[1] As for Clodius, after driving Cicero away he burned down his villas, and burned down his house, and erected on its site a temple to Liberty; the rest of his property he offered for sale and had it proclaimed daily, but nobody would buy anything. Being therefore formidable to the patricians, and dragging along with him the people, who indulged in great boldness and effrontery, he assailed Pompey, attacking fiercely some of the arrangements made by him on his expedition.
[2] The disgrace which this brought upon Pompey led him to reproach himself for his abandonment of Cicero; and changing front he used every effort to effect Cicero’s return, and so did his friends. But since Clodius opposed himself to this, the senate decided to ratify no measure that came up in the mean time and to do no public business, unless Cicero should be permitted to return.
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[3] During the consulship of Lentulus,
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however, when the disorder went on increasing, so that tribunes were wounded in the forum and Quintus the brother of Cicero lay unnoticed for dead among the slain,
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the people began to change their minds, and Annius Milo, one of the tribunes, first ventured to prosecute Clodius for violence, and many joined themselves to Pompey both from the people and from the surrounding cities. With these Pompey came forth, drove Clodius from the forum, and summoned the citizens to the vote.
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[4] And it is said that the people never passed any vote with such unanimity. The senate, too, vying with the people, wrote letters of thanks to all the cities which had ministered to Cicero during his exile, and decreed that his house and his villas, which Clodius had destroyed, should be restored at the public cost.
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[5] Thus Cicero came home in the sixteenth month after his exile; and so great was the joy of the cities and the eagerness of men to meet him that what was said by Cicero afterwards fell short of the truth. He said, namely, that Italy had taken him on her shoulders and carried him into Rome.
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And there Crassus also, who was his enemy before his exile, now readily met him and was reconciled with him, to gratify his son Publius, as he said, who was an ardent admirer of Cicero.
Cicero. Plutarch. Bernadotte Perrin (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1919.
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