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Remember too the strange speed with which he sent the news to Ameria, and sent it, not to the son, as one might expect, but to Capito his accomplice; for that he was an accomplice is evident enough. What else could he be when he so cheated the deputation that went to Sulla at Volaterrae?"
He ventured to defend Roscius of Ameria against an accusation of murder made by Chrysogonus, a prime favorite of Sulla. Cicero lashed the favorite vigorously, and won a verdict for his client. But he found it advisable to leave Rome immediately and resume his studies at Rhodes. Sulla ended his work by organizing a new senate and making a new code of laws.
Of the many other prodigies that then were taken notice of, the greater part were but of the ordinary stamp; it was, however, reported that at Ameria and Tuder, two cities in Italy, there were seen at nights in the sky, flaming darts and shields, now waved about, and then again clashing against one another, all in accordance with the postures and motions soldiers use in fighting; that at length one party retreating, and the other pursuing, they all disappeared westward.
After we had expressed our mutual affection I told him my story from the morning after the massacre and he told me his, which was commonplace. He had easily escaped from the slave-convoy between Narnia and Interamnia, had made his way to Ameria and found shelter there with slaves as an ordinary runaway slave. After a discreet interval he had travelled to Rome.
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 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.
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.
Sextus Roscius was entirely innocent. He had taken no part in politics at all. He had left a son who was his natural heir, and the township of Ameria sent up a petition to Sylla remonstrating against so iniquitous a robbery. The conspirators, finding themselves in danger of losing the reward of their crime, shifted their ground. They denied that they had themselves killed Sextus Roscius.
For myself at least, I confess, I have lately been entertained with one of these curiosities, to which I was an entire stranger before. My wife's grandfather desired I would look over his estate near Ameria.131 As I was walking over his grounds, 1 was shown a lake that lies below them, called Vadirnon,132 about which several very extraordinary things are told. I went up to this lake.
The duchy of Rome appears to have included the Tuscan, Sabine, and Latin conquests, of the first four hundred years of the city, and the limits may be distinctly traced along the coast, from Civita Vecchia to Terracina, and with the course of the Tyber from Ameria and Narni to the port of Ostia.
The man had been killed coming home from supper, in September, after it was dark, say at eight or nine o'clock, and the fact was known in Ameria before dawn.
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