The Kalends of June had been fixed by Sulla as the day on which the slaughter legalized by the proscriptions should cease. In the September following an old gentleman named Sextus Roscius was murdered in the streets of Rome as he was going home from supper one night, attended by two slaves. By whom he was murdered, probably more than one or two knew then, but nobody knows now. He was a man of reputation, well acquainted with the Metelluses and Messalas of the day, and passing rich. His name had been down on no proscription list, for he had been a friend of Sulla's friends. He was supposed, when he was murdered, to be worth about six million of sesterces, or something between fifty and sixty thousand pounds of our money. Though there was at that time much money in Rome, this amounted to wealth; and though we cannot say who murdered the man, we may feel sure that he was murdered for his money. Immediately on his death his chattels were seized and sold--or divided, probably, without being sold--including his slaves, in whom, as with every rich Roman, much of his wealth was invested; and his landed estates--his farms, of which he had many--were also divided. As to the actual way in which this was done, we are left much in the dark. Had the name of Sextus Roscius been on one of the lists, even though the list would then have been out of date, we could have understood that it should have been so. Jupiter Optimus Maximus could not see everything, and great advantages were taken. We must only suppose that things were so much out of order that they who had been accustomed to seize upon the goods of the proscribed were able to stretch their hands so as to grasp almost anything that came in their way. They could no longer procure a rich man's name to be put down on the list, but they could pretend that it had been put down. At any rate, certain persons seized and divided the chattels of the murdered man as though he had been proscribed.