The accusation against Roscius Amerinus was accompanied by horrible circumstances.

The iniquities of Verres, as a public officer who had the power of blessing or of cursing a whole people, were very terrible; but they do not shock so much as the story here told of private life.

That any man should have lived as did Oppianicus, or any woman as did Sassia, seems to prove a state of things worse than anything described by Juvenal a hundred and fifty years later.

Cicero was no doubt unscrupulous as an advocate, but he could have gained nothing here by departing from verisimilitude.

We must take the picture as given us as true, and acknowledge that, though law processes were common, crimes such as those of this man and of this woman were not only possible, but might be perpetrated with impunity.
The story is too long and complicated to be even abridged; but it should be read by those who wish to know the condition of life in Italy during the latter days of the Republic.
[Sidenote: B.C.65, aetat.