Cicero. Part 3/4: The Great Feud

a brawl on the Appian Way, one of the main roads out of Rome, where Milo leaving Rome for the country met Clodius on his way back to Rome. Clodius was killed in the fighting. His body was brought back to Rome, and his followers insisted on cremating it in the senate house, which then caught fire and burned down.

Pompey was appointed sole consul for the year by the senate, and he introduced a law on violence under which Milo was tried. The law laid down specific procedures. Witnesses were to be heard first, and then one day would be given over to speeches from the prosecuting and defending advocates. The prosecution and defence would then each have the right to reject 15 of the 81 jurors, who would then vote. Cicero was one of the defending advocates. Marcus Marcellus was shouted down by a howling mob of Clodius supporters when he tried to cross-examine prosecution witnesses, and to keep order Pompey posted soldiers round the Forum, where the trial was being held. In these circumstances Cicero did not give of his best. Milo was found guilty and he went into exile. This could have been because of Cicero's poor performance or because Milo refused to wear mourning as was customary for defendants. Cicero later published a heavily revised version of his speech. In the speech as given he seems to have relied on the argument that Milo killed Clodius in self-defence, but in the version revised for publication, which is what has come down to us, he also used the argument that Clodius' death was in the public interest.

What is interesting is that we also have a neutral account of what actually happened from Asconius, who wrote commentaries on some of Cicero's speeches in the first century AD. Asconius' account is rather different from Cicero's. According to Asconius, Milo's and Clodius' parties met on the road by chance. Two gladiators at the rear of Milo's party started a shouting match with Clodius' slaves, and when Clodius looked back in irritation, wounded him with a spear. Clodius was taken to an inn to recover, but in the ensuing brawl, Milo had Clodius thrown out of the inn and beaten to death. According to Cicero, Clodius deliberately waylaid Milo in an attempt to kill him, but Milo ended up killing Clodius in self-defence. This was the reverse of

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