"
Clodius, pale with anger, called out, "Who is murdering the people with
famine?" A thousand throats answered, "Pompey!" "Who wants to go to
Alexandria?" "Pompey!" they shouted again. "And whom do you want to go?"
"Crassus!" they cried. Passion had risen too high for words. The Clodians
began to spit on the Milonians. The Milonians drew swords and cut the
heads of the Clodians. The working men, being unarmed, got the worst of
the conflict; and Clodius was flung from the Rostra. The Senate was
summoned to call Pompey to account. Cicero went off home, wishing to
defend Pompey, but wishing also not to offend the "good" party, who were
clamorous against him. That evening nothing could be done. Two days after
the Senate met again; Cato abused Pompey, and praised Cicero much against
Cicero's will, who was anxious to stand well with Pompey. Pompey accused
Cato and Crassus of a conspiracy to murder him. In fact, as Cicero said,
Pompey had just then no friend in any party. The mob was estranged from
him, the noble lords hated him, the Senate did not like him, the patrician
youth insulted him, and he was driven to bring up friends from the country
to protect his life. All sides were mustering their forces in view of an
impending fight.[13]
It would be wasted labor to trace minutely the particulars of so miserable
a scene, or the motives of the principal actors in it--Pompey, bound to
Caesar by engagement and conviction, yet jealous of his growing fame,
without political conviction of his own, and only conscious that his
weight in the State no longer corresponded to his own estimate of his
merits--Clodius at the head of the starving mob, representing mere
anarchy, and nourishing an implacable hate against Cicero--Cicero, anxious
for his own safety, knowing now that he had made enemies of half the
Senate, watching how the balance of factions would go, and dimly conscious
that the sword would have to decide it, clinging, therefore, to Pompey,
whose military abilities his civilian ignorance considered supereminent--
Cato, a virtuous fanatic, narrow, passionate, with a vein of vanity,
regarding all ways as wrong but his own, and thinking all men who would
not walk as he prescribed wicked as well as mistaken--the rest of the
aristocracy scuffling for the plunder of Egypt, or engaged in other
enterprises not more creditable--the streets given over to the factions--
the elections the alternate prize of bribery or violence, and consulates
and praetorships falling to men more than half of whom, if Cicero can be
but moderately believed, deserved to be crucified.
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