[sect. 2]
P. Sullam patrem: P. Cornelius Sulla, in whose defense against the charge of having taken part in the Catilinarian conspiracy Cicero delivered the oration Pro Sulla in 62 B.C.
habebamus: cf. sic habeto, Ep. XXVI.1n.
populus, etc.: i.e. the people do not care (to know how he died), as long as they know he is dead. There is probably, as Reid suggests, a double meaning in combustum. Comburere is used literally of burning a man's body upon a funeral pyre, as inAtt. 14.10.1, and figuratively of roasting a man in the courts, as our slang phrase has it. Cf. Q. fr. 1.2.6 deinde rogas Fabium ut et patrem et filium vivos comburat, si possit; si minus, ad te mittat uti iudicio comburantur.
hoc tu, etc.: Cassius replied (Fam. 15.19.3) cuius (i.e. Sullae) ego mortem forti mercules animo tuli.
πρόσωπον πόλεως, a familiar face in the city.
ne hasta refrixisset: a hasta stuck in the ground was the sign of an auction. Sulla gained possession at such sales of many estates confiscated by Caesar; cf. Fam. 15.19.3 Sulla [gap in text] omnia bona coemit. This fact caused his unpopularity. Cicero speaks of his death in the same way in writing to Dolabella (Fam. 9.10.3): ego cetero qui animo aequo fero; unum vereor ne hasta Caesaris refrixerit. Upon refrixisset, cf. Intr. 99.
Mindius [gap in text] perdidisse: the butcher Mindius and the perfumer Attius have now no competitor at auction sales.