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He was on horseback, contrary to his usual custom, which was to use a carriage, and he had with him thirty slaves armed with swords. No person of distinction thought of traveling without such attendants. The two men passed each other, but Milo's gladiators fell out with the slaves of Clodius. Clodius rode back and accosted the aggressors in a threatening manner.
It was a mournful sight to him to see the ascendency which demagogues had already gained, since it betokened the approaching destruction of the Constitution, which, good or bad, was dear to him, and which as an aristocrat he sought to conserve. Cicero's evil star was not Catiline, but Clodius, another aristocratic demagogue whose crimes he exposed, although he failed to bring him to justice.
These were the men whom Fimbria had persuaded to kill the consul Flaccus, and to choose himself for their general. Accordingly, they gladly listened to Clodius, and called him the soldier's friend, for he pretended to feel indignant at their treatment.
The tribunes were tribunes of the plebs, that is, of the commons, whose interests they were supposed specially to protect; while Clodius was a noble indeed, a noble of nobles belonging as he did to that great Claudian House which was one of the oldest and proudest of Roman families. The only thing to be done was to be adopted by some plebeian. But here, again, there were difficulties.
I shall have to tell how it came to pass that Cicero was sent into exile by means of the misconduct of Clodius; but I shall have to show also that the misconduct of Clodius was but the tool which was used by those who were desirous of ridding themselves of the presence of Cicero.
To support Clodius, the proconsul Caesar remained in the immediate vicinity of the capital till the blow was struck against the two victims.
The days of the Triumvirate had come, and the quarrel with Clodius of Cicero's exile and his return, together with the speeches which he had made, in the agony of his anger, against his enemies. And all this had taken place since those halcyon days in which he had risen, on the voices of his countrymen, to be Quæstor, Ædile, Prætor, and Consul.
"Ay, but he does!" replied the other, with a sarcastic grin; "for Catiline never forgets a friend, or forgives a foe. Can Clodius say the same?" But Clodius merely smiled, and walked off, clinking the money he had won tauntingly in his hand. "What now, I wonder, is the day destined to bring forth?" said the conspirator, making no more allusion to the dagger.
Cicero had openly boasted of his friend's intention to do it, and had spoken of Clodius in the Senate itself as Milo's predestined victim. On the evening of the 13th January, while the uncertainty about the elections was at its height, Clodius was returning from his country house, which was a few miles from Rome on "the Appian Way." Milo's party was the largest.
But when Lentulus was consul, the commotions grew so high upon this matter, that the tribunes were wounded in the Forum, and Quintus, Cicero's brother, was left as dead, lying unobserved amongst the slain. The people began to change in their feelings; and Annius Milo, one of their tribunes, was the first who took confidence to summon Clodius to trial for acts of violence.
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