Pro Roscio Amerino

Pro Roscio Amerino is a defence speech given by Marcus Tullius Cicero on behalf of Sextus Roscius, a Roman citizen from the municipality of Amelia accused of murdering his father.

In fact, C. himself did not have much material; the only evidence he adduces is a decree passed by the decurions of Ameria declaring that the elder Roscius was wrongly proscribed and the son should receive his property back.

In fact, C.'s lengthy speech in defense of his client is mostly the product of his imagination, deployed to derive maximum advantage from scanty materials.The elder Sextus Roscius was a wealthy landowner and distinguished citizen of Ameria, a municipium in southern Umbria.

[8] According to Cicero, Capito then sent word to Lucius Cornelius Chrysogonus, a powerful freedman of the dictator Sulla, who was at his camp besieging the rebel town of Volaterrae.

[9] After hearing of the murder, Chrysogonus entered the elder Sextus Roscius onto the list of the proscribed, even though the official terminus of 1 June had passed.

[13] Outraged at the eviction of the younger Sextus Roscius, the decuriones of Ameria sent an embassy of ten prominent men (decem primi) to Sulla's camp at Volaterrae.

However, Capito was included among the ten: and, according to Cicero, he secretly convinced Chrysogonus to grant him the remaining three of Sextus Roscius' estates.

[14] In return for this, Capito allegedly derailed the embassy by granting them false assurances that Chrysogonus would restore Sextus Roscius' property.

[21] The charge was patricide (parricidium), and was heard in Sulla's recently established court for poisoning and murder (quaestio de veneficiis et sicariis).

[23][24] It seems the prosecution based their argument upon the cui bono principle: namely, since Sextus Roscius had the most to gain from murdering his father, he was the most likely candidate.

However, Cicero himself states that the trip was to hone his skills as an orator and improve his weak physical fitness, and makes no reference to fear of Sulla.

Kinsey believes that the delegation of men from Ameria that went to Sulla's camp had no direct knowledge as to why the elder Roscius had been murdered and why his property had been seized.

Kinsey proposes that many people had profited from the proscriptions (perhaps even members of the jury), and that the younger Roscius was less likely to be "acquitted if it meant the beginning of a long period of reprisal and restitution".

Some scholars believe that the extant speech varies considerably from the one given, mainly because Cicero was unlikely to have delivered such strong criticisms of Sulla in the oppressive climate of the time.

[40] The allusion to the grace and virtue of a country life vs. the vice and corruption of an urban one are very common motifs in Cicero's defence of Roscius.

The idea of the virtuous farmer and vice-ridden city dweller serves as a whole-sale substitute for fact in his case against Magnus, Capito and by extension Chrysogonus.

Cicero fails to produce much evidence, but denies the assumption that the father relegated his son to the farm because the younger Roscius had incurred too much debt.

Cicero refers to the comedic play Hypobolimaeus, rewritten by the Roman playwright Caecilius Statius from the original written by Menander, both now lost.

Many of the Latin words had etymologies coming directly from Etruscan, which Imholtz claims Cicero intentionally employed to heighten the dramatic effect of his speech.