ve.

Up to this moment Milo was no more guilty than Clodius, and neither of
them, probably, guilty of more than their usual violence. Partisans on
the two sides endeavored to show that each had prepared an ambush for
the other, but there is no evidence that it was so. There is no
evidence existing now as to this dragging out of Clodius that he might
be murdered; but we know what was the general opinion of Rome at the
time and we may conclude that it was right. The order probably was given
by Milo--as it would have been given by Clodius in similar
circumstances--at the spur of the moment, when Milo allowed his passion
to get the better of his judgment.

The thirty servants of Clodius were either killed or had run away and
hidden themselves, when a certain Senator, S. Tedius, coming that way,
found the dead body on the road, and carrying it into the city on a
litter deposited it in the dead man's house. Before nightfall the death
of Clodius was known through the city, and the body was surrounded by a
crowd of citizens of the lower order and of slaves. With them was
Fulvia, the widow, exposing the dead man's wounds and exciting the
people to sympathy. On the morrow there was an increased crowd, among
whom were Senators and Tribunes, and the body was carried out into the
Forum, and the people were harangued by the Tribunes as to the horror of
the deed that had been done. From thence the body was borne into the
neighboring Senate-house[56] by the crowd, under the leading of Sextus
Clodius, a cousin of the dead man. Here it was burnt with a great fire
fed with the desks and benches, and even with the books and archives
which were stored there. Not only was the Senate-house destroyed by the
flames, but a temple also that was close to it. Milo's house was
attacked, and was defended by arms. We are made to understand that all
Rome was in a state of violence and anarchy. The Consuls' fasces had
been put away in one of the temples--that of Venus Libitina: these the
people seized and carried to the house of Pompey, declaring that he
should be Dictator, and he alone Consul, mingling anarchy with a
marvellous reverence for legal forms.

But there arose in the city a feeling of great anger at the burning of
the Senate-house, which for a while seemed to extinguish the sympathy
for Clodius, so that Milo, who was supposed to have taken himself off,
came back to Rome and renewed his canvass, distributing bribes to all
the citizens--"mi