Roman life in the days of Cicero Part 5

Clodius was acquitted. If evidence had any thing to do with the result, it was the conduct of Caesar that saved him. It was in his house that the alleged intrusion had taken place, and he had satisfied himself by a private examination of its inmates that the charge was true. But now he professed to know nothing at all about the matter. Probably the really potent influence in the case was the money which Cra.s.sus liberally distributed among the jurors. The fact of the money was indeed notorious. Some of the jury had pretended that they were in fear of their lives, and had asked for a guard. "A guard!" said Catulus, to one of them, "what did you want a guard for? that the money should not be taken from you?"

But Clodius, though he had escaped, never forgave the man whose evidence had been given against him. Cicero too felt that there as war to the knife between them. On the first meeting of the Senate after the conclusion of the trial he made a pointed attack upon his old acquaintance. "Lentulus," he said, "was twice acquitted, and Catiline twice, and now this third malefactor has been let loose on the commonwealth by his judges. But, Clodius, do not misunderstand what has happened. It is for the prison, not for the city, that your judges have kept you; not to keep you in the country, but to deprive you of the privilege of exile was what they intended. Be of good cheer, then, Fathers. No new evil has come upon us, but we have found out the evil that exists. One villain has been put upon his trial, and the result has taught us that there are more villains than one."

Clodius attempted to banter his antagonist. "You are a fine gentleman,"

he said; "you have been at Baiae" (Baiae was a fas.h.i.+onable watering-place on the Campanian coast). "Well," said Cicero, "that is better than to have been at the 'matrons' wors.h.i.+p.'" And the attack and repartee went on. "You have bought a fine house." (Cicero had spent a large sum of money on a house on the Palatine, and was known to have somewhat crippled his means by doing so.) "With you the buying has been of jurymen." "They gave you no credit though you spoke on oath." "Yes; five-and-twenty gave me credit" (five-and-twenty of the jury had voted for a verdict of guilty; two-and-thirty for acquittal), "but your thirty-two gave you none, for they would have their money down." The Senate shouted applause, and Clodius sat down silent and confounded.

How Clodius contrived to secure for himself the office of tribune, the vantage ground from which he hoped to work his revenge, has been already told in the sketch of Caesar. Caesar indeed was really responsible for all that was done. It was he who made it possible for Clodius to act; and he allowed him "to act when he could have stopped him by the lifting of his finger. He was determined to prove to Cicero that he was master. But he never showed himself after the first interference in the matter of the adoption. He simply allowed Clodius to work his will without hindrance.

Clodius proceeded with considerable skill. He proposed various laws, which were so popular that Cicero, though knowing that they would be turned against himself, did not venture to oppose them. Then came a proposal directly leveled at him. "Any man who shall have put to death a Roman citizen uncondemned and without a trial is forbidden fire and water." (This was the form of a sentence of exile. No one was allowed under penalty of death to furnish the condemned with fire and water within a certain distance of Rome.) Cicero at once a.s.sumed the squalid dress with which it was the custom for accused persons to endeavor to arouse the compa.s.sion of their fellow-citizens. Twenty thousand of the upper cla.s.ses supported him by their presence. The Senate itself, on the motion of one of the tribunes, went into this strange kind of mourning on his account.

The consuls of the year were Gabinus and Piso. The first was notoriously hostile, of the second Cicero hoped to make a friend, the more so as he was a kinsman of his daughter's husband. He gives a lively picture of an interview with him. "It was nearly eleven o'clock in the morning when we went to him. He came out of a dirty hovel to meet us, with his slippers on, and his head m.u.f.fled up. His breath smelt most odiously of wine; but he excused himself on the score of his health, which compelled him, he said, to use medicines in which wine was employed." His answer to the pet.i.tion of his visitors (for Cicero was accompanied by his son-in-law) was at least commendably frank. "My colleague Gabinius is in absolute poverty, and does not know where to turn. Without a province he must be ruined. A province he hopes to get by the help of Clodius, but it must be by my acting with him. I must humor his wishes, just as you, Cicero, humored your colleague when you were consul. But indeed there is no reason why you should seek the consul's protection. Every one must look out for himself."

