Clodius

“ Lepidus and Sallust played at odd and even, and the umbra looked on, while Glaucus and Clodius became gradually absorbed in the chances of the dice.
'By Pollux!' cried Glaucus, 'this is the second time I have thrown the caniculae' (the lowest throw) .
'Now Venus befriend me!' said Clodius, rattling the box for several moments. 'O Alma Venus—it is Venus herself!' as he threw the highest cast, named from that goddess—whom he who wins money, indeed, usually propitiates! ”

“ By this habit he made himself odious with many people. But Clodius's faction conspired against him upon the following occasion. Clodius was a member of a noble family, in the flower of his youth, and of a bold and resolute temper. He, being in love with Pompeia, Caesar's wife, got privately into his house in the dress and attire of a music-girl; the women being at that time offering there the sacrifice which must not be seen by men, and there was no man present. Clodius, being a youth and beardless, hoped to get to Pompeia among the women without being taken notice of. ”

“ To him the world was one vast prison to which the sovereign of Rome was the imperial gaoler, and the very virtues which, in the free days of Athens, would have made him ambitious, in the slavery of earth made him inactive and supine.
"Tell me, Clodius," said the Athenian at last, "hast thou ever been in love?"
"Yes, very often."
"He who has loved often," answered Glaucus, "has loved never." ”

“ The party of Clodius were put to flight, and betook themselves with their leader to a house near Bovillae. Milo ordered his men to attack the house. Several of Clodius' men were slain, and Clodius himself dragged out and despatched. The body was left lying on the road, till a senator named Sex. Tedius found it, and conveyed it to Rome. Here it was exposed to the view of the populace, who crowded to see it. ”

“ I have greater opportunity of judging than any such casual observer, and I am more devoted to you. Make up your mind that Clodius is most warmly attached to you, and is such a citizen as a man of the greatest sense and most ample fortune is bound to be. ”

“ Mucia hearing the passion in his voice, felt an answering tingle in her blood. She realized that the man loved her. All their hours together, all their words together suddenly appeared to her in a new light.
"Mucia," Clodius repeated, his voice dwelling on the name. "Mucia is what I hope to get."
Crassus snorted.
"Why man," he exclaimed. "You've had five years to get her in, with Pompey half a world away, and you've spent most of your time on her for three. If you haven't got her already, you'll never get her now. And if you could I don't see how a mutiny of his troops will help you." ”

“ Did Rome escape Hannibal and all the power of Carthage, did Sulla save her from the Samnites twenty years agone, did she barely escape Catiline and his ruffians to be burnt in a mere mutiny and that not spontaneous but stirred up for the sake of a woman? Think of all the blood and tears that have gone to make Rome what she is. Must all be in vain because you are made reckless by a woman's indifference to you?"
"I mean to have Mucia," Clodius replied stubbornly. "To get her I must destroy that sham idol of a husband whom she worships. ”

“ Among the members of the aristocracy of this degenerate age of the Roman republic was one Clodius, whose name, like himself, was a corruption of Claudius, for he belonged to the family of the Claudii. This disreputable profligate had obtained an infamous notoriety during the festival of the Bona Dea, whose rites were celebrated on the first of May; and being conducted exclusively by women, the ceremony was no doubt one of a most confused and tedious character. ”

“ Clodius felt no compassion for his fallen foe. The instant that the departure of Cicero became known, a law was presented to and accepted by the tribes, formally pronouncing the banishment of the fugitive, forbidding any one to entertain or harbour him, and denouncing as a public enemy whosoever should take any steps towards procuring his recall. His magnificent mansion on the Palatine, and his elaborately decorated villas at Tusculum and Formiae were at the same time given over to plunder and destruction. ”

“ You shall hear, my Clodius. Several months ago I was sojourning at Naples, a city utterly to my own heart. One day I entered the temple of Minerva to offer up my prayers, not for myself more than for the city on which Pallas smiles no longer. The temple was empty and deserted. The recollections of Athens crowded fast and meltingly upon me. Imagining myself still alone, my prayer gushed from my heart to my lips, and I wept as I prayed. I was startled in the midst of my devotions, however, by a deep sigh. I turned suddenly, and just behind me was a female. ”

