Milo, endowed with physical courage, with a certain talent for intrigue and for contracting debt, and above all with an ample amount of native assurance which had been carefully cultivated, had made himself a name among the political adventurers of the time, and was the greatest bully in his trade next to Clodius, and naturally therefore through rivalry at the most deadly feud with the latter. As this Achilles of the streets had been acquired by the regents and with their permission was again playing the ultra-democrat, the Hector of the streets became as a matter of course an aristocrat! And the republican opposition, which now would have concluded an alliance with Catilina in person, had he presented himself to them, readily acknowledged Milo as their legitimate champion in all riots. In fact the few successes, which they carried off in this field of battle, were the work of Milo and of his well-trained band of gladiators. So Cato and his friends in return supported the candidature of Milo for the consulship; even Cicero could not avoid recommending one who had been his enemy's enemy and his own protector during many years; and as Milo himself spared neither money nor violence to carry his election, it seemed secured. For the regents it would have been not only a new and keenly-felt defeat, but also a real danger; for it was to be foreseen that the bold partisan would not allow himself as consul to be reduced to insignificance so easily as Domitius and other men of the respectable opposition. It happened that Achilles and Hector accidentally encountered each other not far from the capital on the Appian Way, and a fray arose between their respective bands, in which Clodius himself received a sword-cut on the shoulder and was compelled to take refuge in a neighbouring house.
This had occurred without orders from Milo; but, as the matter had gone so far and as the storm had now to be encountered at any rate, the whole crime seemed to Milo more desirable and even less dangerous than the half; he ordered his men to drag Clodius forth from his lurking place and to put him to death (13 Jan. 702).
The street leaders of the regents' party - the tribunes of the people Titus Munatius Plancus, Quintus Pompeius Rufus, and Gaius Sallustius Crispus - saw in this occurrence a fitting opportunity to thwart in the interest of their masters the candidature of Milo and carry the dictatorship of Pompeius. The dregs of the populace, especially the freedmen and slaves, had lost in Clodius their patron and future deliverer[11]; the requisite excitement was thus easily aroused. After the bloody corpse had been exposed for show at the orators' platform in the Forum and the speeches appropriate to the occasion had been made, the riot broke forth. The seat of the perfidious aristocracy was destined as a funeral pile for the great liberator; the mob carried the body to the senate-house, and set the building on fire. Thereafter the multitude proceeded to the front of Milo's house and kept it under siege, till his band drove off the assailants by discharges of arrows. They passed on to the house of Pompeius and of his consular candidates, of whom the former was saluted as dictator and the latter as consuls, and thence to the house of the interrex Marcus Lepidus, on whom devolved the conduct of the consular elections. When the latter, as in duty bound, refused to make arrangements for the elections immediately, as the clamorous multitude demanded, he was kept during five days under siege in his dwelling house.
But the instigators of these scandalous scenes had overacted their part. Certainly their lord and master was resolved to employ this favourable episode in order not merely to set aside Milo, but also to seize the dictatorship; he wished, however, to receive it not from a mob of bludgeon-men, but from the senate. Pompeius brought up troops to put down the anarchy which prevailed in the capital, and which had in reality become intolerable to everybody; at the same time he now enjoined what he had hitherto requested, and the senate complied. It was merely an empty subterfuge, that on the proposal of Cato and Bibulus the proconsul Pompeius, retaining his former offices, was nominated as "consul without colleagu" instead of dictator on the 25th of the intercalary month[12] (702) - a subterfuge, which admitted an appellation labouring under a double incongruity[13] for the mere purpose of avoiding one which expressed the simple fact, and which vividly reminds us of the sagacious resolution of the waning patriciate to concede to the plebeians not the consulship, but only the consular power[14].
Changes of in the Arrangement of Magistracies and the Jury-System Thus in legal possession of full power, Pompeius set to work and proceeded with energy against the republican party which was powerful in the clubs and the jury-courts. The existing enactments as to elections were repeated and enforced by a special law; and by another against electioneering intrigues, which obtained retrospective force for all offences of this sort committed since 684, the penalties hitherto imposed were augmented.
Still more important was the enactment, that the governorships, which were by far the more important and especially by far the more lucrative half of official life, should be conferred on the consuls and praetors not immediately on their retirement from the consulate or praetorship, but only after the expiry of other five years; an arrangement which of course could only come into effect after four years, and therefore made the filling up of the governorships for the next few years substantially dependent on decrees of senate which were to be issued for the regulation of this interval, and thus practically on the person or section ruling the senate at the moment. The jury-commissions were left in existence, but limits were put to the right of counter-plea, and - what was perhaps still more important - the liberty of speech in the courts was done away; for both the number of the advocates and the time of speaking apportioned to each were restricted by fixing a maximum, and the bad habit which had prevailed of adducing, in addition to the witnesses as to facts, witnesses to character or laudatores, as they were called, in favour of the accused was prohibited. The obsequious senate further decreed on the suggestion of Pompeius that the country had been placed in peril by the quarrel on the Appian Way; accordingly a special commission was appointed by an exceptional law for all crimes connected with it, the members of which were directly nominated by Pompeius.
An attempt was also made to give once more a serious importance to the office of the censors, and by that agency to purge the deeply disordered burgess-body of the worst rabble. All these measures were adopted under the pressure of the sword. In consequence of the declaration of the senate that the country was in danger, Pompeius called the men capable of service throughout Italy to arms and made them swear allegiance for all contingencies; an adequate and trustworthy corps was temporarily stationed at the Capitol; at every stirring of opposition Pompeius threatened armed intervention, and during the proceedings at the trial respecting the murder of Clodius stationed contrary to all precedent, a guard over the place of trial itself.
11. V. VIII. Clodius.
12. In this year the January with 29 and the February with 23 days were followed by the intercalary month with 28, and then by March.