er
brother-in-law, Q. Marcus Rex, was propraetor, and while commanding a
fleet under him had fallen into the hands of pirates, and when freed
from them had gone--apparently in a private capacity--to Antioch, where
he again excited a mutiny of Syrian troops engaged in a war against the
Arabians (B.C. 70-65). On his return to Rome he attempted to make
himself conspicuous by prosecuting Catiline, but accepted a bribe to
withdraw. In B.C. 64, on the staff of the governor of Gallia
Narbonensis, he is accused of having enriched himself with plunder. For
a time after that he was still acting as a member of the party of the
Optimates; seems to have supported Cicero during the Catiline
conspiracy; and in B.C. 62 stood for the quaestorship and was elected.
His violation of the mysteries was alleged to have been committed in
December of that year, and before he could go to the province allotted
to him as quaestor in Sicily he had to stand a trial for sacrilege. Such
an offence--penetrating in disguise into the house of the Pontifex
Maximus, when his wife was engaged in the secret rites of the Bona
Dea--would place him under a curse, and not only prevent his entering
upon his quaestorship, but would disfranchise and politically ruin him.
Clodius would seem not to have been a person of sufficient character or
importance to make this trial a political event. But not only had he
powerful backers, but his opponents also, by proposing an innovation in
the manner of selecting the jurors for trying him, had managed to give a
spurious political importance to the case. One of the most brilliant of
the early letters (XV, p. 37) gives us a graphic picture of the trial.
Clodius was acquitted and went to his province, but returned in B.C. 60,
apparently prepared for a change of parties. Cicero and he had
quarrelled over the trial. He had said sarcastic things about the sacred
consulship, and Cicero had retaliated by bitter speeches in the senate,
and by giving evidence at the trial of having seen Clodius in Rome three
hours before he professed to have been at Interamna, on the day of the
alleged sacrilege. It is perhaps possible that his alibi may have been
true in substance, for he may have been well out of Rome on his way to
Interamna after seeing Cicero. But, however that may be, he nourished a
grudge against Cicero, which he presently had an opportunity of
satisfying. The year of his return to Rome from Sicily (B.C. 60) was the
same as that