“ My Nydia, my poor infant!'
'Oh? is that you—is that Glaucus?' exclaimed the flower-girl, in a tone almost of transport; the tears stood arrested on her cheek; she smiled, she clung to his breast, she kissed his robe as she clung.
'And how dare you, pert stranger! interfere between a free woman and her slave. By the gods! despite your fine tunic and your filthy perfumes, I doubt whether you are even a Roman citizen, my mannikin.'
'Fair words, mistress—fair words!' said Clodius, now entering with Lepidus. ”

“ While Caesar spoke he had been engaged in keeping Clodius at arm's-length. The rage of the frantic libertine increased as the struggle continued. "Stand back, as you value your life," he cried; "I will pass."
"Not this way, sweet Clodius. I have too much regard for you to suffer you to make love at such disadvantage. You smell too much of Falernian at present. Would you stifle your mistress? By Hercules, you are fit to kiss nobody now, except old Piso, when he is tumbling home in the morning from the vintners." ”

“ Your escort was a man wholly unrelated to you in any way, whose attentions to you have been the talk of Rome for a year."
"Clodius," Mucia disclaimed, "is my husband's friend."
"Clodius," Pompeia rejoined, "is nobody's friend. He is his own worst enemy; his country's worst enemy; your worst enemy, if you but knew it; and beyond peradventure, your husband's worst enemy."
"You are blinded," Mucia sneered, "by your own sour, vinegary spirit. Your bile and spleen miscolor all the world for you. Clodius has his faults, but he is far from being as bad as you make him out. ”

“ Appius Clodius, who was sent to Tigranes, (the same Clodius was brother to Lucullus's wife,) being led by the king's guides, a roundabout way, unnecessarily long and tedious, through the upper country, being informed by his freedman, a Syrian by nation, of the direct road, left that lengthy and fallacious one; and bidding the barbarians, his guides, adieu, in a few days passed over Euphrates, and came to Antioch upon Daphne. ”

“ IX. You have said that Publius Clodius was slain by my contrivance. What would men have thought if he had been slain at the time when you pursued him in the forum with a drawn sword, in the sight of all the Roman people; and when you would have settled his business if he had not thrown himself up the stairs of a bookseller's shop, and, shutting them against you, checked your attack by that means? And I confess that at that time I favoured you, but even you yourself do not say that I had advised your attempt. But as for Milo, it was not possible even for me to favour his action. ”

“ Clodius was a second, an abler Catiline, equally unprincipled and far more dexterous and prudent. In times of revolution there is always a disreputable wing to the radical party, composed of men who are the natural enemies of established authority, and these all rallied about their new leader with devout enthusiasm. Clodius was not without political experience. His first public appearance had been as leader of a mutiny. He was already quaestor, and so a senator; but he was too young to aspire to the higher magistracies which were open to him as a patrician. ”

“ Clodius exclaimed. "Talk of revenge to Crassus. Hate drives him. What drives me is love. You can't move me by talking of risks, or of Rome. Not all Rome, not all the Empire, not all the world would be too much to risk to gain Mucia."
"Mucia!" Caesar sneered. "Love! You pose or you misuse words or both. You aren't capable of love and such as you are you do not so much as imagine you love Mucia. Why you are cruising on the offing of half the pretty women in Rome, and you'd tack inshore toward any port not well guarded. ”

“ After the departure of Caesar for Gaul, Clodius became practically master of Rome with the aid of armed ruffians and a system of secret societies. In 57 one of the tribunes proposed the recall of Cicero, and Clodius resorted to force to prevent the passing of the decree, but was foiled by Titus Annius Milo (q.v.) , who brought up an armed band sufficiently strong to hold him in check. Clodius subsequently attacked the workmen who were rebuilding Cicero’s house at the public cost, assaulted Cicero himself in the street, and set fire to the house of Q. Cicero. ”