In default of the consuls there was still some hope that Pompey might be induced to interfere, and Cicero sought an interview with him. Plutarch says that he slipped out by a back door to avoid seeing him; but Cicero's own account is that the interview was granted. "When I threw myself at his feet" (he means I suppose, humiliated himself by asking such a favor), "he could not lift me from the ground. He could do nothing, he said, against the will of Caesar."

Cicero had now to choose between two courses. He might stay and do his best with the help of his friends, to resist the pa.s.sing of the law. But this would have ended, it was well known, in something like an open battle in the streets of Rome. Clodius and his partisans were ready to carry their proposal by force of arms, and would yield to nothing but superior strength. It was possible, even probable, that in such a conflict Cicero would be victorious. But he shrank from the trial, not from cowardice, for he had courage enough when occasion demanded, not even from unwillingness to risk the lives of his friends, though this weighed somewhat with him, but chiefly because he hated to confess that freedom was becoming impossible in Rome, and that the strong hand of a master was wanted to give any kind of security to life and property. The other course was to antic.i.p.ate the sentence and to go into voluntary exile. This was the course which his most powerful friends pressed upon him, and this was the course which he chose. He left Rome, intending to go to Sicily, where he knew that he should find the heartiest of welcomes.

Immediately on his departure Clodius formally proposed his banishment.

"Let it be enacted," so ran the proposition, "that, seeing that Marcus Tullius Cicero has put Roman citizens to death without trial, forging thereto the authority of the Senate, that he be forbidden fire and water; that no one harbor or receive him on pain of death; and that whosoever shall move, shall vote, or take any steps for the recalling of him, be dealt with as a public enemy." The bill was pa.s.sed, the distance within which it was to operate being fixed at four hundred miles. The houses of the banished man were razed to the ground, the site of the mansion on the. Palatine, being dedicated to Liberty. His property was partly plundered, partly sold by auction.

Cicero meanwhile had hurried to the south of Italy. He found shelter for a while at the farm of a friend near Vibo in Brutii (now the Abruzzi), but found it necessary to leave this place because it was within the prescribed limits. Sicily was forbidden to him by its governor, who, though a personal friend, was unwilling to displease the party in power.

Athens, which for many reasons he would have liked to choose for his place of exile, was unsafe. He had bitter enemies there, men who had been mixed up in Catiline's conspiracy. The place, too, was within the distance, and though this was not very strictly insisted upon--as a matter of fact, he did spend the greater part of his banishment inside the prescribed limit--it might at any moment be made a means of annoyance. Atticus invited him to take up his residence at his seat at Buthrotum in Epirus (now Albania). But the proposal did not commend itself to his taste. It was out of the way, and would be very dreary without the presence of its master, who was still at Rome, and apparently intended to remain there. After staying for about a fortnight at a friend's house near Dyrrachium--the town itself, where he was once very popular, for fear of bringing some trouble upon it, he refused to enter--he crossed over to Greece, and ultimately settled himself at Thessalonica.

Long afterward he tells us of a singular dream which seems to have given him some little comfort at this time. "I had lain awake for the greater part of the night, but fell into a heavy slumber toward morning. I was at the point of starting, but my host would not allow me to be waked. At seven o'clock, however, I rose, and then told my friend this dream. I seemed to myself to be wandering disconsolately in some lonely place when the great Marius met me. His lictors were with him, their _fasces_ wreathed with bays. 'Why are you so sad?' he asked me. 'I have been wrongly banished from my country,' I answered. He then took my hand, and turning to the nearest lictor, bade him lead me to his own Memorial Hall. 'There,' he said, 'you will be safe.'" His friend declared that this dream portended a speedy and honorable return. Curiously enough it was in the Hall of Marius that the decree repealing the sentence of banishment was actually proposed and pa.s.sed.

