ave found out the evil
that exists. One villain has been put upon his trial, and the result has
taught us that there are more villains than one."

Clodius attempted to banter his antagonist. "You are a fine gentleman,"
he said; "you have been at Baiae" (Baiae was a fashionable
watering-place on the Campanian coast). "Well," said Cicero, "that is
better than to have been at the 'matrons' worship.'" And the attack and
repartee went on. "You have bought a fine house." (Cicero had spent a
large sum of money on a house on the Palatine, and was known to have
somewhat crippled his means by doing so.) "With you the buying has been
of jurymen." "They gave you no credit though you spoke on oath." "Yes;
five-and-twenty gave me credit" (five-and-twenty of the jury had voted
for a verdict of guilty; two-and-thirty for acquittal), "but your
thirty-two gave you none, for they would have their money down." The
Senate shouted applause, and Clodius sat down silent and confounded.

How Clodius contrived to secure for himself the office of tribune, the
vantage ground from which he hoped to work his revenge, has been
already told in the sketch of Caesar. Caesar indeed was really
responsible for all that was done. It was he who made it possible for
Clodius to act; and he allowed him "to act when he could have stopped
him by the lifting of his finger. He was determined to prove to Cicero
that he was master. But he never showed himself after the first
interference in the matter of the adoption. He simply allowed Clodius to
work his will without hindrance.

Clodius proceeded with considerable skill. He proposed various laws,
which were so popular that Cicero, though knowing that they would be
turned against himself, did not venture to oppose them. Then came a
proposal directly leveled at him. "Any man who shall have put to death a
Roman citizen uncondemned and without a trial is forbidden fire and
water." (This was the form of a sentence of exile. No one was allowed
under penalty of death to furnish the condemned with fire and water
within a certain distance of Rome.) Cicero at once assumed the squalid
dress with which it was the custom for accused persons to endeavor to
arouse the compassion of their fellow-citizens. Twenty thousand of the
upper classes supported him by their presence. The Senate itself, on the
motion of one of the tribunes, went into this strange kind of mourning
on his account.

The consuls of the year were Gabinus and P