lite enough to call on me in the evening after the
senate had risen, that, in case of any business having been done there,
I might, if I thought good, write an account of it to you. The senate
was fuller than I had thought possible in the month of December just
before the holidays. Of us consulars there were P. Servilius, M.
Lucullus, Lepidus, Volcatius, Glabrio: the two consuls-designate; the
praetors. We were a really full house: two hundred in all.[420] Lupus had
excited some interest.[421] He raised the question of the Campanian land
in considerable detail. He was listened to in profound silence. You are
not unaware what material that subject affords. He omitted none of the
points which I had made in this business.[422] There were some sharp
thrusts at Caesar, some denunciations of Gellius, some appeals to the
absent Pompey. After concluding his speech at a late hour, he said that
he would not ask for our votes lest he might burden us with a personal
controversy; he quite understood the sentiments of the senate from the
denunciations of past times and the silence on the present occasion.
Milo spoke. Lupus begins the formula of dismissal,[423] when Marcellinus
says: "Don't infer from our silence, Lupus, what we approve or
disapprove of at this particular time. As far as I am concerned, and I
think it is the same with the rest, I am only silent because I do not
think it suitable that the case of the Campanian land should be debated
in Pompey's absence." Then Lupus said that he would not detain the
senate.[423] Racilius rose and began bringing before the house the case
of the proposed prosecutions. He calls upon Marcellinus, of course,
first;[424] who, after complaining in serious tones of the Clodian
incendiaries, massacres, and stonings, proposed a resolution that
"Clodius himself should, under the superintendence of the praetor
urbanus, have his jury allotted to him; that the elections should be
held only when the allotment of jurors[425] had been completed; that
whoever stopped the trials would be acting against the interests of the
state."[426] The proposal having been received with warm approval, Gaius
Cato[427]--as did also Cassius--spoke against it, with very emphatic
murmurs of disapprobation on the part of the senate, when he proposed to
hold the elections before the trials. Philippus supported Lentulus.[428]
After that Racilius called on me first of the unofficial senators for my
opinion.[429] I made a long sp