iso. The first was notoriously
hostile, of the second Cicero hoped to make a friend, the more so as he
was a kinsman of his daughter's husband. He gives a lively picture of an
interview with him. "It was nearly eleven o'clock in the morning when we
went to him. He came out of a dirty hovel to meet us, with his slippers
on, and his head muffled up. His breath smelt most odiously of wine; but
he excused himself on the score of his health, which compelled him, he
said, to use medicines in which wine was employed." His answer to the
petition of his visitors (for Cicero was accompanied by his son-in-law)
was at least commendably frank. "My colleague Gabinius is in absolute
poverty, and does not know where to turn. Without a province he must be
ruined. A province he hopes to get by the help of Clodius, but it must
be by my acting with him. I must humor his wishes, just as you, Cicero,
humored your colleague when you were consul. But indeed there is no
reason why you should seek the consul's protection. Every one must look
out for himself."

In default of the consuls there was still some hope that Pompey might be
induced to interfere, and Cicero sought an interview with him. Plutarch
says that he slipped out by a back door to avoid seeing him; but
Cicero's own account is that the interview was granted. "When I threw
myself at his feet" (he means I suppose, humiliated himself by asking
such a favor), "he could not lift me from the ground. He could do
nothing, he said, against the will of Caesar."

Cicero had now to choose between two courses. He might stay and do his
best with the help of his friends, to resist the passing of the law. But
this would have ended, it was well known, in something like an open
battle in the streets of Rome. Clodius and his partisans were ready to
carry their proposal by force of arms, and would yield to nothing but
superior strength. It was possible, even probable, that in such a
conflict Cicero would be victorious. But he shrank from the trial, not
from cowardice, for he had courage enough when occasion demanded, not
even from unwillingness to risk the lives of his friends, though this
weighed somewhat with him, but chiefly because he hated to confess that
freedom was becoming impossible in Rome, and that the strong hand of a
master was wanted to give any kind of security to life and property. The
other course was to anticipate the sentence and to go into voluntary
exile. This was the course which