But this Publius Sulla he did defend, and defended successfully.

He was joined in the case with Hortensius, and declared that as to the matter of the former conspiracy he left all that to his learned friend, who was concerned with political matters of that date.[221] He, Cicero, had known nothing about them.

The part of the oration which most interests us is that in which he defends himself from the accusations somewhat unwisely made against himself personally by young Torquatus, the son of him who had been raised to the Consulship in the place of P.Sulla.
Torquatus had called him a foreigner because he was a "novus homo," and had come from the municipality of Arpinum, and had taunted him with being a king, because he had usurped authority over life and death in regard to Lentulus and the other conspirators.

He answers this very finely, and does so without an ill-natured word to young Torquatus, whom, from respect to his father, he desires to spare.

"Do not," he says, "in future call me a foreigner, lest you be answered with severity, nor a king, lest you be laughed at--unless, indeed, you think it king-like so to live as to be a slave not only to no man but to no evil passion; unless you think it be king-like to despise all lusts, to thirst for neither gold nor silver nor goods, to express yourself freely in the Senate, to think more of services due to the people than of favors won from them, to yield to none, and to stand firm against many.
If this be king-like, then I confess that I am a king." Sulla was acquitted, but the impartial reader will not the less feel sure that he had been part and parcel with Catiline in the conspiracy.