His client was one Sextus Roscius, who was accused of having murdered his father. It was the first trial of a capital offense since the proscription. The story Cicero presented to the jury threw a sharp light on the impact that high events in the capital had had on the lives of ordinary people. Roscius’s father, a well-to-do farmer, had paid a visit to Rome during the previous summer or autumn. One night, walking back from a dinner party, he was set upon and killed near some public baths. His son, meantime, was at their home at Ameria, a hill town to the north of Rome, looking after the family estate.
A long-standing feud existed between the victim and two fellow Amerians. According to Cicero, one of the pair happened to be in Rome and immediately sent a messenger to the other with the news of Roscius’s father’s death. This man passed the information to Chrysogonus, a powerful freedman and favorite of Sulla, then encamped with his army a hundred miles north of Ameria. A simple but effective plot was devised to get hold of the substantial Roscius estate.
The proscription lists had been closed on June 1, 81 BC, but Chrysogonus arranged for Roscius’s father’s name to be entered on it retrospectively, despite the fact that he was a well-known conservative. AS a result, all his property was confiscated and publicly auctioned. Although valued at 6,000,000 sesterces, it was knocked down to Chrysogonus for a trifling 2,000 sesterces. AS his share of the spoils, one of the Amerians was given some of Roscius’s father’s land. The remainder went to Chrysogonus, who appointed the other Amerian as his agent and business manager.
The affair caused a great deal of bad blood in Ameria, where Roscius’s father had been a respected figure, and a civic delegation was dispatched to Sulla to lay a complaint. One of the alleged conspirators was appointed to the group and he made sure that it failed to obtain a personal audience with the Dictator. Instead, the Amerians met Chrysogonus, who gave them the assurances they asked for: he would have Roscius’s father’s name removed from the proscription list and would help the son to regain possession of the dead man’s estate.
This bought the conspirators some time, but obviously their promises would have to be delivered sooner or later—and seen to be delivered. If young Roscius were somehow to come by a nasty accident in the meantime, the problem would be solved. This would not be difficult, for he was now isolated, penniless and vulnerable. After more than one attempt on his life, he realized it would be sensible to leave town and he made his way south to the comparative safety of Rome.
Foiled, Chrysogonus and his partners in crime decided on a bold course of action. In fact, if they wanted to preserve their gains, they had little other choice. Father and son had been on poor terms (even Cicero acknowledged this) and it was arranged for the young man to be accused of parricide. This was among the most serious offenses in the charge book and was one of the few crimes to attract the death penalty under Roman law. The method of execution was extremely unpleasant. An ancient legal authority described what took place: “According to the custom of our ancestors it was established that the parricide should be beaten with blood-red rods, sewn in a leather sack together with a dog [an animal despised by Greeks and Romans], a cock [like the parricide devoid of all feelings of affection], a viper [whose mother was supposed to die when it was born], and an ape [a caricature of a man], and the sack thrown into the depths of the sea or a river.”
It is difficult to judge how convincing the case against Roscius was. AS with all Cicero’s speeches at the bar, the arguments of the other side have not survived—sometimes (albeit not on this occasion) even the verdict is lost. Taken as a whole, the story Cicero tells is internally consistent. The likeliest explanation of the murder is either that Roscius was the victim of a late-night mugging, plausible enough in a city without police and street lighting, which his enemies in Ameria then opportunistically exploited—or alternatively that they arranged his assassination themselves.
Cicero’s speech appears to have been soundly based on meticulous research, but its dramatic effect derived more from its daring structure than from the evidence. He opened with a refutation of the charge of parricide. Then he shifted gear and took the offensive: his aim was to destroy the character of the two Amerians and pin the murder charge on them. Finally, and one can only imagine the gasps of surprise around the courtroom, he launched into a full-frontal assault on the Dictator’s favorite, Chrysogonus and the un-Roman excesses of his lifestyle. He, the argument went, was the real villain of the piece.
“He comes down from his mansion on the Palatine Hill,” Cicero intoned with a measured flourish before swooping in for the kill. “For his enjoyment he owns a delightful country place in the suburbs as well as some fine farms close to the city. His home is crammed with costly gold, silver and copper Corinthian and Delian dishes, including that famous pressure cooker which he recently bought at auction at so high a price that when people heard the bids called they thought a landed estate was up for sale. And that is not all. How much embossed silver, carpets and coverlets, pictures, statues, marble do you think he owns? AS much, of course, as he could pile up in one house, taken from many famous families during this age of riot and pillage.” Cicero was nothing if not a genius at character assassination. “And just look at the man himself,” he concluded, “gentlemen of the jury. You see how, with his elegantly styled hair and reeking with perfume, he floats around the Forum, an ex-slave surrounded by a crowd of citizens of Rome, you see how superior he feels himself to be to everyone else, that he alone is wealthy and powerful.”
The court burst into loud applause and Roscius was acquitted. (Unfortunately, the future fate of the players in the drama is unknown.) Cicero had scored a brilliant victory and in one bound joined the front rank of Roman orators. However, the achievement was not without risk.
Cicero insisted that he was not attacking Sulla, who (he claimed) knew nothing about the case, but it was hard to read the speech other than as a critique of the regime. The Dictator was in a position to take revenge on an impertinent young advocate if he wanted to do so. Soon after Cicero compounded the offense by taking on another case with political overtones, that of a woman from Arretium who challenged Sulla’s withdrawal of her Roman citizenship.
In any event, the Dictator took no action against Cicero. Perhaps he could not be bothered to intervene in a minor matter of this kind; he was beginning to lose interest in the exercise of power and withdrew into private life in the following year.
The chief result of Cicero’s defense of Roscius was a flood of briefs. In the months that followed he brought a rapid succession of cases to court—as he recalled, “smelling somewhat of midnight oil.” He was soon suffering severely from overwork.
He did, however, make time to find a wife. This would help him stabilize and enhance his finances and, if he chose well, extend his political connections. It seems that in or around 79, at the age of twenty-seven, Cicero married Terentia. Apparently much younger than he was, she came from a wealthy, perhaps aristocratic family and brought with her a dowry of 480,000 sesterces. This was a substantial fortune, well beyond the sum of 400,000 sesterces required for entry into the equestrian order. She owned woods and pastureland, probably near Cicero’s villa at Tusculum. Little is known about her background, except that her half-sister, Fabia, was a Vestal Virgin. She had a strong character, as Plutarch observed: “Terentia was never at any time a shrinking type of woman; she was bold and energetic by nature, ambitious, and, as Cicero says himself, was more inclined to take a part in his public life than to share with him any of her domestic responsibilities.”