Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/205

61 B.C.]

But the matter could not rest there. The virgins performed afresh the ceremonies whose virtue had been impaired; the pontiffs declared that sacrilege had been committed, and it followed that the State must purge itself from the impiety by the punishment of the offender. After discussions in the Senate, the consuls were instructed to bring a bill before the People, constituting a court for his trial. A tribune, Fufius, proposed in Clodius' interest a rival scheme, which differed from that of the Senate by providing that the jury should be chosen by lot, whereas the consular bill directed the prætor to select the jurymen.

This was the condition of affairs when Pompey arrived early in February before the gates of Rome, and the world eagerly awaited his utterances on all these burning questions. Cicero gives a graphic account of his first appearances before the people and the Senate. "I have already told you what Pompey's first speech was like, with no comfort for the wretched, too unsubstantial to please the disloyal, unsatisfactory to the comfortable classes, and with not sufficient firmness for honest men; and so it fell flat. Not long after, at the instigation of the consul Piso, that paltry fellow Fufius the tribune again put Pompey forward. The scene of this was the Flaminian Circus on a market-day with a large attendance. He questioned him as to whether he approved of a prætor selecting the jurors, who were to sit as that prætor's courts—this being the arrangement proposed