turbed him.
The speech which we read is almost certainly not that which he delivered,
but, as in the previous case of Verres, the finished and elaborate
composition of his calmer hours. Milo was convicted by a large majority;
in fact, there can be little doubt but that he was legally guilty, however
political expediency might, in the eyes of Cicero and his party, have
justified his deed. Cato sat on the jury, and did all he could to insure
an acquittal, showing openly his voting-paper to his fellow jurors, with
that scorn of the "liberty of silence" which he shared with Cicero.

Milo escaped any worse penalty by at once going into voluntary banishment
at Marseilles. But he showed more practical philosophy than his advocate;
for when he read the speech in his exile, he is said to have declared that
"it was fortunate for him it was not spoken, or he should never have known
the flavour of the red mullet of Marseilles".

The removal of Clodius was a deliverance upon which Cicero never ceased to
congratulate himself. That "battle of Bovillae", as he terms it, became an
era in his mental records of only less significance than his consulship.
His own public life continued to be honourable and successful. He was
elected into the College of Augurs, an honour which he had long coveted;
and he was appointed to the government of Cilicia. This latter was a
greatness literally "thrust upon him", and which he would gladly have
declined, for it took him away in these eventful days from his beloved
Rome; and to these grand opportunities for enriching himself he was,
as has been said, honourably indifferent. The appointment to a distant
province was, in fact, to a man like Cicero, little better than an
honourable form of exile: it was like conferring on a man who had been,
and might hope one day to be again, Prime Minister of England, the
governor-generalship of Bombay.

One consolation he found on reaching his new government--that even in the
farthest wilds of Cilicia there were people who had heard of "the consul
who saved Rome". And again the astonished provincials marvelled at a
governor who looked upon them as having rights of their own, and neither
robbed nor ill-used them. He made a little war, too, upon some troublesome
hill-tribes (intrusting the command chiefly to his brother Quintus, who
had served with distinction under Caesar in Gaul), and gained a victory
which his legions thought of sufficient importance to salute him wit