stantly took up the challenge. At three o'clock the same afternoon C1odius was transferred to the plebs. Pompey officiated as augur on the occasion. He took the precaution indeed of exacting from Clodius and his brother Appius a solemn engagement that they would make no attack on Cicero; but Clodius' promises were notoriously worthless, and Clodius was ready to make any number of them that might be desired, if only Pompey would put him in a position in which he would have the power to break them.
Soon after receiving this significant warning Cicero retired into the country, where he spent the months of April and May. The tone of his letters to Atticus is at first more careless and cheerful than might have been expected. He was convinced, and not without reason, that the high-handed proceedings of the triumvirs must set public opinion against them,[1] and that dissensions must arise even amongst their own followers. He forgot for the moment that the triumvirs were resolved to rule by force, and that with force on their side they could afford to ignore public opinion. The country-people, as was natural, were disgusted with the doings in the capital. "You write that at Rome there is dead silence; so I supposed; but here in the fields men are by no means silent; the very fields themselves rebel against your tyranny. If you come to this 'far Læstrygonia'—to Formiæ, I mean—you will see how men chafe under it, how indignant they grow, how they detest our friend the Great One. His surname will soon be as
- ↑ Ad Att., ii., 9, 2.
