t nominally to a close in June, 81; but it has been
supposed by those who have placed this oration first that it was spoken
in that very year. This seems to have been impossible. "I am most
unwilling," says he, "to call to mind that subject, the very memory of
which should be wiped out from our thoughts."[63] 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. As to such violation of Sulla's own enactment, Cicero
excuses the Dictator in this very speech, likening him to Great Jove the
Thunderer. Even "Jupiter Optimus Maximus," as he is whose nod the
heavens, the earth, and seas obey--even he cannot so look after his
numerous affairs but that the winds and the storms will be too strong
sometimes, or the heat too great, or the cold too bitter. If so, how can
we wonder that Sulla, who has to rule the State, to govern, in fact, the
world, should not be able himself to see to everything? Jove probably
found it convenient not to see many things. Such must certainly have
been the case with Sulla.

I will venture, as other biographers have done before, to tell the story
of Sextus Roscius of Ameria at some length, because it is in itself a
tale of powerful romance, mysterious, grim, betraying guilt of the
deepest dye, misery most profound, and audacity unparalleled; because,
in a word, it is as interesting as any novel that modern fiction has
produced; and also, I will tell it, because it lets in a flood of light
upon the condition of Rome at the time. Our hair is made to stand on end
when we remember that men had to pick their steps in such a State as
this, and to live if it were possible, and, if not, then to be ready to
die. We come in upon the fag-end of the proscription, and see, not the
bloody wreath of Sulla as he triumphed on his Marian foes, not the cruel
persecution of the ruler determined to establish his order of things by
slaughtering every foe, but the necessary accompaniments of such
ruthless deeds--those attendant villanies for which the Jupiter Optimus
Maximus of the day had neither ears nor eyes. If in history we can ever
get a glimpse at the real life of the people, it is always mor