Why should any accusation have been made unless there was clear
evidence as to guilt? That is the first question which presents
itself. This son received no benefit from his father's death. He had
in fact been absolutely beggared by it--had lost the farm, the farming
utensils, every slave in the place, all of which had belonged to his
father, and not to himself. They had been taken, and divided; taken
by persons called "Sectores," informers or sequestrators, who took
possession of and sold--or did not sell--confiscated goods. Such men
in this case had pounced down upon the goods of the murdered man at
once and swallowed them all up, not leaving an acre or a slave to our
Roscius. Cicero tells us who divided the spoil among them. There were
two other Rosciuses, distant relatives, probably, both named Titus;
Titus Roscius Magnus, who sojourned in Rome, and who seems to have
exercised the trade of informer and assassin during the proscriptions,
and Titus Roscius Capito, who, when at home, lived at Ameria, but of
whom Cicero tells us that he had become an apt pupil of the other
during this affair. They had got large shares, but they shared also
with one Chrysogonus, the freedman and favorite of Sulla, who did the
dirty work for Jupiter Optimus Maximus when Jupiter Optimus Maximus
had not time to do it himself. We presume that Chrysogonus had the
greater part of the plunder. As to Capito, the apt pupil, we are told
again and again that he got three farms for himself.

Again, it is necessary to say that all these facts come from Cicero,
who, in accordance with the authorized practice of barristers, would
scruple at saying nothing which he found in his instructions. How
instructions were conveyed to an advocate in those days we do not
quite know. There was no system of attorneys. But the story was
probably made out for the "patronus" or advocate by an underling,