For the most part he was miserably unhappy and depressed. In letter after letter he poured out to Atticus his fears, his complaints, and his wants. Why had he listened to the bad advice of his friends? He had wished to stay at Rome and fight out the quarrel. Why had Hortensius advised him to retire from the struggle? It must have been jealousy, jealousy of one whom he knew to be a more successful advocate than himself. Why had Atticus hindered his purposes when he thought of putting an end to all his trouble by killing himself? Why were all his friends, why was Atticus himself, so lukewarm in his cause? In one letter he artfully reproaches himself for his neglect of his friends in times past as the cause of their present indifference. But the reproach is of course really leveled at them.

"If ever," he writes in one letter, "fortune shall restore me to my country and to you, I will certainly take care that of all my friends; none shall be more rejoiced than you. All my duty to you, a duty which I must own in time past was sadly wanting, shall be so faithfully discharged that you will feel that I have been restored to you quite as much as I shall have been restored to my brother and to my children. For whatever I have wronged you, and indeed because I have wronged you, pardon me; for I have wronged myself far worse. I do not write this as not knowing that you feel the very greatest trouble on my account; but if you were and had been under the obligation to love me, as much as you actually do love me and have loved me, you never would have allowed me to lack the wise advice which you have so abundantly at your command."

This is perhaps a little obscure, as it is certainly somewhat subtle; but Cicero means that Atticus had not interested himself in his affairs as much as he would have felt bound to do, if he (Cicero) had been less remiss in the duties of friends.h.i.+p.

To another correspondent, his wife Terentia, he poured out his heart yet more freely. "Don't think," he writes in one of his letters to her, "that I write longer letters to others than to you, except indeed I have received some long communication which I feel I must answer. Indeed I have nothing to write; and in these days I find it the most difficult of duties. Writing to you and to my dearest Tullia I never can do without floods of tears. I see you are utterly miserable, and I wanted you to be completely happy. I might have made you so. I could have made you had I been less timid.... My heart's delight, my deepest regret is to think that you, to whom all used to look for help, should now be involved in such sorrow, such distress! and that I should be to blame, I who saved others only to ruin myself and mine!... As for expenditure, let others, who can if they will, undertake it. And if you love me, don't distress your health, which is already, I know, feeble. All night, all day I think of you. I see that you are undertaking all imaginable labors on my behalf; I only fear that you will not be able to endure them. I am aware that all depends upon you. If we are to succeed in what you wish and are now trying to compa.s.s, take care of your health." In another he writes: "Unhappy that I am! to think that one so virtuous, so loyal, so honest, so kind, should be so afflicted, and all on my account. And my dearest Tullia, too, that she should be so unhappy about a father in whom she once found so much happiness. And what shall I say about my dear little Cicero? That he should feel the bitterest sorrow and trouble as soon as he began to feel any thing! If all this was really, as you write, the work of fate, I could endure it a little more easily; but it was all brought about by my fault, thinking that I was loved by men who really were jealous of me, and keeping aloof from others who were really on my side."

