and grudge to perform, the trouble can be easily mended.  For if We endure willingly all necessary things and show the white feather before none of them, all those matters in which one might assume unwillingness have been abolished.  There is, indeed, an old saying and a very good one, to the effect that we ought not to think it requisite for whatever we wish to come to pass, but to wish for whatever does come to pass as the result of any necessity.  We neither have free choice in our course of life nor is it on ourselves that we are dependent; but according as it may suit Fortune, and according to the character of the Divinity granted each one of us for the fulfillment of what is ordained, must we also regard our life.

[-25-] “Such is the nature of the case whether we like it or not.  If, now, it is not mere dishonor or mere exile that troubles you, but the fact that not only without having done your country any hurt, but after having benefited her greatly you were dishonored and expelled, look at it in this way,—­that once it was destined for you to have such an experience, it has been the noblest and the best fortune that could befall you to be despitefully used without having committed any wrong.  You advised and performed all that was proper for the citizens, not as individual but as consul, not meddling officiously in a private capacity but obeying the decree of the senate, not as a party measure but for the best ends.  This or that other person, on the contrary, out of his superior power and insolence had devised everything against you, wherefore disasters and grief belong to him for his injustice, but for you it is noble as well as necessary to bear bravely what the Divinity has determined.  Surely you would not have preferred to cooeperate with Catiline and to conspire with Lentulus, to give your country the exact opposite of advantageous counsel, to discharge none of the duties laid upon you by it, and thus to remain at home under a burden of wickedness instead of displaying uprightness and being exiled.  Accordingly, if you have any care for reputation, it is far preferable for you to have been driven out, guilty of no wrong, than to have remained at home by executing some villainy; for, among other considerations, shame attaches to the men who have unjustly cast one forth, but not to the man who is wantonly expelled.

[-26-] “Moreover, the story as I heard it was that you did not depart unwillingly nor after conviction, but of your own accord; that you hated to live with them, seeing that you could not make them better and would not endure to perish with them, and that you were exiled not from your country but from those who were plotting against her.  Consequently they would be the ones dishonored and banished, having cast out all that is good from their souls, but you would be honored and fortunate, as being nobody’s slave in unseemly fashion and possessing all fitting qualities, whether you choose to live in Sicily, in