in explaining the law than in laying down the principles of justice.  Those maxims which were derived from laws and from the common law, he constantly referred to the original principles of kindness and equity.  Nor was he more fond of arranging the conduct of law-suits than of preventing disputes altogether.  Therefore he is not in want of this memorial which a statue will provide; he has other and better ones.  For this statue will be only a witness of his honourable death; those actions will be the memorial of his glorious life.  So that this will be rather a monument of the gratitude of the senate, than of the glory of the man.

The affection of the son, too, will appear to have great influence in moving us to honour the father; for although, being overwhelmed with grief, he is not present, still you ought to be animated with the same feelings as if he were present.  But he is in such distress, that no father ever sorrowed more over the loss of an only son than he grieves for the death of his father.  Indeed, I think that it concerns also the fame of Servius Sulpicius the son, that he should appear to have paid all due respect to his father.  Although Servius Sulpicius could leave no nobler monument behind him than his son, the image of his own manners, and virtues, and wisdom, and piety, and genius; whose grief can either be alleviated by this honour paid to his father by you, or by no consolation at all.

Vi.  But when I recollect the many conversations which in the days of our intimacy on earth I have had with Servius Sulpicius, it appears to me, that if there be any feeling in the dead, a brazen statue, and that too a pedestrian one, will be more acceptable to him than a gilt equestrian one, such as was first erected to Lucius Sylla.  For Servius was wonderfully attached to the moderation of our forefathers, and was accustomed to reprove the insolence of this age.  As if, therefore, I were able to consult himself as to what he would wish, so I give my vote for a pedestrian statue of brass, as if I were speaking by his authority and inclination; which by the honour of the memorial will diminish and mitigate the great grief and regret of his fellow-citizens.  And it is certain that this my opinion, O conscript fathers, will be approved of by the opinion of Publius Servilius, who has given his vote that a sepulchre be publicly decreed to Servius Sulpicius, but has voted against the statue.  For if the death of an ambassador happening without bloodshed and violence requires no honour, why does he vote for the honour of a public funeral, which is the greatest honour that can be paid to a dead man!  If he grants that to Servius Sulpicius which was not given to Cnaeus Octavius, why does he think that we ought not to give to the former what was given to the latter?  Our ancestors, indeed, decreed statues to many men; public sepulchres to few.  But statues perish by weather, by violence, by lapse of time; but the sanctity of the sepulchres is in the soil itself, which can neither be moved nor destroyed by any violence; and while other things are extinguished, so sepulchres become holier by age.