6
For as, in the case of your very kindness itself, its magnitude is so great that I cannot do adequate justice to it in my speech; so also in your zeal such great good-will and inclination towards me was displayed, that you seem not only to have taken my misfortune off from me, but even to have increased my dignity. For it was not my youthful sons and many other relations and kinsmen who offered up their prayers for my return, as they did for that of Publius Popillius, a most noble man. It was not, as it was in the case of Quintus Metellus, that most illustrious man, a son of an age fully proved by this time; or Lucius Diadematus, a man of consular rank and of the greatest authority; or Caius Metellus, a man of censorian rank; or their children; or Quintus Metellus Nepos, who at that time was standing for the consulship; or the sons of his sisters, the Luculli, the Servilii, and the Scipios;—for at that time there were many Metelli, or sons of the Metelli, who addressed supplications to you and to your fathers for the return of Quintus Metellus. And if my own preeminent dignity and most glorious achievements were not of sufficient influence, still the piety of my son, the prayers of my relations, the mourning garb of all the young men, the tears of all the old, had power to move the Roman people to pity.
