ABSTRACT
In this chapter I want to consider one of Cicero’s murder cases, pro Roscio Amerino, making some comparisons, where relevant, with pro Cluentio of some fourteen years later, which is also concerned with death in the upper ranks of municipal life. (In each there is an all-purpose off-stage villain, Chrysogonus in pro Roscio, Oppianicus senior in pro Cluentio. In each Cicero starts by saying that he will prove positively his client’s innocence, but later, quite properly, reverts to throwing the burden of proof on the accuser.) The speech on behalf of Sextus Roscius from Ameria is one of Cicero’s earliest, and his first criminal trial; he was probably twenty-seven years old when he made it in 80 BC.1 (We have one earlier speech surviving, pro Publio Quinctio, delivered the previous year, which dealt with a fairly complicated matter of partnership, inheritance and debt; we do not know the result.2). The charge was not simply murder, but more specifically parricide, the murder by the defendant of his father. Sextus Roscius’ acquittal seems to have made Cicero’s name as a forensic orator.3
