of ages to perpetuate the speech which he made in the matter. But the
story, as a story of Roman life, is interesting, and it gives a slight
aid to history in explaining the condition of things which Sulla had
produced.

The attack upon Chrysogonus is bold, and cannot but have been
offensive to Sulla, though Sulla is by name absolved from immediate
blame. Chrysogonus himself, the favorite, he does not spare, saying
words so bitter of tone that one would think that the judges--Sulla's
judges--would have stopped him, had they been able. "Putting aside
Sextus Roscius," he says, "I demand, first of all, why the goods of an
esteemed citizen were sold; then, why have the goods been sold of one
who had not himself been proscribed, and who had not been killed while
defending Sulla's enemies? It is against those only that the law is
made. Then I demand why they were sold when the legal day for such
sales had passed, and why they were sold for such a trifle."[72] Then
he gives us a picture of Chrysogonus flaunting down the streets. "You
have seen him, judges, how, his locks combed and perfumed, he swims
along the Forum "--he, a freedman, with a crowd of Roman citizens
at his heels, that all may see that he thinks himself inferior to
none--"the only happy man of the day, the only one with any power in
his hands."[73]

This trial was, as has been said, a "causa publica," a criminal
accusation of such importance as to demand that it should be tried
before a full bench of judges. Of these the number would be uncertain,
but they were probably above fifty. The Preter of the day--the Preter
to whom by lot had fallen for that year that peculiar duty--presided,
and the judges all sat round him. Their duty seems to have consisted
in listening to the pleadings, and then in voting. Each judge could