tical matters of that date.[221] He, Cicero, had
known nothing about them. The part of the oration which most interests
us is that in which he defends himself from the accusations somewhat
unwisely made against himself personally by young Torquatus, the son of
him who had been raised to the Consulship in the place of P. Sulla.
Torquatus had called him a foreigner because he was a "novus homo," and
had come from the municipality of Arpinum, and had taunted him with
being a king, because he had usurped authority over life and death in
regard to Lentulus and the other conspirators. He answers this very
finely, and does so without an ill-natured word to young Torquatus,
whom, from respect to his father, he desires to spare. "Do not," he
says, "in future call me a foreigner, lest you be answered with
severity, nor a king, lest you be laughed at--unless, indeed, you think
it king-like so to live as to be a slave not only to no man but to no
evil passion; unless you think it be king-like to despise all lusts, to
thirst for neither gold nor silver nor goods, to express yourself freely
in the Senate, to think more of services due to the people than of
favors won from them, to yield to none, and to stand firm against many.
If this be king-like, then I confess that I am a king." Sulla was
acquitted, but the impartial reader will not the less feel sure that he
had been part and parcel with Catiline in the conspiracy. It is trusted
that the impartial reader will also remember how many honest, loyal
gentlemen have in our own days undertaken the causes of those whom they
have known to be rebels, and have saved those rebels by their ingenuity
and eloquence.

At the end of this year, B.C. 62, there occurred a fracas in Rome which
was of itself but of little consequence to Rome, and would have been of
none to Cicero but that circumstances grew out of it which created for
him the bitterest enemy he had yet encountered, and led to his sorest
trouble. This was the affair of Clodius and of the mysteries of the Bona
Dea, and I should be disposed to say that it was the greatest misfortune
of his life, were it not that the wretched results which sprung from it
would have been made to spring from some other source had that source
not sufficed. I shall have to tell how it came to pass that Cicero was
sent into exile by means of the misconduct of Clodius; but I shall have
to show also that the misconduct of Clodius was but the tool which was
used