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