[39]
Sextus Roscius has murdered his father. What sort of man is he? is he a young man,
corrupted, and led on by worthless men? He is more than forty years old. Is he forsooth
an old assassin, a bold man, and one well practised in murder? You have not heard this
so much as mentioned by the accuser. To be sure; then, luxury, and the magnitude of his
debts, and the ungovernable desires of his disposition, have urged the man to this
wickedness? Erucius acquitted him of luxury, when he said that he was scarcely ever
present at any banquet. But he never owed anything Further what evil desires could exist
in that man who as his accuser himself objected to him has always lived in the country
and spent his time in cultivating his land, a mode of life which is utterly removed from
covetousness, and inseparably allied to virtue?
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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