funeral of Marius. He was stabbed but not killed. When Fimbria found
that he was likely to live, he indicted him. For what do you indict a
man so blameless? asked some one. For what? for not allowing himself to
be stabbed to the heart. This is exactly why the confederates have
indicted Roscius. His crime has been of escaping from their hands.
"Roscius killed his father," you say. "A young man, I suppose, led away
by worthless companions." Not so; he is more than forty years of age.
"Extravagance and debt drove him to it." No; you say yourself that he
never goes to an entertainment, and he certainly owes nothing. "Well,"
you say, "his father disliked him." Why did he dislike him? "That," you
reply, "I cannot say; but he certainly kept one son with him, and left
this Roscius to look after his farms." Surely this is a strange
punishment, to give him the charge of so fine an estate. "But," you
repeat, "he kept his other with him." "Now listen to me," cries Cicero,
turning with savage sarcasm to the prosecutor, "Providence never allowed
you to know who your father was. Still you have read books. Do you
remember in Caecilius' play how the father had two sons, and kept one
with him and left the other in the country? and do you remember that the
one who lived with him was not really his son, the other was true-born,
and yet it was the true-born who lived in the country? And is it such a
disgrace to live in the country? It is well that you did not live in old
times when they took a Dictator from the plow; when the men who made
Rome what it is cultivated their own land, but did not covet the land of
others. 'Ah! but,' you say, 'the father intended to disinherit him.'
Why? 'I cannot say.' Did he disinherit him? 'No, he did not.' Who
stopped him? 'Well, he was thinking of it.' To whom did he say so? 'To
no one.' Surely," cries Cicero, "this is to abuse the laws and justice
and your dignity in the basest and most wanton way, to make charges
which he not only cannot but does not even attempt to establish."