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him in check, and to accomplish this he possessed an effective instrument. We have seen that Clodius had an old grudge against Cicero, and an old debt of gratitude to Cæsar and Crassus. He would be delighted to wipe off both scores at once, and to inflict punishment on Cicero, nominally for having put the Catilinarian conspirators to death, really for not being sufficiently submissive to the triumvirs. To deliver this attack it was necessary that Clodius should become tribune of the plebs, but he was debarred from the office by his patrician birth. The obstacle might be removed by his adoption into a plebeian family, and such adoptions were in the control of Cæsar as Pontifex Maximus. Cæsar was prepared to use this control according as Cicero behaved.

This question was decided early in the year, probably during the month of March. Caius Antonius, Cicero's colleague in his consulship, who had since grossly misconducted himself in his province of Macedonia, was put on his trial, not only, as was reasonable, for extortion, but on the charge of complicity in the Catilinarian conspiracy. Cicero was counsel for the defence, and, as he himself tells us, "uttered in the course of my speech some complaints regarding the present state of the nation, which seemed to me to bear on the case of my unfortunate client." This was at noon, and Cicero's remarks were forthwith reported (in an exaggerated form, he says) to the consul. Cæsar accepted the words as evidence that Cicero meant to throw in his lot with the opposition, and he