not gone many steps before he was cut down by a man that was following
him. Lucius Catiline's conduct was especially wicked. He had murdered
his own brother. This was before the proscription began. He went to
Sulla and begged that the name might be put in the list as if the man
were still alive; and it was so put. His gratitude to Sulla was shown by
his killing one Marius, who belonged to the opposite faction, and
bringing his head to Sulla as he sat in the forum. (This Marius was a
kinsman of the great democratic leader, and was one of the most popular
men in Rome.) This done, he washed his hands in the holy water-basin of
the temple of Apollo."

Forty senators and sixteen hundred knights, and more than as many men of
obscure station, are said to have perished. At last, on the first of
June, 81, the list was closed. Still the reign of terror was not yet at
an end, as the strange story which I shall now relate will amply prove.
To look into the details of a particular case makes us better able to
imagine what it really was to live at Rome in the days of the Dictator
than to read many pages of general description. The story is all the
more impressive because the events happened after order had been
restored and things were supposed to be proceeding in their regular
course.

The proscription came to an end, as has been said, in the early summer
of 81. In the autumn of the same year a certain Sextus Roscius was
murdered in the streets of Rome as he was returning home from dinner.
Roscius was a native of Ameria, a little town of Etruria, between fifty
and sixty miles north of Rome. He was a wealthy man, possessed, it
would seem, of some taste and culture, and an intimate friend of some of
the noblest families at Rome. In politics he belonged to the party of
Sulla, to which indeed in its less prosperous days he had rendered good
service. Since its restoration to power he had lived much at Rome,
evidently considering himself, as indeed he had the right to do, to be
perfectly safe from any danger of proscription. But he was wealthy, and
he had among his own kinsfolk enemies who desired and who would profit
by his death. One of these, a certain Titus Roscius, surnamed Magnus,
was at the time of the murder residing at Rome; the other, who was known
as Capito, was at home at Ameria. The murder was committed about seven
o'clock in the evening. A messenger immediately left Rome with the news,
and made such haste to Ameria that h