something under fifty miles; a rough, uncouth, and probably honest
man--one, at any rate, to whom the ways of the city were unknown, and
who must have been but partially acquainted with the doings of the
time.[64] As we read the story, we feel that very much depends on the
character of this man, and we are aware that our only description of
him comes from his own advocate. Cicero would probably say much which,
though beyond the truth, could not be absolutely refuted, but would
state as facts nothing that was absolutely false. Cicero describes him
as a middle-aged man, who never left his farm, doing his duty well
by his father, as whose agent he acted on the land--a simple,
unambitious, ignorant man, to whom one's sympathies are due rather
than our antipathy, because of his devotion to agriculture. He was now
accused of having murdered his father. The accusation was conducted by
one Erucius, who in his opening speech--the speech made before that
by Cicero--had evidently spoken ill of rural employments. Then Cicero
reminds him, and the judges, and the Court how greatly agriculture
had been honored in the old days, when Consuls were taken from the
ploughs. The imagination, however, of the reader pictures to itself
a man who could hardly have been a Consul at any time--one silent,
lonely, uncouth, and altogether separate from the pleasant
intercourses of life. Erucius had declared of him that he never took
part in any festivity. Cicero uses this to show that he was not likely
to have been tempted by luxury to violence. Old Roscius had had two
sons, of whom he had kept one with him in Rome--the one, probably,
whose society had been dearest to him. He, however, had died, and our
Roscius--Sextus Roscius Amerinus, as he came to be called when he was
made famous by the murder--was left on one of the farms down in the
country. The accusation would probably not have been made, had he not
been known to be a man sullen, silent, rough, and unpopular--as to
whom such a murder might be supposed to be credible.