allotted as his share, was not only chosen to be one of
the ten, but actually became their spokesman and their manager. The
great object was to keep Sulla himself in the dark, and this Capito
managed to do by the aid of Chrysogonus. None of the ten were allowed to
see Sulla. They are hoaxed into believing that Chrysogonus himself will
look to it, and so they go back to Ameria, having achieved nothing. We
are tempted to believe that the deputation was a false deputation, each
of whom probably had his little share, so that in this way there might
be an appearance of justice. If it was so, Cicero has not chosen to tell
that part of the story, having, no doubt, some good advocate's reason
for omitting it.

So far the matter had gone with the Tituses, and with Chrysogonus who
had got his lion's share. Our poor Roscius, the victim, did at first
abandon his property, and allow himself to be awed into silence. We
cannot but think that he was a poor creature, and can fancy that he had
lived a wretched life during all the murders of the Sullan
proscriptions. But in his abject misery he had found his way up among
the great friends of his family at Rome, and had there been charged with
the parricide, because Chrysogonus and the Tituses began to be afraid of
what these great friends might do.

This is the story as Cicero has been able to tell it in hiss speech.
Beyond that, we only know that the man was acquitted. Whether he got
back part of his father's property there is nothing to inform us.
Whether further inquiry was made as to the murder; whether evil befell
those two Tituses or Chrysogonus was made to disgorge, there has been no
one to inform us. The matter was of little importance in Rome, where
murders and organized robberies of the kind were the common incidents of
every-day life. History would have meddled with nothing so ordinary had
not it happened that the case fell into the hands of a man so great a
master of his language that it has been worth the while of ages to
perpetuate the speech which he made in the matter. But the story, as a
story of Roman life, is interesting, and it gives a slight aid to
history in explaining the condition of things which Sulla had produced.

The attack upon Chrysogonus is bold, and cannot but have been offensive
to Sulla, though Sulla is by name absolved from immediate blame.
Chrysogonus himself, the favorite, he does not spare, saying words so
bitter of tone that one would think that t