[28] But Milo, as he had been that day in the senate till it was dismissed, came home, changed his shoes and his garments, waited a little, as men do, while his wife was getting ready, and then started at the time when Clodius might have returned, if, indeed, he had been coming to Rome that day. Clodius meets him unencumbered on horseback, with no carriage, with no baggage, with no Greek companions, as he was used to, without his wife, which was scarcely ever the case; while this plotter, who had taken, forsooth, that journey for the express purpose of murder, was driving with his wife in a carriage, in a heavy travelling cloak, with abundant baggage, and a delicate company of women, and maidservants, and boys. [29] He meets Clodius in front of his farm, about the eleventh hour, or not far from it. Immediately a number of men attack him from the higher ground with missile weapons. The men who are in front kill his driver, and when he had jumped down from his chariot and flung aside his cloak, and while he was defending himself with vigorous courage, the men who were with Clodius drew their swords, and some of them ran back towards his chariot in order to attack Milo from behind, and some, because they thought that he was already slain, began to attack his servants who were behind him; and those of the servants who had presence of mind to defend themselves, and were faithful to their master, were some of them slain, and the others, when they saw a fierce battle taking place around the chariot, and as they were prevented from getting near their master so as to help him, when they heard Clodius himself proclaim that Milo was slain, and they thought that it was really true, they, the servants of Milo, (I am not speaking for the purpose of shifting the guilt onto the shoulders of others, but I am saying what really occurred,) did, without their master either commanding it, or knowing it, or even being present to see it, what every one would have wished his servants to do in a similar case. [cap.11] [30]
These things were all done, O judges, just as I have related them. The man who laid the plot was defeated; violence was defeated by violence; or, I should rather say, audacity was crushed by valour. I say nothing about what the republic, nothing about what you, nothing about what all good men gained by the result. I do not desire it to be any advantage to me to hear that he was born with such a destiny that he was unable even to save himself, without at the same time saving the republic and all of you. If he had not a right to do so, then I have nothing which I can urge in his defence. But if both reason has taught this lesson to learned men, and necessity to barbarians, and custom to all nations, and nature itself to the beasts, that they are at all times to repel all violence by whatever means they can from their persons, from their liberties, and from their lives, then you cannot decide this action to have been wrong, without deciding at the same time that all men who fall among thieves must perish, either by their weapons, or by your sentence.