This is, perhaps, a good opportunity of saying something about the lady herself. Who she was we do not certainly know. There was a family of the name in Rome, the most notable of whom perhaps was the Terentius Varro[7] whose rashness brought upon his country the terrible disaster of the defeat of Cannae. She had a half-sister, probably older than herself, of the name of Fabia, who was a vestal virgin. She brought her husband, to whom she was married about 78 B.C., a fair dowry, about three thousand five hundred pounds. We have seen how affectionately Cicero writes to her during his exile. She is his darling, his only hope; the mere thought of her makes his eyes overflow with tears. And she seems to have deserved all his praise and affection, exerting herself to the utmost to help him, and ready to impoverish herself to find him the means that he needed. Four letters of this period have been preserved. There are twenty others belonging to the years 50-47 B.C. The earlier of these are sufficiently affectionate. When he is about to return to Rome from his province (Cilicia), she is still the most amiable, the dearest of women. Then we begin to see signs of coolness, yet nothing that would strike us did we not know what was afterwards to happen. He excuses the rarity of his letters. There is no one by whom to send them. If there were, he was willing to write. The greetings became formal, the superlatives "dearest," "fondest," "best," are dropped. "You are glad," he writes after the battle of Pharsalia had dashed his hopes, "that I have got back safe to Italy; I hope that you may continue to be glad." "Don't think of coming," he goes on, "it is a long journey and not very safe; and I don't see what good you would do if you should come." In another letter he gives directions about getting ready his house at Tusculum for the reception of guests. The letter is dated on the first of October, and he and his friends would come probably to stay several days, on the seventh. If there was not a tub in the bath-room, one must be provided. The greeting is of the briefest and most formal.

Meanwhile we know from what he writes to Atticus that he was greatly dissatisfied with the lady's conduct. Money matters were at the bottom of their quarrel. She was careless, he thinks, and extravagant. Though he was a rich man, yet he was often in need of ready money, and Terentia could not be relied upon to help him. His vexation takes form in a letter to Atticus. "As to Terentia--there are other things without number of which I don't speak--what can be worse than this? You wrote to her to send me bills for one hundred and eight pounds; for there was so much money left in hand. She sent me just ninety pounds, and added a note that this was all. If she was capable of abstracting such a trifle from so small a sum, don't you see what she would have done in matters of real importance?" The quarrel ended in a divorce, a thing far more common than, happily, it is among ourselves, but still a painful and discreditable end to an union which had lasted for more than five-and-twenty years. Terentia long survived her husband, dying in extreme old age (as much, it was said, as a hundred and three years), far on in the reign of Augustus; and after a considerable experience of matrimony, if it be true that she married three or even, according to some accounts, four other husbands.

[Footnote 7: Another of the same name was an eminent man of letters of Cicero's own time.]

Terentia's daughter, Tullia, had a short and unhappy life. She was born, it would seem, about 79 B.C., and married when fifteen or sixteen to a young Roman n.o.ble, Piso Frugi by name. "The best, the most loyal of men," Cicero calls him. He died in 57 B.C., and Rome lost, if his father-in-law's praises of him may be trusted, an orator of the very highest promise. "I never knew any one who surpa.s.sed my son-in-law, Piso, in zeal, in industry, and, I may fairly say, in ability." The next year she married a certain Cra.s.sipes, a very shadowy person indeed. We know nothing of what manner of man he was, or what became of him. But in 50 B.C. Tullia was free to marry again. Her third venture was of her own or her mother's contriving. Her father was at his government in Cilicia, and he hears of the affair with surprise. "Believe me," he writes to Atticus, "nothing could have been less expected by me. Tiberius Nero had made proposals to me, and I had sent friends to discuss the matter with the ladies. But when they got to Rome the betrothal had taken place.

This, I hope, will be a better match. I fancy the ladies were very much pleased with the young gentleman's complaisance and courtesy, but do not look for the thorns." The "thorns," however, were there. A friend who kept Cicero acquainted with the news of Rome, told him as much, though he wraps up his meaning in the usual polite phrases. "I congratulate you," he writes, "on your alliance with one who is, I really believe, a worthy fellow. I do indeed think this of him. If there have been some things in which he has not done justice to himself, these are now past and gone; any traces that may be left will soon, I am sure, disappear, thanks to your good influence and to his respect for Tullia. He is not offensive in his errors, and does not seem slow to appreciate better things." Tullia, however, was not more successful than other wives in reforming her husband. Her marriage seems to have been unhappy almost from the beginning. It was brought to an end by a divorce after about three years. Shortly afterward Tullia, who could have been little more than thirty, died, to the inconsolable grief of her father. "My grief,"

he writes to Atticus, "pa.s.ses all consolation. Yet I have done what certainly no one ever did before, written a treatise for my own consolation. (I will send you the book if the copyists have finished it.) And indeed there is nothing like it. I write day after day, and all day long; not that I can get any good from it, but it occupies me a little, not much indeed; the violence of my grief is too much for me.

