The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 | Page 9

Gaius and his friends: thus for the first time exercising imperium sine provocatione. Opimius had been impeached after his year of office, but acquitted, which the senate might claim as a confirmation of the right, in spite of the lex of Gaius Gracchus, which confirmed the right of provocatio in all cases. In B.C. 100 the tribune Saturninus and the pr?tor Glaucia were arrested in consequence of a similar decree, which this time joined the other magistrates to the consuls as authorized to protect the Republic: their death, however, was an act of violence on the part of a mob. Its legality had been impugned by C?sar's condemnation of Rabirius, as duovir capitalis, but to a certain extent confirmed by the failure to secure his conviction on the trial of his appeal to the people. In B.C. 88 and 83 this decree of the senate was again passed, in the first case in favour of Sulla against the tribune Sulpicius, who was in consequence put to death; and in the second case in favour of the consuls (partisans of Marius) against the followers of Sulla. Again in B.C. 77 the decree was passed in consequence of the insurrection of the proconsul Lepidus, who, however, escaped to Sardinia and died there.
In every case but one this decree had been passed against the popular party. The only legal sanction given to the exercise of the imperium sine provocatione was the acquittal of the consul Opimius in B.C. 120. But the jury which tried that case probably consisted entirely of senators, who would not stultify their own proceedings by condemning him. To rely upon such precedents required either great boldness (never a characteristic of Cicero), or the most profound conviction of the essential righteousness of the measure, and the clearest assurance that the safety of the state--the supreme law--justified the breach of every constitutional principle. Cicero was not left long in doubt as to whether there would be any to question his proceeding. On the last day of the year, when about to address the people, as was customary, on laying down his consulship, the tribune Q. C?cilius Metellus Nepos forbade him to speak, on the express ground that he "had put citizens to death uncondemned"--quod cives indemnatos necavisset. Cicero consoled himself with taking the required oath as to having observed the laws, with an additional declaration that he had "saved the state." Nevertheless, he must have felt deeply annoyed and alarmed at the action of Metellus, for he had been a legatus of Pompey, and was supposed to represent his views, and it was upon the approbation and support of Pompey, now on the eve of his return from the East, that Cicero particularly reckoned.
[Sidenote: Letters after B.C. 63.]
The letters in our collection now recommence. The first of the year (B.C. 62) is one addressed to Pompey, expressing some discontent at the qualified manner in which he had written on recent events, and affirming his own conviction that he had acted in the best interests of the state and with universal approval. But indeed the whole correspondence to the end of Cicero's exile is permeated with this subject directly or indirectly. His quarrel with Metellus Nepos brought upon him a remonstrance from the latter's brother (or cousin), Metellus Celer (Letters XIII, XIV), and when the correspondence for B.C. 61 opens, we find him already on the eve of the quarrel with Publius Clodius which was to bring upon him the exile of B.C. 58.
[Sidenote: Publius Clodius Pulcher.]
P. CLODIUS PULCHER was an extreme instance of a character not uncommon among the nobility in the last age of the Republic. Of high birth, and possessed of no small amount of ability and energy, he belonged by origin and connexion to the Optimates; but he regarded politics as a game to be played for his personal aggrandizement, and public office as a means of replenishing a purse drained by boundless extravagance and self-indulgence. His record had been bad. He had accompanied his brother-in-law Lucullus, or had joined his staff, in the war with Mithridates, and had helped to excite a mutiny in his army in revenge for some fancied slight. He had then gone to Cilicia, where another brother-in-law, Q. Marcus Rex, was propr?tor, and while commanding a fleet under him had fallen into the hands of pirates, and when freed from them had gone--apparently in a private capacity--to Antioch, where he again excited a mutiny of Syrian troops engaged in a war against the Arabians (B.C. 70-65). On his return to Rome he attempted to make himself conspicuous by prosecuting Catiline, but accepted a bribe to withdraw. In B.C. 64, on the staff of the governor of Gallia Narbonensis, he is accused of having enriched himself with plunder. For a time after that he