A BRAWL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
Clodius, who had taken the lead in driving Cicero into exile, was of
course furious at his return, and continued to show him an unceasing
hostility. His first care was to hinder the restoration of his property.
He had contrived to involve part at least of this in a considerable
difficulty. Cicero's house on the Palatine Hill had been pulled down and
the area dedicated--so at least Clodius alleged--to the Goddess of
Liberty. If this was true, it was sacred forever; it could not be
restored. The question was, Was it true? This question was referred to
the Pontiffs as judges of such matters. Cicero argued the case before
them, and they pronounced in his favor. It was now for the Senate to
act. A motion was made that the site should be restored. Clodius opposed
it, talking for three hours, till the anger of his audience compelled
him to bring his speech to an end. One of the tribunes in his interest
put his veto on the motion, but was frightened into withdrawing it. But
Clodius was not at the end of his resources. A set of armed ruffians
under his command drove out the workmen who were rebuilding the house. A
few days afterwards he made an attack on Cicero himself. He was wounded
in the struggle which followed, and might, says Cicero, have been
killed, "but," he adds, "I am tired of surgery."
Pompey was another object of his hatred, for he knew perfectly well that
without his consent his great enemy would not have been restored. Cicero
gives a lively picture of a scene in the Senate, in which this hatred
was vigorously expressed. "Pompey spoke, or rather wished to speak; for,
as soon as he rose, Clodius' hired ruffians shouted at him. All through
his speech it was the same; he was interrupted not only by shouts but by
abuse and curses. When he came to an end--and it must be allowed that he
showed courage; nothing frightened him: he said his say and sometimes
even obtained silence--then Clodius rose. He was met with such an uproar
from our side (for we had determined to give him back as good as he had
given) that he could not collect his thoughts, control his speech, or
command his countenance. This went on from three o'clock, when Pompey
had only just finished his speech, till five. Meanwhile every kind of
abuse, even to ribald verses, were shouted out against Clodius and his
sister. Pale with fury he turned to his followers, and in the midst of
the uproar asked them, 'Who is it that is killing the people with
hunger?' 'Pompey,' they answered. 'Who wants to go to Alexandria?'
'Pompey,' they answered again. 'And whom do _you_ want to go?'
'Crassus,' they said. About six o'clock the party of Clodius began, at
some given signal, it seemed, to spit at our side. Our rage now burst
out. They tried to drive us from our place, and we made a charge. The
partisans of Clodius fled. He was thrust down from the hustings. I then
made my escape, lest any thing worse should happen."
A third enemy, and one whom Clodius was destined to find more dangerous
than either Cicero or Pompey, was Annius Milo. Milo was on the mother's
side of an old Latin family. The name by which he was commonly known was
probably a nickname given him, it may be, in joking allusion to the Milo
of Crotona, the famous wrestler, who carried an ox on his shoulders and
ate it in a single day. For Milo was a great fighting man, a well-born
gladiator, one who was for cutting all political knots with the sword.
He was ambitious, and aspired to the consulship; but the dignity was
scarcely within his reach. His family was not of the highest; he was
deeply in debt; he had neither eloquence nor ability. His best chance,
therefore, was to attach himself to some powerful friend whose gratitude
he might earn. Just such a friend he seemed to find in Cicero. He saw
the great orator's fortunes were very low, but they would probably rise
again, and he would be grateful to those who helped him in his
adversity. Hence Milo's exertions to bring him back from banishment and
hence the quarrel with Clodius. The two men had their bands of hired, or
rather purchased, ruffians about the city, and came into frequent
collisions. Each indicted the other for murderous assault. Each publicly
declared that he should take the earliest chance of putting his I enemy
to death. What was probably a chance collision brought matters to a
crisis.
On the twentieth of January Milo left Rome to pay a visit to Lanuvium, a
Latin town on the Appian road, and about fifteen miles south of Rome. It
was a small town, much decayed from the old days when its revolt
against Rome was thought to be a thing worth recording; but it
contained one of the most famous temples of Italy, the dwelling of Juno
the Preserver, whose image, in its goat-skin robe, its quaint, turned-up
shoes, with spear in one hand and small shield in the other, had a
peculiar sacredness. Milo was a native of the place, and its dictator;
and it was his duty on this occasion to nominate the chief priest of the
temple. He had been at a meeting of the Senate in the morning, and had
remained till the close of the sitting. Returning home he had changed
his dress and shoes, waited a while, as men have to wait, says Cicero,
while his wife was getting ready, and then started. He traveled in a
carriage his wife and a friend. Several maid-servants and a troop of
singing boys belonging to his wife followed. Much was made of this great
retinue of women and boys, as proving that Milo had no intention when he
started of coming to blows with his great enemy. But he had also with
him a number of armed slaves and several gladiators, among whom were two
famous masters of their art. He had traveled about ten miles when he met
Clodius, who had been delivering an address to the town council of
Aricia, another Latin town, nearer to the capital than Lanuvium, and was
now returning to Rome. 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. One of the gladiators replied by wounding him in the
shoulder with his sword. A number of Milo's slaves hastened back to
assist their comrades. The party of Clodius was overpowered, and Clodius
himself, exhausted by his wound, took refuge in a roadside tavern, which
probably marked the first stage out of Rome. Milo, thinking that now he
had gone so far he might go a little further and rid himself of his
enemy forever, ordered his slaves to drag Clodius from his refuge and
finish him. This was promptly done. Cicero indeed declared that the
slaves did it without orders, and in the belief that their master had
been killed. But Rome believed the other story. The corpse of the dead
man lay for some time upon the road uncared for, for all his attendants
had either fallen in the struggle or had crept into hiding-places. Then
a Roman gentleman on his way to the city ordered it to be put into his
litter and taken to Rome, where it arrived just before nightfall. It was
laid out in state in the hall of his mansion, and his widow stood by
showing the wounds to the sympathizing crowd which thronged to see his
remains. Next day the excitement increased. Two of the tribunes
suggested that the body should be carried into the market-place, and
placed on the hustings from which the speaker commonly addressed the
people. Then it was resolved, at the suggestion of another Clodius, a
notary, and a client of the family, to do it a signal honor. "Thou shalt
not bury or burn a man within the city" was one of the oldest of Roman
laws. Clodius, the favorite of the people, should be an exception. His
body was carried into the Hall of Hostilius, the usual meeting-place of
the Senate. The benches, the tables, the platform from which the orators
spoke, the wooden tablets on which the clerks wrote their notes, were
collected to make a funeral pile on which the corpse was to be consumed.
