Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/1100

1086 MILO. the murder of Clodius at Bovillae on the Appian- road, January 20th, b. c. 52. The details of the meeting, the quarrel, and its catastrophe, are related in the account of Clodius [No. 40J. The immediate effect of the death of Clodius was to depress the Miloniaii, and to re-animate the Clodian faction. Milo at first meditated voluntary- exile. But the excesses of his opponents made his presence once more possible at Rome. The tri- bune of the plebs, M. Caelius, attended him to the forum, and Milo addressed the assembly in the white robe of a candidate, and proceeded with his consular canvass. But a more powerful, though secret opponent had meanwhile risen up against Milo. His competitors in the comitia were P. Piautius Hypsaeus [Hypsaeus, No. 5] and Q. Metellus Scipio. Cn. Pompey had married a daughter of Scipio, and from Hypsaeus he expected aid in gratifying the prime object of his ambition — the dictatorship. A bill for his appointment was not indeed promulgated. But the senate no- minated him sole consul. Pompey immediately brought forward three laws, which, from their im- mediate reference to the circumstances of the times, were in fact privilegia. In the first he specially noticed the murder at Bovillae, the conflagration of the curia hostilia and the Porcian Basilica, and the attack upon the house of M. Lepidus the interrex. In the second he introduced more stringent penalties for ambitus, and in the third he increased the severity of the existing laws against sodalitia, or iliegal interference with the freedom of the comitia. The time allowed for trials de Vi, Ambitu^ Soda/lim, was also much shortened, only three days being assigned to the accusation, the defence, and the ex- amination of witnesses. M. Caelius opposed these laws on the ground that they were privilegia and retrospective. But Pompey stifled all opposition by surrounding his house and gardens with soldiers, and withdrawing himself from the senate and the forum, on pretence of dreading Milo's violence. A variety of charges and recriminations was brought forward by either faction. The slaves of Milo and Clodius were respectively required to be given up to torture, and perjury and intimidatiqu, the forms of law, and the abuse of justice, were put in active re- quisition. Milo, however, was not without hope, since the higher aristocracy, from jealousy of Pom- pey, supported him, and Cicero undertook his de- fence. His trial opened on the 4th of April, B. c. 52. He was impeached by the two Clodii, nephews of the deceased, de Vi, by Q. Petulcius and L. Cornificius, de Amhitu, and by P. Fulvius Neratus, de Sodalitiis. L. Domitius Alienobarbus, a consular, was appointed quaesitor or instigator by a special law of Pompey's, and all Rome and thousands of spectators from Italy thronged the forum and its avenues from dawn to sunset during these memor- able proceedings. But Milo's chances of acquittal, faint even had justice been decorously adminis- tered, were wholly marred by the virulence of his adversaries, who insulted and obstructed the witnesses, the process, and the conductors of the defence. Cn. Pompey availed himself of these disorders to line the forum and its encompassing hills with soldiers. Cicero was intimidated and Milo was condemned. Had he even been acquitted on the first count de Vi, the two other charges of bribery and conspiracy awaited him. He therefore went into exile. Cicero, who could not deliver, re- wrote and expanded the defence of Milo — the MILON. extant oration — and sent it to him at Marseille. Milo remarked, " I am glad this was not spoken, since I must have been acquitted, and then had never known the delicate flavour of these Marseille- mullets." M. Brutus also some time afterwards composed as a rhetorical exercise a defence of Milo. He took a different and an easier view of the cause than Cicero. The murder of Clodius, according to Brutus, was a benefit to the commonwealth ; according to Cicero, it was a necessary act of self- defence. Both pleas are singularly Aveak. How- ever useful and merited the death of Clodius might be to the state, inflicted by a private hand it was a pernicious precedent ; and although the meet- ing at Bovillae may have been accidental, the necessity for self-defence ceased with the flight of Clodius, and the pretence wholly fails when it is remembered that Milo's escort was much the more numerous and the better-armed. Milo's exile was a heavy blow to his numerous creditors. His houses at Rome, his numerous villas, and his bands of fighting men were put up to auction, and Cicero did not escape suspicion of having purchased through an agent, Philotimus, some of the Annian property below its real worth. Cicero, on his return from Cilicia in b. c. 51, showed that he felt the imputation by offering to cancel the purchase or to increase the price. He however, owed no gratitude to Milo, who had espoused his cause because it suited his own in- terest, and his undertaking the defence of so no- torious a criminal with extreme risk to himself amply discharged his real or supposed obligations. The close of Milo's life was as inglorious as his political career had been violent and disgraceful. Milo expected a recall from Caesar, when, in B. c. 49, the dictator permitted many of the exiles to return. But better times were come, and Rome neither needed nor wished for the presence of a bankrupt agitator. Milo's former friend the ex- tribune M. Caelius, praetor in B. c. 48, promulgated a bill for the adjustment of debts — a revolutionary measure for which the senate, where the Caesarian party had then a majority, expelled him from his office. Caelius, himself a man of broken fortunes, required desperate allies, and he accordingly invited Milo to Italy, as the fittest tool for his purposes. At the head of the survivors of his gladiatorial bands, reinforced by Samnite and Bruttian herdsmen, by criminals and run-away slaves, Milo appeared in Campania, and proclaimed himself a legatus of Cn. and Sextus Pompey. He found, however, no ad- herents, and retreated into Lucania, where he was met by the praetor Q. Pedius, and slain under the walls of an obscure fort in the district of Thurii. Milo, in B. c. 57, married Fausta, a daughter of the dictator Sulla. She proved a faithless wife, and Sallust the historian was soundly scourged by Milo for an intrigue with her. (The authorities for Milo's life are Cicero's well-known oration and the passages in Orelli's Onom. Tull. ; Plutarch's lives of Pompey, Cicero, and Caesar ; Dion Cass, xxxix. 6—8, 18—21, xli, 48—55 ; Appian, B C. ii. 16, 20—24, 48 ; Caes. B. C. iii. 21—23 ; see Dru- mann, Ges^ch. Boms, vol. i. p. 43, &c.) [ W. B. D.] MILON (Mikwv) of Crotona, son of Diotimus, an athlete, famous for his extraordinary bodily strength. He was six times victor in wrestling at the Olympic games, and as often at the Pythian ; but having entered the lists at Olyinpia a seventh time, he was worsted by the superior agility of his