If fortune did not give to you to know the father
 whose son you are, so that you could understand what was the affection of fathers towards
 their children; still, at all events, nature has given you no small share of human
 feeling. To this is added a zeal for learning, so that you are not unversed in literature.
 Does that old man in Caecilius, (to quote a play,) appear to have less affection for
 Eutychus, his son, who lives in the country, than for his other one Chaerestratus? for
 that, I think, is his name; do you think that he keeps one with him in the city do him
 honour, and sends the other into the country in order to punish him? Why do you have recourse to such trifling? you will say. As if it were
 a hard matter for me to bring forward ever so many by name, of my own tribe, or my own
 neighbours, (not to wander too far off,) who wish those sons for whom they have the
 greatest regard, to be diligent farmers. But it is an odious step to quote known men, when
 it is uncertain whether they would like their names to be used; and no one is likely to be
 better known to you than this same Eutychus; and certainly it has nothing to do with the
 argument, whether I name this youth in a play, or some one of the country about Veii . In truth, I think that these things are invented by
 poets in order that we may see our manners sketched under the character of strangers, and
 the image of our daily life represented under the guise of fiction. Come now; turn your thoughts, if you please, to reality, and consider
 not only in Umbria and that neighbourhood, but in
 these old municipal towns, what pursuits are most praised by fathers of families. You will
 at once see that, from want of real grounds of accusation, you have imputed that which is
 his greatest praise to Sextus Roscius as a fault and a crime. 
 
 But not only do children do this by the wish of their fathers, but I have myself known
 many men (and so, unless I am deceived, has every one of you) who are inflamed of their
 own accord with a fondness for what relates to the cultivation of land, and who think this
 rural life, which you think ought to be a disgrace to and a charge against a man, the most
 honourable and the most delightful. What do you think
 of this very Sextus Roscius? How great is his fondness for, and shrewdness in rural
 affairs! As I hear from his relations, most honourable men, you are not more skillful in
 this your business of an accuser, than he is in his. But, as I think, since it seems good
 to Chrysogonus, who has left him no farm, he will be able now to forget this skill of his,
 and to give up this taste. And although that is a sad and a scandalous thing, yet he will
 bear it, O judges, with equanimity, if, by your verdict, he can preserve his life and his
 character; but this is intolerable, if he is both to have this calamity brought upon him
 on account of the goodness and number of his farms, and if that is especially to be
 imputed to him as a crime that he cultivated them with great care; so that it is not to be
 misery enough to have cultivated them for others not for himself, unless it is also to be
 accounted a crime that he cultivated them at all. In truth, O Erucius, you would have been a ridiculous accuser, if you had been born in
 those times when men were sent for from the plough to be made consuls. Certainly you, who
 think it a crime to have superintended the cultivation of a farm, would consider that
 Atilius, whom those who were sent to him found sowing seed with his own hand, a most base
 and dishonourable man. But, forsooth, our ancestors judged very differently both of him
 and of all other such men. And therefore from a very small and powerless state they left
 us one very great and very prosperous. For they diligently cultivated their own lands,
 they did not graspingly desire those of others; by which conduct they enlarged the
 republic, and this dominion, and the name of the Roman people, with lands and conquered
 cities, and subjected nations.