of politics, and divided his time between the pursuit of wealth and the elegant pleasures of literature and art. The greater part of his life was spent in Greece, and especially at Athens; whence he added to his family name of Pomponius the surname of Atticus. His house at Rome was on the Quirinal, near the temples of Salus and Quirinus,1 the former of which lay close to the Porta Salutaris, and the latter near the church of S. Andrea del Noviziato. Hence Atticus probably dwelt near the Quattro Fontane. The building, as we are told by his friend Cornelius Nepos, was an old family house on which Atticus bestowed no more pains than just to keep it in proper repair; elegantly, but not sumptuously, furnished; but containing the choicest family of slaves, whether for literary or domestic purposes, of any residence in the city: so that everything was made at home. Its chief ornament was a wood or park (silva).2 This quiet, moneymaking, and saving man married his daughter to Agrippa, and thus became the grandfather of a Roman empress, Vipsania Agrippina, the consort of Tiberius. He was buried in the tomb of his uncle Cæcilius, at the fifth milestone in the Appian Way, and therefore not a great way beyond the striking monument of Cæcilia Metella.3 But to return. The better to carry out his factious purposes, Clodius, with the aid of Cæsar, got himself adopted into a plebeian family, in order that he might become a tribune; which office he obtained in B. c. 59. Armed with this formidable power, Clodius, to gratify his own vengeance as well as to please Cæsar, soon made Rome too hot for Cicero, who, to avoid worse consequences, went into voluntary exile; and Clodius soon after procured his banishment to be decreed by law. Cicero, before his departure, had proceeded to the Capitol, and there dedicated a statue of Minerva; a signifi i. 1. 1 Cic. ad Att. xii. 45; De Leg. 2 Vita Att. 13. cant hint that as the Roman councils were now about to be deprived of his own wisdom, they stood the more in need of the goddess of that quality. When he was gone his fine house upon the Palatine was pillaged, burnt, and razed by Clodius' myrmidons, and his wife Terentia compelled to take refuge among the neighbouring Vestals, whose superior was fortunately her sister. Cicero's villas at Tusculum and Formiæ experienced the same fate. Having got rid of Cicero, Clodius next turned his arms against Pompey, who had assisted him to procure Cicero's banishment, and relegated Cato from Rome, by obtaining for him from the people a mission to the isle of Cyprus. Clodius seemed now to be sole master of Rome. He hired a troop of bandits to besiege Pompey in his own house in the Carinæ, and threatened to level it as he had that of Cicero; so that Pompey was forced to shut himself up in his gardens, and surround himself with a numerous guard. He endeavoured to carry off Tigranes, king of Armenia, who was detained in Pompey's Alban villa, and he employed one of his own slaves to assassinate Pompey in the midst of the senate. He seized the Temple of Castor, destroyed the steps leading up to it, and, having filled it with arms, made it the stronghold of revolt. At the Aurelian tribunal, which stood just in front of it on the Forum, he openly enrolled in his service the most abandoned wretches, thus converting the very seat of justice into a lair of robbers and assassins. He even ventured to attack the consul Gabinius, and break his fasces. But these acts of violence produced a reaction, and Pompey, who had helped to banish Cicero, now became solicitous for his recall. The attempt to do so produced further riots, in which many persons lost their lives. Cicero's brother Quintus narrowly escaped in a nocturnal fray in the Forum. To oppose force by force, bands led by Sestius and Milo were organised against those of Clodius. The senate, having met in Marius' Temple of Honos et Virtus, called upon the cities of Italy to receive Cicero, and invited the inhabitants of the municipal towns to Rome, by way of counterbalancing the city mob. Thus Rome, like Paris during the first revolution, though mistress of the nation, was herself torn by domestic faction. At length, after a hesitation which betrayed how utterly lost were all order and authority, the senate ventured to meet in the Curia Hostilia and pronounce Cicero's recall. The secret was that Cæsar, who was now in Gaul, had intimated his approbation of such a step. Clodius had served as a tool, and was thrown aside. The people, voting in their Comitia Centuriata in the Campus Martius, as the highest court of justice, in August, B. C. 57, reversed the decree for Cicero's banishment. In confident anticipation of this result, he was already on his way to Italy, and landed at Brundusium the day after the decision of the Comitia (August 5th). He journeyed leisurely towards Rome, which he did not reach till September, enjoying no