M. Tullius Cicero, Pro S. Roscio Amerino, 49

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[49] What do you think of this very Sextus Roscius? How great is his fondness for, and shrewdness in rural affairs! As I hear from his relations, most honourable men, you are not more skillful in this your business of an accuser, than he is in his. But, as I think, since it seems good to Chrysogonus, who has left him no farm, he will be able now to forget this skill of his, and to give up this taste. And although that is a sad and a scandalous thing, yet he will bear it, O judges, with equanimity, if, by your verdict, he can preserve his life and his character; but this is intolerable, if he is both to have this calamity brought upon him on account of the goodness and number of his farms, and if that is especially to be imputed to him as a crime that he cultivated them with great care; so that it is not to be misery enough to have cultivated them for others not for himself, unless it is also to be accounted a crime that he cultivated them at all.

Pro S. Roscio Amerino. M. Tullius Cicero. London. 1903.

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Current edition Perseus

For Sextus Roscius of Ameria (English) (Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 1. Yonge, Charles Duke, translator. London: Bell, 1903.)

Editions (1)

Pro Sex. Roscio Amerino Perseus (Cicero. M. Tulli Ciceronis Orationes, Volume 1. Clark, Albert Curtis, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908.) — 49 focus

[49] quid censes hunc ipsum Sex. Roscium quo studio et qua intellegentia esse in rusticis rebus? Vt ex his propinquis eius, hominibus honestissimis, audio, non tu in isto artificio accusatorio callidior es quam hic in suo. verum, ut opinor, quoniam ita Chrysogono videtur qui huic nullum praedium reliquit, et artificium obliviscatur et studium deponat licebit. quod tametsi miserum et indignum est, feret¹ tamen aequo animo, iudices, si per vos vitam et famam potest obtinere; hoc vero est quod ferri² non potest, si et in hanc calamitatem venit propter praediorum bonitatem et multitudinem et quod ea studiose coluit, id erit ei maxime³ fraudi, ut parum miseriae sit quod aliis coluit non sibi, nisi etiam quod omnino coluit crimini fuerit.

Commentary

Notes on Pro S. Roscio Amerino (Select Orations of Cicero (Allen and Greenough's Edition). Greenough, James Bradstreet; Kittredge, George Lyman, editors. Boston, London: Ginn & Company, 1897.) focus

facis injuriam , i.e. you do wrong (i.e. to Sulla).

majorem spem : in this and the preceding sentence Cicero artfully suggests that Chrysogonus has no confidence that Sulla's constitution will last, and that he therefore wishes to remove a dangerous claimant in case of another political overturn. This insinuation would, of course, tend to prejudice the partisans of Sulla against Chrysogonus.

cruenta (pred.): the expression of the thought is made more vivid by the use of words exactly appropriate to the killing of a man and the stripping (

detrahere ) of his dead body.

M. Tullius Cicero Pro S. Roscio Amerino 49

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