t cause to travel all through
the night? Why was it necessary that Capito should know all about it at
once? "I cannot think," says Cicero, "only that I see that Capito has
got three of the farms out of the thirteen which the murdered man
owned!" But Capito is to be produced as a witness, and Cicero gives us
to understand what sort of cross-examination he will have to undergo.

In all this the reader has to imagine much, and to come to conclusions
as to facts of which he has no evidence. When that hurried messenger was
sent, there was probably no idea of accusing the son. The two real
contrivers of the murder would have been more on their guard had they
intended such a course. It had been conceived that when the man was dead
and his goods seized, the fear of Sulla's favorite, the still customary
dread of the horrors of the time, would cause the son to shrink from
inquiry. Hitherto, when men had been killed and their goods taken, even
if the killing and the taking had not been done strictly in accordance
with Sulla's ordinance, it had been found safer to be silent and to
endure; but this poor wretch, Sextus, had friends in Rome--friends who
were friends of Sulla--of whom Chrysogonus and the Tituses had probably
not bethought themselves. When it came to pass that more stir was made
than they had expected, then the accusation became necessary.

But, in order to obtain the needed official support and aid, Chrysogonus
must be sought. Sulla was then at Volaterra, in Etruria perhaps 150
miles north-west from Rome, and with him was his favorite Chrysogonus.
In four days from the time of this murder the news was earned thither,
and, so Cicero states, by the same messenger--by Glaucia--who had taken
it to Ameria. Chrysogonus immediately saw to the selling of the goods,
and from this Cicero implies that Chrysogonus and the two Tituses were
in partnership.

But it seems that when the fact of the death of old Roscius was known at
Ameria--at which place he was an occasional resident himself, and the
most conspicuous man in the place--the inhabitants, struck with horror,
determined to send a deputation to Sulla. Something of what was being
done with their townsman's property was probably known, and there seems
to have been a desire for justice. Ten townsmen were chosen to go to
Sulla, and to beg that he would personally look into the matter. Here,
again, we are very much in the dark, because this very Capito, to whom
these farms were