[737] Plutarch, Cato, 55.
[738] All that follows is taken almost entirely from Asconius, the most ancient commentator on Cicero, and is derived, it is believed, from the Acta Diurna. (See the Argument of the Oration of Cicero for Milo, edit. Orelli, p. 31.)
[739] Nine years after the sacrilege committed on the day of the festival of the Bona Dea, Clodius was slain by Milo before the gate of the temple of the Bona Dea, near Bovillæ. (Cicero, Orat. pro Milone, 31.)
[740] Romphæa. (Asconius, Argument of the Orat. of Cicero pro Milone, p. 32, edit. Orelli.)
[741] Cicero, Orat. pro Milone 10.—Dio Cassius, XL. 48.—Appian, Civil Wars, II. 21.—(Asconius, Argument of the Oration of Cicero pro Milone, p. 31, et seq.)
[742] Lectus libitinæ. (Asconius, p. 34.)—The sense of this word is given by Acro, a scholiast on Horace (see Scholia Horatiana, edit. Pauly, tom. I., p. 360). It corresponds with our word corbillard, a hearse. We know the custom of the Romans of carrying at interments the images of the ancestors of the dead with the ensigns of their dignities. The fasces must have been numerous in the Clodian family.
[743] Dio Cassius, XL. 50.
[744] Dio Cassius, XL. 49.
[745] Dio Cassius, XL. 49.
[746] Appian, Civil Wars, II. 22.