1Do you ask against whom I say this, Erucius? 1Not against the man you want and suppose; 1for Sulla has been cleared both by my speech from the beginning and by his own outstanding merit at all times. 1I say that Chrysogonus did all this: that he lied, that he made out that Sextus Roscius had been a bad citizen, that he said he had been killed among the enemy, that he did not allow Lucius Sulla to be informed of these matters by the envoys of the Amerians. 1Finally, I suspect this too, that this property was never sold at all; 1which will be revealed later, gentlemen, if you permit it.
128For I believe there is in the law a date by which proscriptions and sales are to be made, namely the first of June. 128Some months later the man was killed and the property is said to have been sold. 128Surely either none of this property has come into the public accounts and we are being fooled by that scoundrel more cleverly than we think, or, if it has, the public accounts have been falsified in some way; 128for it is agreed that the property at any rate could not have been sold lawfully. 128I realise, gentlemen, that I am examining these things before the proper time, and am almost going astray, since, when I ought to be healing the head of Sextus Roscius, I am tending a hangnail.
128For he is not troubled about money, he takes no account of any advantage of his own; 128he thinks he will easily bear his poverty, if he is freed from this undeserved suspicion and fabricated charge. 129But I ask of you, gentlemen, to listen to these few remaining points in such a way that you consider that I am speaking partly for myself, partly for Sextus Roscius. 129For the things that seem to me personally undeserved and intolerable, and which I think concern everyone unless we take care, these I declare on my own behalf from the feeling and pain of my heart; 129what concerns the peril to this man's life and his case, and what he wishes to be said on his behalf, and with what terms he is content, you will hear, gentlemen, at the very end of my speech.