Ptolemy poisoned himself; Cato
earned the glory of adding a new province to the Empire, and did not
return for two years, when he brought 7,000 talents--a million and a half
of English money--to the Roman treasury.
Cicero and Cato being thus put out of the way--Caesar being absent in
Gaul, and Pompey looking on without interfering--Clodius had amused
himself with legislation. He gratified his corrupt friends in the Senate
by again abolishing the censor's power to expel them. He restored cheap
corn establishments in the city--the most demoralizing of all the measures
which the democracy had introduced to swell their numbers. He re-
established the political clubs, which were hot-beds of distinctive
radicalism. He took away the right of separate magistrates to lay their
vetoes on the votes of the sovereign people, and he took from the Senate
such power as they still possessed of regulating the government of the
provinces, and passed it over to the Assembly. These resolutions, which
reduced the administration to a chaos, he induced the people to decree by
irresistible majorities. One measure only he passed which deserved
commendation, though Clodius deserved none for introducing it. He put an
end to the impious pretence of "observing the heavens," of which
conservative officials had availed themselves to obstruct unwelcome
motions.
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