ity and
because on this excuse they hoped to get rid of Milo, showed
displeasure.[-49-] While they were in this frame of mind Rufus and Titus
Munatius Plancus took hold of them and excited them to greater wrath. As
tribunes they conveyed the body into the Forum just before dawn, placed
it on the rostra, exhibited it to all, and spoke appropriate words with
lamentations. So the populace, as a result of what it both saw and
heard, was deeply stirred and paid no further heed to considerations of
sanctity or things divine, but overthrew all the customs of burial and
nearly burned down the whole city. The body of Clodius they picked up
and carried into the senate-house, arranged it in due fashion, and then
after heaping a pyre of benches burned both the corpse and the
convention hall. They did this, therefore, not under the stress of such
an impulse as often takes sudden hold of crowds, but of set purpose, so
that on the ninth day they held the funeral feast in the Forum itself,
with the senate-house still smouldering, and furthermore undertook to
apply the torch to Milo's house. This last was not burned because many
were defending it. Milo for a time, in great terror over the murder, was
hidden not only by ordinary citizens but under the guard of knights and
some senators. When this other act, however, occurred, he hoped that the
wrath of the senate would pass over to the outrage of the opposing
party. They had assembled late in the afternoon on the Palatine for this
very purpose, and had voted that an interrex be chosen by show of hands
and that he and the tribunes and Pompey, moreover, care for the guarding
of the city, that it suffer no detriment. Milo, accordingly, made his
appearance in public, and pressed his claims to the office as strongly
as before, if not more strongly.

[-50-] As a consequence of this, conflicts and killings in plenty began
again, so that the senate ratified the aforementioned measures, summoned
Pompey, allowed him to make fresh levies, and changed their garments.
Not long after his arrival they assembled under guard near his theatre
outside the pomerium and resolved that the bones of Clodius should be
taken up, and assigned the rebuilding of the senate-house to Faustus,
son of Sulla. It was the Curia Hostilia which had been remodeled by
Sulla. Wherefore they came to this decision about it and ordered that
when repaired it should receive again the former's name. The city was in
a fever of excitem