Among the wealthier inhabitants of Larinum was a certain Dinaea, a childless widow.  She had lost her eldest son in the Social War (the war carried on between Rome and her Italian allies), and had seen two others die of disease.  Her only daughter, who had been married to Oppianicus, was also dead.  Now came the unexpected news that her eldest son was still alive.  He had been sold into slavery, and was still working among a gang of laborers on a farm in Gaul.  The poor woman called her kinsfolk together and implored them to undertake the task of recovering him.  At the same time she made a will, leaving the bulk of her property to her daughter’s son, the younger Oppianicus, but providing for the missing man a legacy of between three and four thousand pounds.  The elder Oppianicus was not disposed to see so large a sum go out of the family.  Dinaea fell ill, and he brought her his own physician.  The patient refused the man’s services; they had been fatal, she said, to all her kinsfolk.  Oppianicus then contrived to introduce to her a traveling quack from Ancona.  He had bribed the man with about seventeen pounds of our money to administer a deadly drug.  The fee was large, and the fellow was expected to take some pains with the business; but he was in a hurry; he had many markets to visit; and he gave a single dose which there was no need to repeat.

Meanwhile Dinaea’s kinsfolk had sent two agents to make inquiries for the missing son.  But Oppianicus had been beforehand with them.  He had bribed the man who had brought the first news, had learned where he was to be found, and had caused him to be assassinated.  The agents wrote to their employers at Larinum, saying that the object of their search could not be found, Oppianicus having undoubtedly tampered with the person from whom information was to be obtained.  This letter excited great indignation at Larinum; and one of the family publicly declared in the market-place that he should hold Oppianicus (who happened to be present) responsible if any harm should be found to have happened to the missing man.  A few days afterwards the agents themselves returned.  They had found the man, but he was dead.  Oppianicus dared not face the burst of rage which this news excited, and fled from Larinum.  But he was not at the end of his resources.  The Civil War between Sulla and the party of Marius (for Marius himself was now dead) was raging, and Oppianicus fled to the camp of Metellus Pius, one of Sulla’s lieutenants.  There he represented himself as one who had suffered for the party.  Metellus had himself fought in the Social War, and fought against the side to which the murdered prisoner belonged.  It was therefore easy to persuade him that the man had deserved his fate, and that his friends were unworthy persons and dangerous to the commonwealth.  Oppianicus returned to Larinum with an armed force, deposed the magistrates whom the towns-people had chosen, produced Sulla’s mandate for the appointment of himself and three of his creatures in their stead, as well as for the execution of four persons particularly obnoxious to him.  These four were, the man who had publicly threatened him, two of his kinsfolk, and one of the instruments of his own villainies, whom he now found it convenient to get out of the way.