ally brought against him, was really directed
against the senate. For among the populace its members were subject to
denunciations of the utmost virulence voiced by Metellus Nepos, to the
effect that they had no right to condemn any citizen to death without
the consent of the people. But Cicero had no trouble at that time. The
senate had granted immunity to all those who administered affairs during
that period and had further proclaimed that if any one should dare to
call any one of them to account again, he should be in the category of a
personal and public enemy; so that Nepos was afraid and aroused no
further tumult.

[-43-] This was not the senate's only victory. Nepos had moved that
Pompey be summoned with his army (he was still in Asia), pretendedly for
the purpose of bringing calm to the existing conditions, but really in
hope that he himself might through him get power in the disturbances he
was causing, because Pompey favored the multitude: this plan the
senators prevented from being ratified. For, to begin with, Cato and
Quintus Minucius in their capacity as tribunes vetoed the proposition
and stopped the clerk who was reading the motion. Nepos took the
document to read it himself, but they snatched it away, and when even so
he undertook to make some oral remarks they laid hold of his mouth. The
result was that a battle with sticks and stones and even swords took
place between them, in which some others joined who assisted both sides.
Therefore the senators convened in session that very day, changed their
togas and gave the consuls charge of the city, "that it suffer no
injury." Then even Nepos was afraid and retired immediately from their
midst: subsequently, after publishing some piece of writing against the
senate, he set out to join Pompey, although he had no right to be absent
from the city a single night.

[-44-] After this occurrence Caesar, who was now praetor, likewise showed
no further revolutionary tendencies. He effected the removal of the name
of Catulus from the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus--he was calling him to
account for theft and was demanding an account of the money he had
spent--and the entrusting to Pompey of the construction of the remainder
of the edifice. For many details, considering the size and character of
the work, were but half finished. Or else Caesar pretended it was so, in
order that Pompey might gain the glory for its completion and inscribe
his name instead. He was not, to