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34The responsibility for these evils rested on the senators themselves. For whereas they ought to have set at their head some one man who had their best interests at heart and to have coöperated with him continually, they failed to do this, but took certain men into their favour, strengthened them against the rest, and later undertook to overthrow these favourites as well, and in consequence gained no friend but made everybody enemies. 2For men do not feel the same way toward those who have injured them and toward their benefactors, but whereas they remember their anger even against their will, yet they willingly forget their gratitude. This is because, on the one hand, they deprecate giving the impression that they have received benefits from others, since they will seem to be weaker than they, and, on the other hand, they are annoyed to have it thought that they have been injured by anybody with impunity, since that will imply cowardice on their part. 3So the senators, by not taking up with any one person, but attaching themselves first to one and then to another, and voting and doing, now something for them, now something against them, suffered much because of them and much also at their hands. 4For all the leaders had a single purpose in the war—the abolition of the popular government and the setting up of a sovereignty; and since the people were fighting to see whose slaves they should be, and the leaders to see who should be the people’s master, both alike were ruining the state, and each side gained a reputation which varied with its fortune. 5For those who were successful were considered shrewd and patriotic, while the defeated were called enemies of their country and accursed.
This was the pass to which the fortunes of Rome had at that time come. I shall now go on to describe the separate events.
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