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Updated: May 3, 2025
The story is all the more impressive because the events happened after order had been restored and things were supposed to be proceeding in their regular course. The proscription came to an end, as has been said, in the early summer of 81. In the autumn of the same year a certain Sextus Roscius was murdered in the streets of Rome as he was returning home from dinner.
No doubt he had tried his 'prentice hand in cases of less importance. That of these two the defence of Sextus Roscius came first, is also to be found in his own words. More than once, in pleading for Quintius, he speaks of the proscriptions and confiscations of Sulla as evils then some time past.
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.
When the tone of the two speeches is compared, it will become evident that that for Sextus Roscius was spoken the first. It was, as I have said, spoken in his twenty-seventh year, B.C. 80, the year after the proscription lists had been closed, when Sulla was still Dictator, and when the sales of confiscated goods, though no longer legal, were still carried on under assumed authority.
At first, it is said, he as well as Demosthenes, was defective in his delivery, and on that account paid much attention to the instructions, sometimes of Roscius, the comedian, and sometimes of Aesop, the tragedian.
You remember what old Tully says in his oration, pro Archia poeta, concerning one of your confraternity quis nostrum tam anino agresti ac duro fuit ut ut I forget the Latin the meaning is, which of us was so rude and barbarous as to remain unmoved at the death of the great Roscius, whose advanced age was so far from preparing us for his death, that we rather hoped one so graceful, so excellent in his art, ought to be exempted from the common lot of mortality?
The first stage attempt of our English Roscius was in 1727. Not long after, he was invited to Lisbon by an uncle, who was a considerable wine merchant in that city, but his stay there was very short, for he returned to Lichfield the year following.
In the fragment we have of the speech there is nothing remarkable except the studied clearness of the language; but it reminds us of the opinion which Cicero had expressed of this actor in the oration which he made for Publius Quintius, who was the brother-in-law of Roscius.
The subject of the action against Roscius is not easy to state in a few words. Yet Roscius is sometimes called a histrio. Roscius was a perfect master of his art, according to Cicero; and his name became proverbial among the Romans to express a perfect master of any art. Roscius wrote a work in which he compared oratory and acting. Appian merely speaks of his dying of fever.
Roscius, Roscius!" said Bonaparte, smiling, "have you grown a flatterer during my absence?" "Roscius was the friend of Caesar, general, and when the conqueror returned from Gaul he probably said to him about the same thing I have said to you." Bonaparte laid his band on Talma's shoulder. "Would he have said the same words after crossing the Rubicon?" Talma looked Bonaparte straight in the face.
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