doubt the respectful homage paid to him in all the towns and villages on the road. The senate, followed by an immense crowd of people, came out beyond the Porta Capena to meet and welcome him. A gilt chariot, drawn by horses magnificently caparisoned, was here in waiting for him; and as he thus, amid the acclamations of the spectators, proceeded along the Sacra Via, and over the Forum to the Capitol, to render thanks to the immortal gods for his return, he seemed to enjoy a triumph-the triumph of peace-equal to that of many a victorious general. Then, having withdrawn the Minerva which he had set up on the day of his exile, he returned, as he tells us, home: that is, probably, to the family house in the Carinæ, as his own on the Palatine had been destroyed. Not only destroyed, but also, so far as it lay in Clodius' power, its site appropriated, and its very memory obliterated. The factious tribune had caused a shrine and statue of Liberty to be erected where it had stood, but which was nothing else than the image of a Greek courtesan carried off from a tomb.1 Clodius had also destroyed the neighbouring portico of Catulus, the erection of which out of the Cimbric spoils we have before recorded. In fact, he appears to have been desirous of appropriating all this side of the Palatine. He wanted to buy the house of the ædile Seius. Seius having declared that, so long as he lived, Clodius should not have it, Clodius caused him to be poisoned, and then bought his house under a feigned name! He was thus enabled to erect a portico 300 feet in length, in place of that of Catulus. The latter, however, was afterwards restored at the public expense. Cicero obtained public grants for the restoration of his house, and of his Tusculan and Formian villas, but very far from enough to cover the losses he had suffered. The aristocratic part of the senate appears to have envied and grudged the novus homo to whose abilities they looked for protection. He was advised not to rebuild his house on the Palatine, but to sell the ground. It was not in Cicero's temper to take such a course; but he was hampered ever after with debts. Clodius, who had been defeated but not beaten, still continued his persecutions. He organised a gang of street-boys, to call out under Cicero's windows, 'Bread! bread!' His bands interrupted the dramatic performances on the Palatine, at the Megalesian games, by rushing upon the stage. On another occasion, Clodius, at the head of his myrmidons, besieged the senate in the Temple of Concord.8 He attacked Cicero in the streets to the danger of his life; and when he had begun to rebuild his house, drove away the masons, overthrew what part had been re-erected of Catulus' portico, and cast burning torches into the house of Quintus Cicero, which he had hired next to his brother's on the Palatine, and consumed a great part of it. Clodius seemed to control the senate; the cries of the 1 Cic. Pro dom, ad Pont. 42. 3 Cic. De Har. Resp. 11; Pro domo, 5, 7. 2 Ad Att. iv. 2. artisans whom he had hired, when they occupied the Græcostasis and the steps of the Curia, sufficed to disperse the senators.1 At length, however, this violent man was to fall by violence. We shall here anticipate his end. Milo, a rival bully, who espoused the patrician cause, was always surrounded with a troop of gladiators. In the year B. c. 53, both were candidates for public office; Milo for the consulate, Clodius for the prætorship. We may imagine the scenes of violence that occurred between two such ruffians. Cicero, in a letter to Atticus, describes how he saw a band of tatterdemalions with a lantern assembled at Clodius' door during the night; meanwhile Milo with his gladiators occupied the Campus Martius, and effectually hindered the Comitia being held there on the following day.2 A little before, Clodius had besieged Milo in his house on the Germalus, or that part of the Palatine which overhangs the Velabrum; and Milo, to save his life, had been compelled to fly to the house of P. Sulla.3 In January, B. C. 52, Milo and Clodius with their trains accidentally met near Bovilla, on the Appian Way, when a quarrel ensued among their retainers, in which Clodius was killed. Sex. Tedius, a senator, who found his body lying in the road, had it conveyed to his house upon the Palatine Hill; where Fulvia, the wife of Clodius, excited the sympathy of the people by her lamentations, and by pointing out to them her husband's wounds. So great was the crowd that gathered round, that a senator was crushed to death. At length two tribunes caused the body to be carried to the Forum, where it was exposed, naked and disfigured with dirt and blood, before the Rostra. The tribunes then mounted the Rostra, and harangued the multitude, till, their passions having been inflamed, Clodius' brother persuaded them to take the body into 1 Cic. ad Quint. Fr. ii. 1. 2 Ad Att. iv. 3. 3 Ibid. |