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CICERO. 71 confidence to summon Clodius to trial for acts of violence. Many of the common people and out of the neighboring cities formed a party yith Pompey, and he went with them, and drove Clodius out of the Forum, and sum- moned the people to pass their vote. And, it is said, the people never passed any suflB.-age more unanimously than this. The senate, also, striving to outdo the people, sent letters of thanks to those cities which had received Cicero with respect in his exile, and decreed that his house and his country-places, which Clodius had de- stroyed, should be rebuilt at the public charge. Thus Cicero returned sixteen months after his exile, and the cities were so glad, and people so zealous to meet him, that what he boasted of afterwards, that Italy had brought him on her shoulders home to Rome, was rather less than the truth. And Crassus himself, who had been his enemy before his exile, went then voluntarily to meet him, and was reconciled, to please his son Publius, as he said, who was Cicero's affectionate admirer. Cicero had not been long at Rome, when, taking the opportunity of Clodius's absence, he went, with a great compam'^, to the capitol, and there tore and defaced the tribunician tables, in which were recorded the acts done in the time of Clodius. And on Clodius calling him in question for this, he answered, that he, being of the patri- cian order, had obtained the office of tribune against law, and, therefore, nothing done by him was vahd. Cato was displeased at this, and opposed Cicero, not that he com- mended Clodius, but rather disapproved of his whole ad- ministration ; yet, he contended, it was nn irregular and violent course for the senate to vote the illegality of so many decrees and acts, including those of Cato's own government in Cyprus and at Byzantium. This occa- sioned a breach between Cato and Cicero, which, though