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Updated: June 4, 2025
The disaffection of the preceding summer had been trampled out, but the ashes of it were still smouldering; and when it became known that Clodius, who was regarded as Caesar's tribune, had been killed, that the Senate was in power again, and that Italy was threatened with civil convulsions, their passionate patriotism kindled once more into flame.
But the aedile ostentatiously drew forth his own napkin, which was not, indeed, of so fine a linen, but in which the fringe was twice as broad, and wiped his hands with the parade of a man who felt he was calling for admiration. 'A splendid nappa that of yours, said Clodius; 'why, the fringe is as broad as a girdle! 'A trifle, my Clodius: a trifle!
At Bovillæ, near the temple of the Bona Dea, his cortege was met by Clodius on horseback, who had with him some friends, and thirty slaves armed with swords. Milo's attendants were nearly ten times as numerous. It is not supposed by Asconius that either of the two men expected the meeting, which may be presumed to have been fortuitous.
He tells the priests that the whole joy of his restoration must depend on their decision. Citizens who had hitherto been made subject to such penalties had been malefactors; whereas, it was acknowledged of him that he had been a benefactor to the city. Clodius had set up on the spot, not a statue of Liberty, but, as was well known to all men, the figure of a Greek prostitute.
And Glory! oh, vainly would we call her ghost from the fields of Marathon and Thermopylae! 'Thy heart rebukes thee while thou speakest, said the Egyptian; 'and in thy gaieties this night, thou wilt be more mindful of Leoena than of Lais. Vale! Thus saying, he gathered his robe around him, and slowly swept away. 'I breathe more freely, said Clodius.
This was followed by a determined opposition by Milo to the holding of the elections for B.C. 56, until his prosecution of Clodius de vi should have been tried. Clodius, however, was acquitted, and, being elected ædile, immediately commenced a counter accusation against Milo for vis.
Only women, and those of the most unsullied character, were permitted to attend; and the breach of this rule by Clodius, disguised in woman's garb, constituted a heinous offence against the state, from the penalties of which he only escaped, if we may believe Cicero, by bribing the judges.
We have no record in Cicero's correspondence of the final measures taken by Clodius against him. We find him when the correspondence for this year opens on his way to exile: all his boasts of staying and fighting have been thrown to the winds. Clodius, indeed, had not simply done what Cicero expected at the worst impeached him. He had gone more systematically to work.
During the next few years the renewal of the understanding among the triumvirs shut Cicero out from any leading part in politics, and he resumed his activity in the law-courts, his most important case being, perhaps, the defence of Milo for the murder of Clodius, Cicero's most troublesome enemy.
But indeed the whole correspondence to the end of Cicero's exile is permeated with this subject directly or indirectly. P. CLODIUS PULCHER was an extreme instance of a character not uncommon among the nobility in the last age of the Republic.
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