Why should any accusation have been made unless there was clear evidence as to guilt? That is the first question which presents itself. This son received no benefit from his father's death. He had in fact been absolutely beggared by it--had lost the farm, the farming utensils, every slave in the place, all of which had belonged to his father, and not to himself. They had been taken, and divided; taken by persons called "Sectores," informers or sequestrators, who took possession of and sold--or did not sell--confiscated goods. Such men in this case had pounced down upon the goods of the murdered man at once and swallowed them all up, not leaving an acre or a slave to our Roscius. Cicero tells us who divided the spoil among them. 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. They had got large shares, but they shared also with one Chrysogonus, the freedman and favorite of Sulla, who did the dirty work for Jupiter Optimus Maximus when Jupiter Optimus Maximus had not time to do it himself. We presume that Chrysogonus had the greater part of the plunder. As to Capito, the apt pupil, we are told again and again that he got three farms for himself. Again, it is necessary to say that all these facts come from Cicero, who, in accordance with the authorized practice of barristers, would scruple at saying nothing which he found in his instructions. How instructions were conveyed to an advocate in those days we do not quite know. There was no system of attorneys. But the story was probably made out for the "patronus" or advocate by an underling, and in some way prepared for him. That which was thus prepared he exaggerated as the case might seem to require. It has to be understood of Cicero that he possessed great art and, no doubt, great audacity in such exaggeration; in regard to which we should certainly not bear very heavily upon him now, unless we are prepared to bear more heavily upon those who do the same thing in our own enlightened days. But Cicero, even as a young man, knew his business much too well to put forward statements which could be disproved. The accusation came first; then the speech in defence; after that the evidence, which was offered only on the side of the accuser, and which was subject to cross-examination. Cicero would have no opportunity of producing evidence. He was thus exempted from the necessity of proving his statements, but was subject to have them all disproved. I think we may take it for granted that the property of the murdered man was divided as he tells us.