people and he knew the courts too well.
Pompey no doubt might have warded off the coming evil; such at least was
Cicero's idea. To him Pompey was the greatest political power as yet
extant in Rome; but he was beginning to believe that Pompey would be
untrue to him. When he had sent to Pompey a long account of the grand
doings of his Consulship, Pompey had replied with faintest praises. He
had rejected the overtures of the Triumvirate. In the last letter to
Atticus in the year before, written in August,[272] he had declared that
the Republic was ruined; that they who had brought things to this
pass--meaning the Triumvirate--were hostile; but, for himself, he was
confident in saying that he was quite safe in the good will of men
around him. There is a letter to his brother written in November, the
next letter in the collection, in which he says that Pompey and Caesar
promise him everything. With the exception of two letters of
introduction, we have nothing from him till he writes to Atticus from
the first scene of his exile.

When the new year commenced, Clodius was Tribune of the people, and
immediately was active. Piso and Gabinius were Consuls. Piso was kinsman
to Piso Frugi, who had married Cicero's daughter,[273]and was expected
to befriend Cicero at this crisis. But Clodius procured the allotment of
Syria and Macedonia to the two Consuls by the popular vote. They were
provinces rich in plunder; and it was matter of importance for a Consul
to know that the prey which should come to him as Proconsul should be
worthy of his grasp. They were, therefore, ready to support the Tribune
in what he proposed to do. It was necessary to Cicero's enemies that
there should be some law by which Cicero might be condemned. It would
not be within the power of Clodius, even with the Triumvirate at his
back, to drive the man out of Rome and out of Italy, without an alleged
cause. Though justice had been tabooed, law was still in vogue. Now
there was a matter as to which Cicero was open to attack. As Consul he
had caused certain Roman citizens to be executed as conspirators, in the
teeth of a law which enacted that no Roman citizen should be condemned
to die except by a direct vote of the people. It had certainly become a
maxim of the constitution of the Republic that a citizen should not be
made to suffer death except by the voice of the people. The Valerian,
the Porcian, and the Sempronian laws had all been passed to that effect.
Now