than one or two knew then, but nobody knows now. He was a man of
reputation, well acquainted with the Metelluses and Messalas of the
day, and passing rich. His name had been down on no proscription list,
for he had been a friend of Sulla's friends. He was supposed, when he
was murdered, to be worth about six million of sesterces, or something
between fifty and sixty thousand pounds of our money. Though there was
at that time much money in Rome, this amounted to wealth; and though
we cannot say who murdered the man, we may feel sure that he was
murdered for his money.

Immediately on his death his chattels were seized and sold--or
divided, probably, without being sold--including his slaves, in whom,
as with every rich Roman, much of his wealth was invested; and his
landed estates--his farms, of which he had many--were also divided.
As to the actual way in which this was done, we are left much in the
dark. Had the name of Sextus Roscius been on one of the lists, even
though the list would then have been out of date, we could have
understood that it should have been so. Jupiter Optimus Maximus could
not see everything, and great advantages were taken. We must only
suppose that things were so much out of order that they who had been
accustomed to seize upon the goods of the proscribed were able to
stretch their hands so as to grasp almost anything that came in their
way. They could no longer procure a rich man's name to be put down on
the list, but they could pretend that it had been put down. At any
rate, certain persons seized and divided the chattels of the murdered
man as though he had been proscribed.

Old Roscius, when he was killed, had one son, of whom we are told that
he lived always in the country at Ameria, looking after his father's
farms, never visiting the capital, which was distant from Ameria