In private affairs if any one had managed a business
 entrusted to him, I will not say maliciously for the sake of his own gain and advantage,
 but even carelessly, our ancestors thought that he had incurred the greatest disgrace.
 Therefore, legal proceedings for betrayal of a commission are established, involving
 penalties no less disgraceful than those for theft. I suppose because, in cases where we
 ourselves cannot be present, the vicarious faith of friends is substituted; and he who
 impairs that confidence, attacks the common bulwark of all men, and as far as depends on
 him, disturbs the bonds of society. For we cannot do everything ourselves; different
 people are more capable in different matters. On that account friendships are formed, that
 the common advantage of all may be secured by mutual good offices. Why do you undertake a commission, if you are either going to neglect
 it or to turn it to your own advantage? Why do you offer yourself to me, and by feigned
 service hinder and prevent my advantage? Get out of the way, I will do my business by
 means of some one else. You undertake the burden of a duty which you think you are able to
 support; a duty which does not appear very heavy to those who are not very worthless
 themselves.
 
 This fault therefore is very base, because it violates two most holy things, friendship
 and confidence; for men commonly do not entrust anything except to a friend, and do not
 trust any one except one whom they think faithful. It is therefore the part of a most
 abandoned man, at the same time to dissolve friendship and to deceive him who would not
 have been injured unless he had trusted him. Is it not
 so? In the most trifling affairs be who neglects a commission, must be condemned by a most
 dishonouring sentence; in a matter of this importance, when he to whom the character of
 the dead, the fortunes of the living have been recommended and entrusted, loads the dead
 with ignominy and the living with poverty, shall he be reckoned among honourable men,
 shall he even be reckoned a man at all? In trifling affairs, in affairs of a private
 nature, even carelessness is accounted a crime, and is liable to a sentence branding a man
 with infamy; because, if the commission be properly executed, the man who has given the
 commission may feel at his ease and be careless about it: he who has undertaken the
 commission may not. In so important an affair as this, which was done by public order and
 so entrusted to him, what punishment ought to be inflicted on that man who has not
 hindered some private advantage by his carelessness, but has polluted and stained by his
 treachery the solemnity of the very commission itself? or by what sentence shall he be
 condemned? If Sextus Roscius had entrusted this matter
 to him privately to transact and determine upon with Chrysogonus, and to involve his
 credit in the matter if it seemed to him to be necessary—if he who had undertaken the
 affair had turned ever so minute a point of the business to his own advantage, would he
 not, if convicted by the judge, have been compelled to make restitution, and would he not
 have lost all credit? Now it is not Sextus Roscius who
 gave him this commission, but what is a much more serious thing, Sextus Roscius himself,
 with his character, his life, and all his property, is publicly entrusted by the senators
 to Roscius; and, of this trust, Titus Roscius has converted not some small portion to his
 own advantage, but has turned him entirely out of his property; he has bargained for three
 farms for himself; he has considered the intention of the senators and of all his
 fellow-citizens of just as much value as his own integrity.