Cicero - Anthony Everitt [90]
Having plunged more or less successfully into the political melee, Cicero had some domestic worries to exercise him. His property was to be returned to him, but the question arose of compensation for the demolition of his house on the Palatine and of his country villas. He had been unable to work at the bar for a year and a half and was in urgent need of funds. Also there was the problem of the temple that Clodius had erected on the site of his home; unless the consecration could be annulled, rebuilding would be out of the question. The matter was put before the relevant religious authority, the College of Pontiffs.
Like the Senate, the College of Pontiffs wanted to avoid a full-scale confrontation with Clodius. It came up with a clever formulation which invalidated the consecration without discrediting its originator. At a meeting of the Senate on October 1, the College’s findings were discussed. Given the absence in Long-haired Gaul of the Chief Pontiff (who might well have taken a view less friendly to Cicero), a spokesman for the College emphasized that it saw its role as judge of the religious issue and that the Senate was judge of the law. Those Pontiffs who were also Senators then asked to speak in their latter capacity and did so on Cicero’s behalf. Clodius was present; after some futile filibustering, he saw that further opposition in the Senate would be pointless. On the following day a decree was passed and the Consuls, with the help of surveyors, proceeded to agree to a financial valuation of the house and villas. To Cicero’s annoyance, the house on the Palatine was estimated at 2 million sesterces (much less than the original purchase price of 3.5 million sesterces), the villa at Tusculum at 500,000 sesterces and the one at Formiae at 250,000 sesterces.
The affair confirmed Cicero’s continuing resentment against fair-weather friends in the Senate, who he believed would never let slip an opportunity to harm his interests. He told Atticus: “Those same gentlemen (you don’t need me to tell you their names) who formerly clipped my wings don’t want to see them grow back to their old size. However, I hope they are growing already.”
It turned out that Clodius had only appeared to accept defeat in the gang wars: he was running for Aedile in 56—an important venture, for, if successful, he would once again have a constitutional position. When the elections were postponed Clodius stepped up the pressure on the streets. He let it be known that if elections were not held soon, he would carry out reprisals against the city. In November he staged a series of riots. On November 3 an armed gang drove away the workmen who were rebuilding Cicero’s house on the Palatine. From this vantage point they threw stones at Quintus’s house nearby and set it on fire. A few days later Clodius mounted an attack on Cicero in person. Cicero wrote excitedly to Atticus:
On November 11 as I was coming down the Holy Way, he came after me with his men. Uproar! Stones flying, cudgels and swords in evidence. And like a bolt from the blue! I retired into Tettius Damio’s forecourt, and my companions had no difficulty keeping out the rowdies. Clodius himself could have been killed, but I am becoming a dietitian, I’m sick of surgery.
The next morning, in broad daylight, Clodius led a force armed with swords and shields to storm and burn the house of Milo, his competitor for mastery of the streets. A counterattack beat them off and a number of leading Clodians were killed. For the time being, this was a decisive encounter, and Clodius temporarily lost control of the situation.
In general, Cicero was in a remarkably good mood, considering the political disarray, his continuing money worries and the threats to his physical safety. “My heart is high,” he wrote to Atticus, “higher even than in my palmy days, but my purse is low.” We do not know the reason for his elation, because the surviving correspondence with Atticus is sparse for a number of months, but he may have been buoyed by signs of strain among the First Triumvirate. In