Still I am soothed, and do my best to compose, not my feelings, indeed, but, if I can, my face." And again: "Next to your company nothing is more agreeable to me than solitude. Then all my converse is with books; yet this is interrupted by tears; these I resist as well as I can; but at present I fail." At one time he thought of finding comfort in unusual honors to the dead. He would build a shrine of which Tullia should be the deity. "I am determined," he writes, "on building the shrine. From this purpose I cannot be turned ... Unless the building be finished this summer, I shall hold myself guilty." He fixes upon a design. He begs Atticus, in one of his letters, to buy some columns of marble of Chios for the building. He discusses the question of the site. Some gardens near Rome strike him as a convenient place. It must be conveniently near if it is to attract wors.h.i.+pers. "I would sooner sell or mortgage, or live on little, than be disappointed." Then he thought that he would build it on the grounds of his villa. In the end he did not build it at all. Perhaps the best memorial of Tullia is the beautiful letter in which one of Cicero's friends seeks to console him for his loss. "She had lived," he says, "as long as life was worth living, as long as the republic stood." One pa.s.sage, though it has often been quoted before, I must give. "I wish to tell you of something which brought me no small consolation, hoping that it may also somewhat diminish your sorrow. On my way back from Asia, as I was sailing from Aeigina to Megara, I began to contemplate the places that lay around me. Behind me was Aegina, before me Megara; on my right hand the Piraeus, on my left hand Corinth; towns all of them that were once at the very height of prosperity, but now lie ruined and desolate before our eyes. I began thus to reflect: 'Strange! do we, poor creatures of a day, bear it ill if one of us perish of disease, or are slain with the sword, we whose life is bound to be short, while the dead bodies of so many lie here inclosed within so small a compa.s.s?"

But I am antic.i.p.ating. When Cicero was in exile the republic had yet some years to live; and there were hopes that it might survive altogether. The exile's prospects, too, began to brighten. Caesar had reached for the present the height of his ambition, and was busy with his province of Gaul. Pompey had quarreled with Clodius, whom he found to be utterly unmanageable. And Cicero's friend, one Milo, of whom I shall have to say more hereafter, being the most active of them all, never ceased to agitate for his recall. It would be tedious to recall all the vicissitudes of the struggle. As early as May the Senate pa.s.sed a resolution repealing the decree of banishment, the news of it having caused an outburst of joy in the city. Accius' drama of "Telamon" was being acted at the time, and the audience applauded each senator as he entered the Senate, and rose from their places to greet the consul as he came in. But the enthusiasm rose to its height when the actor who was playing the part of Telamon (whose banishment from his country formed part of the action of the drama) declaimed with significant emphasis the following lines--

What! he--the man who still with steadfast heart Strove for his country, who in perilous days Spared neither life nor fortune, and bestowed Most help when most she needed; who surpa.s.sed In wit all other men. Father of G.o.ds, _His_ house--yea, _his_!--I saw devoured by fire; And ye, ungrateful, foolish, without thought Of all wherein he served you, could endure To see him banished; yea, and to this hour Suffer that he prolong an exile's day.

Still obstacle after obstacle was interposed, and it was not till the fourth of August that the decree pa.s.sed through all its stages and became finally law. Cicero, who had been waiting at the point of Greece nearest to Italy, to take the earliest opportunity of returning, had been informed by his friends that he might now safely embark. He sailed accordingly on the very day when the decree was pa.s.sed, and reached Brundisium on the morrow. It happened to be the day on which the foundation of the colony was celebrated, and also the birthday of Tullia, who had come so far to meet her father. The coincidence was observed by the towns-people with delight. On the eighth the welcome news came from Rome, and Cicero set out for the capital. "All along my road the cities of Italy kept the day of my arrival as a holiday; the ways were crowded with the deputations which were sent from all parts to congratulate me. When I approached the city, my coming was honored by such a concourse of men, such a heartiness of congratulation as are past believing. The way from the gates, the ascent of the Capitol, the return to my home made such a spectacle that in the very height of my joy I could not but be sorry that a people so grateful had yet been so unhappy, so cruelly oppressed." "That day," he said emphatically, "that day was as good as immortality to me."

