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Upon this sister's account, in particular, Clodius's character was attacked. Notwithstanding all this, when the common people united against the accusers and witnesses and the whole party, the judges were affrighted, and a guard was placed about them for their defense; and most of them wrote their sentences on the tablets in such a way, that they could not well be read.
The meeting was in the circus Flaminius, and there was in the same place that day a crowd of market people a kind of tiers état. He asked him to say whether he approved of the jurymen being selected by the prætor, to form a panel for the prætor himself to employ. That was the regulation made by the senate in the matter of Clodius's sacrilege.
There was not a man who did not think it impossible for him to stand his trial without being condemned a thousand times over. Farther, when I was produced as a witness, I suppose you have been told how the shouts of Clodius's supporters were answered by the jury rising to their feet to gather round me, and openly to offer their throats to P. Clodius in my defence.
But when it came even to blows and wounds in the forum, and that one of Clodius's bondslaves was apprehended, creeping through the crowd towards Pompey with a sword in his hand, Pompey laid hold of this pretence, though perhaps otherwise apprehensive of Clodius's insolence and bad language, and never appeared again in the forum during all the time he was tribune, but kept close at home, and passed his time in consulting with his friends, by what means he might best allay the displeasure of the senate and nobles against him.
His term of office having expired, he had been despatched as propraetor to Spain, where the ashes of the Sertorian rebellion were still smouldering; and he had started for his province while the question of Clodius's trial was still pending. Portugal and Gallicia were still unsubdued. Bands of robbers lay everywhere in the fastnesses of the mountain ranges.
Again, therefore, the matter was referred to the Senate. One of the tribunes introduced Clodius, that he might speak for himself. Cicero had now altered his mind, and was in favor of the prosecution. When it came to a division, the Senate voted by a majority of four hundred to fifteen that the consuls must recommend the bill. Piso gave way, and the tribune also who had been in Clodius's favor.
Milo was also acquitted, and the rest of Clodius's ædileship seems to have passed without farther acts of open violence. But Cicero had now other causes of anxiety. Pompey was to have fifteen legates, a good supply of ships and men, and considerable powers in all corn-growing countries in the Mediterranean.
The state of Rome at this time has been well described by a modern historian as a "Walpurgis dance of political witches." Clodius was a licensed libertine; but license has its limits. He had been useful so far; but a rein was wanted for him, and Pompey decided at last that Cicero might now be recalled. Clodius's term of office ran out. The tribunes for the new year were well disposed to Cicero.
Still he had a personal feeling for Cicero, and when it was known that one of Clodius's objects in seeking to become a plebeian and a tribune was to attack him, Cæsar offered him two chances of honourable retreat first as one of the commissioners to administer his land law, and again as one of his legati in Gaul.
But Clodius's faction conspired against him upon the following occasion. Clodius was a member of a noble family, in the flower of his youth, and of a bold and resolute temper.
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