Some time after, a knight named L. Vettius, who had been one of Cicero’s informers in the affair of Catiline, being suborned, it is said, by Cæsar, declared that several young noblemen had entered into a plot, in which he himself partook, to murder Pompey; the senate ordered him to prison; next day Cæsar produced him on the rostra, when he omitted some whom he had named to the senate, and added others, among whom were Lucullus and Cicero’s son-in-law Piso, and hinted at Cicero himself. Vettius was taken back to prison, where he was privately murdered by his accomplices, as Cæsar said,—by Cæsar himself, according to others.
The senate, to render Cæsar as innocuous as possible, had, in right of the Sempronian law, assigned the woods and roads as the provinces of the consuls on the expiration of their office. But Cæsar had no idea of being foiled thus; and his creature, the tribune Vatinius, had a law passed by the people, giving him the province of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, with three legions, for five years; and when on the death of Metellus Celer he expressed a wish to have Transalpine Gaul added, the senate, as he would otherwise have applied to the people, granted it to him with another legion. In order to draw the ties more closely between himself and Pompey, he had given him in marriage his lovely and amiable daughter Julia, and he himself married the daughter of L. Calpurnius Piso, whom, with A. Gabinius, a creature of Pompey, the triumvirs had destined for the consulate of the following year. They also secured the tribunate for Clodius; and thus terminated the memorable consulate of Cæsar and Bibulus.
CLODIUS EXILES CICERO
[58-57 B.C.]
Clodius lost no time (58) in preparing for his attack on Cicero. To win the people, he proposed a law for distributing corn to them gratis; by another law he re-established the clubs and unions, which the senate had suppressed, and formed new ones out of the dregs of the populace and even of the slaves; by a third law he prohibited any one from watching the heavens on assembly days;[106] by a fourth, to gain the profligate nobility, he forbade the censors to note any senator unless he was openly accused before them, and that they both agreed. He then made sure of the consuls, who were distressed and profligate men, by engaging to get Macedonia and Achaia for Piso as his province, and Syria for Gabinius. Having thus, as he thought, secured the favour of the consuls, the nobility, and the people, and having a sufficient number of ruffians from the clubs and unions at his devotion, he proposed a bill interdicting from fire and water any person who, without sentence of the people, had or should put any citizen to death. Cicero, who, though he was not named, knew that he was aimed at, was so foolish and cowardly as to change his raiment (a thing he afterwards justly regretted), and go about supplicating the people according to custom, as if he were actually accused; but Clodius and his followers met him in all the streets, threw dirt and stones at him, and impeded his supplications. The knights, the young men, and numbers of others, with young Crassus at their head, changed their habits with him and protected him. They also assembled on the Capitol, and sent some of the most respectable of their body on his behalf to the consul Gabinius and the senate, who were in the temple of Concord; but Gabinius would not let them come near the senate, and Clodius had them beaten by his ruffians. On the proposal of the tribune L. Ninnius, the senate decreed that they should change their raiment as in a public calamity; but Gabinius forbade it, and Clodius was at hand with his cut-throats, so that many of them tore their clothes, and rushed out of the temple with loud cries.
Pompey had told Cicero not to fear, and repeatedly promised him his aid; and Cæsar, whose design was only to humble him, had offered to appoint him his legate, to give him an excuse for absenting himself from the city; but Cicero suspecting his object in so doing, and thinking it derogatory to him, had refused it. He now found that Pompey had been deceiving him, for he kept out of the way lest he should be called on to perform his promises. Sooner, as he says, than be the cause of civil tumult and bloodshed, he retired by night from the city, which but five years before he had saved from the associates of those who now expelled him. Cæsar, who had remained in the suburbs waiting for the effect of Clodius’ measures, then set out for his province. When Clodius found that Cicero was gone, he had a bill passed interdicting him from fire and water, and outlawing any person living within four hundred miles of Rome who should entertain him. He burned and destroyed his different villas and his house on the Palatine, the site of which he consecrated to Liberty! His goods were put up to auction, but no one would bid for them; the consuls, however, had taken possession of the more valuable portions of them for themselves.
Cicero, it is much to be lamented, bore his exile with far less equanimity than could have been wished for by the admirers of his really estimable character; his extant letters are filled with the most unmanly complaints, and he justly drew on himself the derision of his enemies. But his was not one of those characters which, based on the high consciousness of worth, derive all their support and consolation from within; it could only unfold its bloom and display its strength beneath the fostering sun of public favour and applause, and Cicero was great nowhere but at Rome. It was his first intention to go to Sicily, but the prætor of that island, C. Virgilius, who had been his intimate friend, wrote desiring him not to enter it. He then passed over to Greece, where he was received with the most distinguished honours, and finally fixed his residence in Macedonia, where the quæstor Cn. Plancius showed him every attention.
