Cæsar, who was the person most interested in the subject of the lawsuit, allowed it to give him very little uneasiness; for having divorced his wife, he continued on terms of friendship with Clodius. The latter became a candidate for the tribuneship; but being disqualified by his high birth, he got himself adopted into that for which nature had best adapted him—a very low family. By a bargain with the Consuls he obtained their support; for he promised that if they helped him to the tribuneship, he would assist them in helping themselves to a rich province at the close of their year of office. The disgraceful arrangement was completed,—the plunderers paying each other at the cost of the public welfare.
Clodius immediately began to exercise his public authority for the gratification of his private feelings; and got a law passed for the sole purpose of destroying Cicero. The orator looked to the triumvirate for protection; but Pompey went out of town; Crassus remembered an old grudge; and Cæsar sided with his friend Clodius. Cicero, without waiting to take his trial, left the city, amid the lamentations of all the good, who formed a mourning party, far more select than numerous. After his departure, sentence of outlawry was passed upon him; his house on the Palatine, and his two villas, were by the hand of demolition brought to the ground, while the rest of his property was brought to the hammer at a public auction.
Clodius having been successful in the gratification of one of his personal animosities, began to look about for other victims against whom he could put in force the power with which "the people" had entrusted him. Recollecting that he had once been in the hands of pirates, and that Ptolemy, King of Cyprus, had declined to rescue him, he passed a law that Ptolemy should be at once deposed; and he, in order to kill two unfortunate birds with one stone, got rid of Cato, by sending him to take possession of Cyprus as a Roman province. Ptolemy, instead of meeting the matter with spirit, met it with a dose of laudanum, and so far forgot himself as to seek in suicide forgetfulness of his sorrows.
Cicero employed his exile in lamenting his fate; and though by profession a dealer in philosophy, he had no stock on hand for his own use, when its consolation was required. He sent whining letters to his wife; and his signature was so bedewed with tears, that he left a blot upon his name, through his unmanly weakness.
Clodius being no longer Consul, a portion of the incubus which stifled the breath of freedom was removed, and the public voice ventured so make itself heard in demanding the recall of Cicero. The orator returned in triumph; and he showed his gratitude by supporting any measure that was proposed by any of those who had been influential in bringing him home again. His advocacy was demanded, and freely given, in favour of many a disgraceful proceeding on the part of his friends; and he undertook the defence of Gabinius, who had carried on a system of extortion in Syria.
Rome was now completely in the hands of an ambitious party, which, by means of armed mercenaries, disposed of the lives, the liberties, and even the opinions of the citizens. Pompey and Crassus, at the instigation of Cæsar, put up for the Consulship a second time, when an opposition candidate, L. Domitius, having come forward, his servant was cut down by the soldiers before his face, as a hint to those who should presume to hold an opinion adverse to the existing authority. The candidate having seen the skull of his domestic split, feared an equally decisive plumper for his own poll, and retired into private life, leaving the executive to be re-elected without any attempt at opposition. The temporary powers of each member of the triumvirate were, by treachery and violence, prolonged for five years; and Cato, who ventured on an opinion that the step was not quite in accordance with the constitution or the law, was unceremoniously thrown into prison. Right was in all cases made completely subservient to might; and the competitors for power kept armed ruffians in their pay, whose collisions with each other were often of the most desperate character. In one of these encounters between the creatures of Clodius and the mercenaries of Milo, the former was killed, which caused the latter to be put upon his trial. Cicero was engaged to defend the accused; but Pompey, who hated Milo, had taken care to surround the former with an armed force, which so intimidated Cicero, that his tongue stuck to his mouth, when he himself ought to have stuck to his client. The orator had not a word to say for himself, or rather for Milo; and as not a sentence was said in his favour, a sentence was pronounced against him. He went into exile at Marseilles; and Cicero, with tardy zeal, wrote a defence when the trial was over. He sent a copy of it to Milo, who pronounced it excellent in its way, but a little too late; and he added, in writing to Cicero, "If you had only delivered it in time, you would have delivered me from the dilemma I was placed in."