Well, be it so; what reason had he for hastening to Rome? for starting at nightfall? Why should the fact of his being his heir cause him to make so much haste? In the first place, there was no reason why there should be need of any haste; secondly, even if there was, still what was there which he could obtain that night, but which he would lose if he arrived at Rome early the next morning? And as an arrival in the city by night was rather to be avoided by him than to be desired, so it was just suited for Milo to lie in ambush and wait for him, as he was a plotter of that sort, if he knew that he was likely to come to the city by night. [50] He would have slain him by night, in a place calculated for an ambush and fall of robbers; no one would have refused to believe him if he denied it, when now all men wish to save him even when he confesses it. The brunt of the blame would have fallen on the place itself, so well suited to receive and conceal robbers, while neither the voiceless solitude would have informed against, nor the dark night discovered Milo; secondly, the numbers of men who had been insulted by Clodius, or plundered by him, or stripped of all their property by him, many, too, who were in constant fear of such misfortunes, would have fallen under suspicion; in short, the whole of Etruria would have been impeached in people's opinion.