“ And because the unspeakable Clodius had played Jupiter to his youngest sister's Juno need Clodia be considered less than a Diana to his Apollo? As for her lovers—his voice broke upon the word—she loved him, Catullus, strange as that seemed, and him only. Of course, like all women of charm, she could play the harmless coquette with other men. He hated the domestic woman—Lucretius's dun-coloured wife, for instance—on whom no man except her mate would cast an eye. ”

“ Clodius was the son-in-law of Lælius, and fraudulently appropriated, it is said, a grammatical work, written by his distinguished relative, which shows the honour and credit by this time attached to such pursuits at Rome. Clodius was a Roman knight; and, from his example, men of rank did not disdain to write concerning grammar, and even to teach its principles. Still, however, the greater number of grammarians, at least of the verbal grammarians, were slaves. If well versed in the science, they brought, as we learn from Suetonius, exorbitant prices. ”

“ The Assembly met the next day in the Forum, but was broken up by violence, and Clodius had still to wait. The political witch-dance was at its height and Cicero was in his glory. “The elections,” he wrote to Atticus, “will not, I think, be held; and Clodius will be prosecuted by Milo unless he is first killed. Milo will kill him if he falls in with him. He is not afraid to do it, and he says openly that he will do it. He is not frightened at the misfortune which fell on me. He is not the man to listen to traitorous friends or to trust indolent patricians.” ”

“ Two of the tribunes suggested that the body should be carried into the market-place, and placed on the hustings from which the speaker commonly addressed the people. Then it was resolved, at the suggestion of another Clodius, a notary, and a client of the family, to do it a signal honor. "Thou shalt not bury or burn a man within the city" was one of the oldest of Roman laws. Clodius, the favorite of the people, should be an exception. His body was carried into the Hall of Hostilius, the usual meeting-place of the Senate. ”

“ When he reached Cilicia he received one Menemachus, a deserter from Tigranes, and Clodius who had revolted under Lucullus, and, fearing a repetition of the doings at Nisibis, he put him in command of the fleet; for Marcius, too, had one of his sisters as wife. Now Clodius, after being captured by the pirates and released by them in consequence of their fear of Pompey, came to Antioch in Syria, declaring that he would be their ally against the Arabians, with whom the people were then at variance. There, likewise, he caused some to revolt, and his activity nearly cost him his life. ”

“ Marcellinus, at the head of the Senate, proceeded to the Forum, and harangued the people to ask it for the comitia, without success probably, since the senators returned immediately to the place of their session. Clodius, who, since the conference of Lucca, had become more intimate with Pompey, appeared suddenly among the crowd, interrupted the consul, and bantered him on this display of untimely mourning. In the public place Clodius would easily carry the approval of the multitude; but when he attempted to return to the Senate, he encountered the most resolute opposition. ”

“ She is rich, my friend; why dost thou not proffer thy suit to her?'
'Why, I had once hoped that Glaucus would have married her. She does not disguise her attachment; and then, as he gambles freely and with ill-success...'
'The sesterces would have passed to thee, wise Clodius. A wife is a good thing—when it belongs to another man!'
'But,' continued Clodius, 'as Glaucus is, I understand, to wed the Neapolitan, I think I must even try my chance with the dejected maid. ”

“ But when Lentulus was consul, the commotions grew so high upon this matter, that the tribunes were wounded in the Forum, and Quintus, Cicero's brother, was left as dead, lying unobserved amongst the slain. The people began to change in their feelings; and Annius Milo, one of their tribunes, was the first who had the courage to summon Clodius to trial for acts of violence. Many of the common people in Rome and the neighboring cities formed a party with Pompey, who headed them in person, drove Clodius out of the Forum, and summoned the people to pass their vote. ”

“ In the so-called "Ode," he followed the manner employed by Ramler, whom, however, it alone suited. But Clodius, as an imitator, had especially marked the foreign words by means of which the poems of Ramler come forth with a majestic pomp, which, because it is conformable to the greatness of his subject and the rest of his poetic treatment, produces a very good effect on the ear, feelings, and imagination. In Clodius, on the contrary, these expressions had a heterogeneous air; since his poetry was in other respects not calculated to elevate the mind in any manner. ”