1For in this case, when they saw that those men possessed a vast fortune while my client was in the utmost beggary, they would not indeed ask whose advantage it had been, but, that being obvious, would connect the charge and the suspicion with the plunder rather than with the poverty. 1What if there is added to this that you were formerly poor? 1what if, that you are greedy? 1what if, that you are reckless? 1what if, that you were the bitterest enemy of the man who was killed? 1need we look for a motive that drove you to so great a deed? 1Which of these things, then, can be denied?
1The man's poverty is such that it cannot be concealed, and shines out the more, the more it is hidden. 87You display your greed, you who formed a partnership with a total stranger over the fortunes of your own townsman and kinsman. 87How reckless you are, to pass over other things, all could understand from this, that out of the whole partnership, that is, out of so many assassins, you alone were found to sit with the accusers, and not only to show your face but even to thrust it forward. 87That you had a quarrel with Sextus Roscius and great disputes over property you must concede. 88It remains, judges, for us to consider which of the two is more likely to have killed Sextus Roscius: the one to whom riches came by his death, or the one to whom beggary came; the one who was poor before, or the one who afterwards became utterly destitute; the one who, burning with greed, is carried in hostility against his own kin, or the one who has always lived in such a way that he knew no gain, but only the fruit he had produced by his labour; the one who is the most audacious of all the buyers of confiscated property, or the one who through unfamiliarity with the forum and the courts dreads not only the benches but the city itself; finally, judges, and this in my opinion is most to the point, whether an enemy or a son.