He never left his farm.

Erucius, the accuser, had said, and had said truly, that Rome was full of murderers.[66] But who was the most likely to have employed such a person: this rough husbandman, who had no intercourse with Rome, who knew no one there, who knew little of Roman ways, who had nothing to get by the murder when committed, or they who had long been concerned with murderers, who knew Rome, and who were now found to have the property in their hands?
The two slaves who had been with the old man when he was killed, surely they might tell something?
Here there comes out incidentally the fact that slaves when they were examined as witnesses were tortured, quite as a matter of course, so that their evidence might be extracted.

This is spoken of with no horror by Cicero, nor, as far as I can remember, by other Roman writers.

It was regarded as an established rule of life that a slave, if brought into a court of law, should be made to tell the truth by such appliances.

This was so common that one is tempted to hope, and almost to suppose that the "question" was not ordinarily administered with circumstances of extreme cruelty.