Pro Roscio Amerino (For Sextus Roscius)

The speech in defence of Sextus Roscius of Ameria, delivered in 80 BC, was Cicero's first great criminal case, undertaken when he was twenty-six and at a time when the dictator Sulla's proscriptions had made many advocates afraid to speak. Roscius was accused of murdering his father, a wealthy man of Ameria killed in Rome; the father's name had been added to the proscription lists after the deadline, and his estates bought for a pittance by Sulla's powerful freedman Chrysogonus.

Cicero explains why a young man has taken a case that others refused, and tells how the elder Roscius was killed, how the news was carried to his kinsman Titus Roscius Capito, how the estate was seized and sold, and how an embassy from Ameria to Sulla was thwarted. He then dismantles the prosecution of Erucius: Roscius had no motive, was not estranged from his father, and had neither the means nor the opportunity, and Cicero dwells on the horror of parricide and its ancient punishment, the sack. He turns to ask who gained from the crime, and points to the two Titi Roscii, Magnus and Capito, and to the messenger who brought the news to Ameria so quickly. Finally he attacks Chrysogonus, careful to spare Sulla himself, mocks his luxury, and appeals to the nobility and the jury to stop a new proscription.

Roscius was acquitted, and the speech made Cicero's name. He later thought its style youthfully exuberant, but it is a vivid, accessible speech and a valuable source for the age of Sulla.