y 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.

Let, then, that man be distinguished by that honour also, a man to
whom no honour can be given which is not deserved. Let us be grateful
in paying respect in death to him to whom we can now show no other
gratitude. And by that same step let the audacity of Marcus Antonius,
waging a nefarious war, be branded with infamy. For when these honours
have been paid to Servius Sulpicius, the evidence of his embassy
having been insulted and rejected by Antonius will remain for
everlasting.

VII. On which account I give my vote for a decree in this form: 'As
Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the son of Quintus, of the Lemonian tribe,
at a most critical period of the republic, and being ill with a very
serious and dangerous disease, preferred the authority of the senate
and the safety of the republic to his own life, and struggled against
the violence and severity of his illness, in order to arrive at the
camp of Antonius, to which the senate had sent him; and as he when he
had almost arrived at the camp, being overwhelmed by the violence of
the disease, has lost his life in discharging a most important office
of the republic; and as his death has been in strict correspondence to
a life passed with the greatest integrity and honour, during which he,
Servius Sulpicius, has often been of great service to the republic,
both as a private individual and in the discharge of various
magistracies; and as he, being such a man, has encountered death on
behalf of the republic while employed on an embassy;--the senate
decrees that a brazen pedestrian statue of Servius Sulpicius be
erected in the rostra in compliance with the resolution of this order,
and that his children and posterity sh