1Sextus Roscius killed his father. 1What sort of man? 1a corrupted young lad, led astray by worthless men? 1He is more than forty years old. 1An old assassin, no doubt, a reckless man, often engaged in bloodshed. 1But you have not heard this even said by the accuser. 1Then extravagance, of course, and the size of his debts and the untamed desires of his mind drove the man to this crime. 1Of extravagance Erucius cleared him, when he said that he had hardly ever been present even at any banquet. 1Moreover, he has never owed anything. 1Further, what desires can there be in a man who, as the accuser himself charged against him, has always lived in the country and spent his life farming the land?
1a life which is most remote from desire and most closely joined with duty. 40What, then, drove Sextus Roscius to such great madness? 40'He did not please his father,' he says. 40He did not please his father? 40for what reason? 40for that reason too must necessarily have been just and great and plain. 40For just as it is incredible that death was brought on a father by his son without very many and very great reasons, so it is not likely that a son was hateful to his parent without many, great and compelling reasons. 41Let us go back, then, to the same point and ask what great vices there were in an only son that he should displease his father.
41But it is plain that there were none. 41Was the father, then, insane, to hate without reason the son he had begotten? 41But he, indeed, was the most steadfast of all men. 41Therefore this at least is now surely plain, that if the father was not insane nor the son depraved, the father had no reason for hatred nor the son for crime.