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.[64] As we read the story, we feel that very much depends on the character of this man, and we are aware that our only description of him comes from his own advocate. Cicero would probably say much which, though beyond the truth, could not be absolutely refuted, but would state as facts nothing that was absolutely false. Cicero describes him as a middle-aged man, who never left his farm, doing his duty well by his father, as whose agent he acted on the land--a simple, unambitious, ignorant man, to whom one's sympathies are due rather than our antipathy, because of his devotion to agriculture. He was now accused of having murdered his father. The accusation was conducted by one Erucius, who in his opening speech--the speech made before that by Cicero--had evidently spoken ill of rural employments. Then Cicero reminds him, and the judges, and the Court how greatly agriculture had been honored in the old days, when Consuls were taken from the ploughs. The imagination, however, of the reader pictures to itself a man who could hardly have been a Consul at any time--one silent, lonely, uncouth, and altogether separate from the pleasant intercourses of life. Erucius had declared of him that he never took part in any festivity. Cicero uses this to show that he was not likely to have been tempted by luxury to violence. Old Roscius had had two sons, of whom he had kept one with him in Rome--the one, probably, whose society had been dearest to him. He, however, had died, and our Roscius--Sextus Roscius Amerinus, as he came to be called when he was made famous by the murder--was left on one of the farms down in the country. The accusation would probably not have been made, had he not been known to be a man sullen, silent, rough, and unpopular--as to whom such a murder might be supposed to be credible.