Having driven Cicero away, Clodius next proceeded to remove Cato, that he might not be on the spot to impede his measures. He proposed at the same time to gratify an old grudge against the king of Cyprus, the brother of the king of Egypt; for when Clodius was in Asia he chanced to be taken by the pirates, and having no money he applied to the king of Cyprus, who being a miser, sent him only two talents, and the pirates sent the paltry sum back, and set Clodius at liberty without ransom. Clodius kept this conduct in his mind; and just as he entered on his tribunate, the Cypriots happening to send to Rome to complain of their king, he caused a bill to be passed for reducing Cyprus to the form of a province, and for selling the king’s private property; he added in the bill, that this province should be committed to Cato as quæstor, with prætorian power, who (to keep him the longer away from Rome) was also directed to go to Byzantium, and restore the exiles who had been driven thence for their crimes. Cato, we are assured, undertook this most iniquitous commission against his will; he executed it, however, most punctually. He went to Rhodes, whence he sent one of his friends named M. Canidius to Cyprus, to desire the king to resign quietly, offering him the priesthood of the Paphian goddess. Ptolemy however preferred death to degradation, and he took poison. Cato then, not trusting Canidius, sent his nephew, M. Junius Brutus, to look after the property, and went himself to Byzantium, where he effected his object without any difficulty. He then proceeded to Cyprus to sell the late king’s property; and being resolved to make this a model sale, he attended the auction constantly himself, saw that every article was sold to the best advantage, and even offended his friends by not allowing them to get bargains. He thus brought together a sum of seven thousand talents, which he made up in vessels containing two talents five hundred drachmæ each, to which he attached a cord and cork, that they might float in case of shipwreck. He also had two separate accounts of the sale drawn out, one of which he kept, and the other he committed to one of his freedmen, but both happened to be lost, and he had not the gratification of proving his ability of making the most of a property.
When the news that Cato had entered the Tiber with the money reached Rome, priests and magistrates, senate and people, poured out to receive him; but though the consuls and prætors were among them, Cato would not quit his charge till he had brought his vessel into the docks. The people were amazed at the quantity of the wealth, and the senate voted a prætorship to Cato, though he was under the legal age, and permission to appear at the games in a prætexta, of which however he took no advantage. No one thought of the iniquity of the whole proceeding; and when Cicero, after his return, wished to annul all the acts of Clodius’ tribunate, Cato opposed him, and this caused a coolness between them for some time.
Cicero had been only two months gone when his friend Ninnius the tribune, supported by seven of his colleagues, made a motion in the senate for his recall. The whole house agreed to it, but one of the other tribunes interposed. Pompey himself was, however, now disposed to join in restoring him, for Clodius’ insolence was gone past his endurance. This ruffian had by stratagem got into his hands the young Tigranes, whom Pompey had given in charge to the prætor L. Flavius. He had promised him his liberty for a large sum of money; and when Pompey demanded him, he put him on board a ship bound for Asia. A storm having driven the vessel into Antium, Flavius went with an armed force to seize the prince, but Sex. Clodius, one of the tribune’s bravos, met him on the Appian road, and, after an engagement in which several were slain on both sides, drove him off. While Pompey was brooding over this insult, one of Clodius’ slaves was seized at the door of the senate-house with a dagger, which he said his master had given him that he might kill Pompey; Clodius’ mob also made frequent attacks on him, so that out of real or pretended fear he resolved to keep his house till the end of the year; indeed he had been actually pursued to and besieged in it one day by a mob, headed by Clodius’ freedman Damio, and the consul Gabinius had to fight in his defence. Pompey therefore now resolved to befriend Cicero; and P. Sextius, one of the tribunes-elect, took a journey into Gaul to obtain Cæsar’s consent. About the end of October the eight tribunes again proposed a law for his recall, and P. Lentulus Spinther, the consul-elect, spoke strongly in favour of it. Lentulus’ colleague, Q. Metellus Nepos, though he had been Cicero’s enemy, seeing how Cæsar and Pompey were inclined, promised his aid, as also did all the tribunes-elect: Clodius, however, soon managed to purchase two of them, namely, Num. Quinctius and Sex. Serranus.