact
that he, who in one day marked down by one order, and one single letter, all the Roman
citizens in all Asia, scattered as they were over so
many cities, for slaughter and butchery, has not only never yet suffered any chastisement
worthy of his wickedness, but now, twenty-three years after that time, is still a king, and a
king in such a way that he is not content to hide himself in Pontus, or in the recesses of Cappadocia, but he seeks to emerge from his hereditary kingdom, and to range
among your revenues, in the broad light of Asia.
[8]
Indeed up to this time your generals have been, contending
with the king so as to carry off tokens of victory rather than actual victory. Lucius Sulla
has triumphed, Lucius Murena has triumphed over Mithridates, two most gallant men, and most
consummate generals; but yet they have triumphed in such a way that he, though routed and
defeated, was still king. Not but what praise is to be given to those generals for what they
did. Pardon must be conceded to them for what they left undone; because the republic recalled
Sulla from that war into Italy, and Sulla recalled
Murena.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.