CHAPTER XI.

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 G.o.ddess 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 p.r.o.nounced 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?'

'Cra.s.sus,' 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 consuls.h.i.+p; 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 grat.i.tude 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 a.s.sault. 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sist 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 canva.s.s for the consuls.h.i.+p, making a present in money (which may be reckoned at five-and-twenty s.h.i.+llings) 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 inst.i.tute 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 a.s.sa.s.sinated, 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 a.s.sertion 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 d.a.m.ning 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 a.s.sembled, gave a verdict of guilty. Milo went into banishment at Ma.r.s.eilles--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 Ma.r.s.eilles 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.

CHAPTER XII.

CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA.

"From his earliest years," so runs the character that has come down to us of Cato, "he was resolute to obstinacy. Flattery met with a rough repulse, and threats with resistance. He never laughed, and his smile was of the slightest. Not easily provoked, his anger, once roused, was implacable. He learned but slowly, but never forgot a thing once acquired; he was obedient to his teachers, but wanted to know the reason of every thing." The stories told of his boyhood bear out this character. Here is one of them. His tutor took him to Sulla's house. It was in the evil days of the Proscription, and there were signs of the b.l.o.o.d.y work that was going on. "Why does no one kill this man?" he asked his teacher. "Because, my son, they fear him more than they hate him,"

was the answer. "Why then," was the rejoinder, "have you not given me a sword that I may set my country free?" The tutor, as it may be supposed, carried him off in haste.

Like most young Romans he began life as a soldier, and won golden opinions not only by his courage, which indeed was common enough in a nation that conquered the world, but by his temperance and diligent performance of duty. His time of service ended, he set out on his travels, accepting an invitation from the tributary king of Galatia, who happened to be an old friend of the family, to visit him. We get an interesting little picture of a Roman of the upper cla.s.s on a tour. "At dawn he would send on a baker and a cook to the place which he intended to visit. These would enter the town in a most unpretending fas.h.i.+on, and if their master did not happen to have a friend or acquaintance in the place, would betake themselves to an inn, and there prepare for their master's accommodation without troubling any one. It was only when there was no inn that they went to the magistrates and asked for entertainment; and they were always content with what was a.s.signed.

Often they met with but scanty welcome and attention, not enforcing their demands with the customary threats, so that Cato on his arrival found nothing prepared. Nor did their master create a more favorable impression, sitting as he did quietly on his luggage, and seeming to accept the situation. Sometimes, however, he would send for the town authorities and say, "You had best give up these mean ways, my inhospitable friends; you won't find that all your visitors are Catos."

Once at least he found himself, as he thought, magnificently received.

Approaching Antioch, he found the road lined on either side with troops of spectators. The men stood in one company, the boys in another. Every body was in holiday dress. Some--these were the magistrates and priests--wore white robes and garlands of flowers. Cato, supposing that all these preparations were intended for himself, was annoyed that his servants had not prevented them. But he was soon undeceived. An old man ran out from the crowd, and without so much as greeting the new comer, cried, "Where did you leave Demetrius? When will he come?" Demetrius was Pompey's freedman, and had some of his master's greatness reflected on him. Cato could only turn away muttering, "Wretched place!"

Returning to Rome he went through the usual course of honors, always discharging his duties with the utmost zeal and integrity, and probably, as long as he filled a subordinate place, with great success. It was when statesmans.h.i.+p was wanted that he began to fail.