to put up with it. Suetonius tells the same story with
admirable simplicity. Of Suetonius it must be said that, if he had no
sympathy for a patriot such as Cicero, neither had he any desire to
represent in rosy colors the despotism of a Caesar. He tells his stories
simply as he has heard them. "Cicero," says Suetonius,[242] "having at
some trial complained of the state of the times, Caesar, on the very same
day, at the ninth hour, passed Clodius over from the Patrician to the
Plebeian rank, in accordance with his own desire." How did it come to
pass that Caesar, who, though Consul at the time, had no recognized power
of that nature, was efficacious for any such work as this? Because the
Republic had come to the condition which the German historian has
described. The conspiracy between Caesar and his subordinates had not
been made for nothing.

The reader will require to know why Clodius should have desired
degradation, and how it came to pass that this degradation should have
been fatal to Cicero. The story has been partly told in the passage from
Middleton. A Patrician, in accordance with the constitution, could not
be a Tribune of the people. From the commencement of the Tribunate, that
office had been reserved for the Plebeians. But a Tribune had a power of
introducing laws which exceeded that of any Senator or any other
official. "They had acquired the right," we are told in Smith's
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, "of proposing to the comitia
tributa, or to the Senate, measures on nearly all the important affairs
of the State;" and as matters stood at this time, no one Tribune could
"veto" or put an arbitrary stop to a proposition from another. When such
proposition was made, it was simply for the people to decide by their
votes whether it should or should not be law. The present object was to
have a proposition made and carried suddenly, in reference to Cicero,
which should have, at any rate, the effect of stopping his mouth. This
could be best done by a Tribune of the people. No other adequate Tribune
could be found--no Plebeian so incensed against Cicero as to be willing
to do this, possessing at the same time power enough to be elected.
Therefore it was that Clodius was so anxious to be degraded.

No Patrician could become a Tribune of the people; but a Patrician might
be adopted by a Plebeian, and the adopted child would take the rank of
his father--would, in fact, for all legal purposes, be the sam