The Senate complimented
them in giving their consent. With a firm expectation present in all men's
minds the second morning dawned. Even in Rome, accustomed as it was to
mockeries of justice, public opinion was shocked when the confident
anticipation was disappointed. According to Cicero, Marcus Crassus, for
reasons known to himself, had been interested in Clodius. During the night
he sent for the judges one by one. He gave them money. What else he either
gave or promised them, must continue veiled in Cicero's Latin.[2] Before
these influences the resolution of the judges melted away, and when the
time came, thirty-one out of fifty-six high-born Roman peers and gentlemen
declared Clodius innocent.
The original cause was nothing. That a profligate young man should escape
punishment for a licentious frolic was comparatively of no consequence;
but the trial acquired a notoriety of infamy which shook once more the
already tottering constitution.
"Why did you ask for a guard?" old Catulus growled to the judges: "was it
that the money you have received might not be taken from you?"
"Such is the history of this affair," Cicero wrote to his friend Atticus.
"We thought that the foundation of the Commonwealth had been surely re-
established in my consulship, all orders of good men being happily united.
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