7. Is Rutilius unfortunate because those who condemned him decided a case against themselves for all time to come? because he was more willing to be deprived of his country than to be recalled from exile? because he alone dared to deny anything to the dictator Sulla, and when invited to return, not only refused, but fled farther? “Let those manage affairs,” said he, “whom thy good fortune keeps in Rome! Let them look upon the pool of blood in the Forum and the heads of senators floating on the Servilian lake,—for that was the field of carnage of those proscribed by Sulla—and the bands of assassins roaming through the city, and the many thousands of Roman citizens slain in one place after pledges of immunity had been given, yes, because of those very pledges! Let those look upon these things who are not able to endure exile.” 8. Shall we say that Sulla is to be congratulated because, when he descends to the Forum, a way is opened for him with the sword? because he allows the heads of men of consular rank to be shown him in public, and paid the price of their slaughter by the hand of the quaestor and from the fisc? And he who did these things is the same man that enacted the Cornelian law! Let us return to Regulus. What injury did his destiny do him by making him, the well-known exemplar of good faith, an exemplar of patient endurance? Nails pierce his skin, and whatever way he lays down his weary body he lies on a wound, while his open eyes doom him to perpetual wakefulness. 9. The greater the anguish, the greater will be the glory. Wouldst thou know how little he regretted the high value he set on fortitude? Heal his wounds and send him back to the senate—he will give the same advice (as before). Dost thou think Maecenas happier when a prey to the torments of love and when grieving over the daily repulses of a wayward wife, he courts sleep amid the sound of symphonies softly sounding in the distance? Though he stupify himself with wine, and seek diversion in the murmur of waters, or trick his troubled mind with a thousand pastimes, he lies awake on his bed of down no less than the other on his bed of torture. But for the former there is the solace that he is enduring hardness for a noble purpose, and he can look away from his pain to its cause; the latter, surfeited with pleasures, weighed down by an excess of good fortune, is more tormented by the cause of his sufferings than by the sufferings themselves.