The hall caught fire, and was burned to the ground; another large
building adjoining it, the Hall of Porcius, narrowly escaped the same
fate. The mob attacked several houses, that of Milo among them, and was
with difficulty repulsed.
It had been expected that Milo would voluntarily go into exile; but the
burning of the senate-house caused a strong reaction of feeling of which
he took advantage. He returned to Rome, and provided to canvass for the
consulship, making a present in money (which may be reckoned at
five-and-twenty shillings) to every voter. The city was in a continual
uproar; though the time for the new consuls to enter on their office was
long past, they had not even been elected, nor was there any prospect,
such was the violence of the rival candidates, of their being so. At
last the Senate had recourse to the only man who seemed able to deal
with the situation, and appointed Pompey sole consul. Pompey proposed
to institute for the trial of Milo's case a special court with a
special form of procedure. The limits of the time which it was to occupy
were strictly laid down. Three days were to be given to the examination
of witnesses, one to the speeches of counsel, the prosecution being
allowed two hours only, the defense three. After a vain resistance on
the part of Milo's friends, the proposal was carried, Pompey threatening
to use force if necessary. Popular feeling now set very strongly against
the accused. Pompey proclaimed that he went in fear of his life from his
violence; refused to appear in the Senate lest he should be
assassinated, and even left his house to live in his gardens, which
could be more effectually guarded by soldiers. In the Senate Milo was
accused of having arms under his clothing, a charge which he had to
disprove by lifting up his under garment. Next a freedman came forward,
and declared that he and four others had actually seen the murder of
Clodius, and that having mentioned the fact, they had been seized and
shut up for two months in Milo's counting-house. Finally a sheriff's
officer, if we may so call him, deposed that another important witness,
one of Milo's slaves, had been forcibly taken out of his hands by the
partisans of the accused.
On the eighth of April the trial was begun. The first witness called was
a friend who had been with Clodius on the day of his death. His evidence
made the case look very dark against Milo, and the counsel who was to
cross-examine him on behalf of the accused was received with such angry
cries that he had to take refuge on the bench with the presiding judge.
Milo was obliged to ask for the same protection.
Pompey resolved that better order should be kept for the future, and
occupied all the approaches to the court with troops. The rest of the
witnesses were heard and cross-examined without interruption. April 11th
was the last day of the trial. Three speeches were delivered for the
prosecution; for the defense one only, and that by Cicero. It had been
suggested that he should take the bold line of arguing that Clodius was
a traitor, and that the citizen who slew him had deserved well of his
country. But he judged it better to follow another course, and to show
that Clodius had been the aggressor, having deliberately laid an ambush
for Milo, of whose meditated journey to Lanuvium he was of course aware.
Unfortunately for his client the case broke down. Milo had evidently
left Rome and the conflict had happened much earlier than was said,
because the body of the murdered man had reached the capital not later
than five o'clock in the afternoon. This disproved the assertion that
Clodius had loitered on his way back to Rome till the growing darkness
gave him an opportunity of attacking his adversaries. Then it came out
that Milo had had in his retinue, besides the women and boys, a number
of fighting men. Finally there was the damning fact, established, it
would seem, by competent witnesses, that Clodius had been dragged from
his hiding-place and put to death. Cicero too lost his presence of mind.
The sight of the city, in which all the shops were shut in expectation
of a riot, the presence of the soldiers in court, and the clamor of a
mob furiously hostile to the accused and his advocate, confounded him,
and he spoke feebly and hesitatingly. The admirable oration which has
come down to us, and professes to have been delivered on this occasion,
was really written afterwards. The jury, which was allowed by common
consent to have been one of the best ever assembled, gave a verdict of
guilty. Milo went into banishment at Marseilles--a punishment which he
seems to have borne very easily, if it is true that when Cicero excused
himself for the want of courage which had marred the effect of his
defense, he answered, "It was all for the best; if you had spoken
better I should never have tasted these admirable Marseilles mullets."
Naturally he tired of the mullets before long. When Caesar had made
himself master of Rome, he hoped to be recalled from banishment. But
Caesar did not want him, and preferred to have him where he was. Enraged
at this treatment, he came over to Italy and attempted to raise an
insurrection in favor of Pompey. The troops whom he endeavored to
corrupt refused to follow him. He retreated with his few followers into
the extreme south of the peninsula, and was there killed.