[1]: This was an extraordinary trial held under a new law just passed by Pompey; and it was presided over, not by the praetor, but by Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who was expressly appointed by the comitia president of the judge on this occasion.
[2]: Pompey was present at the trial surrounded by his officers, and he had filled the forum and all its precincts with armed men for the sake of keeping the peace.
[3]: Munatius Plancus, the day before, had exhorted the people not to suffer Milo to escape.
[4]: After Clodius's death, Munatius Plancus the tribune exposed his body on the rostrum and harangued the people against Milo, the populace carried the body into the senate house, and made a pyre of the seats to burn it, in doing which they burnt the senate house, and Plancus himself with difficulty escaped.
[5]: Literally, “this wholesome letter, as well as that melancholy one.” The letter A was the “wholesome” letter, being the initial of absolvo, I acquit; the letter C the melancholy one, being the initial of condemno, I condemn.
[6]: After the death of Tiberius Gracchus, Publius Aemilianus Africanus Scipio, the conqueror of Carthage and Numantia, was know a to be hostile to the agrarian law and threw every obstacle in the way of it; his enemies gave out that he intended to abrogate it by force. One morning he was found dead in his bed without a wound. The cause and manner of his death were unknown; some said it was natural; some that he had slain himself; some, that his wife Sempronia, the sister of Gracchus, had strangled him. His slaves it was said declared that some strangers had been introduced into the house at the back who had strangled him, and the triumvir Carbo is generally believed to have been the chief agent in his murder and is expressly mentioned as the murderer by Cicero, Ep. ad Q. Fr. 2.3.
[7]: It was the priest of Juno Sospita, who was the patroness of Lanuvium.
[8]: The passage in brackets is a very doubtful supplement of Beier; which, however, Orellius prefers to any other.
[9]: Cicero here supposes Sextus Clodius to look menacingly at him, in order to check him in his attack on this intended law.
[10]: That is, to Manlius's camp in Etruria at the time of Catiline's conspiracy in which, in all probability, Clodius was implicated.
[11]: The disturbances on the death of Clodius arose to such a height, that the senate at last passed a resolution that Marcus Lepidus the Interrex, assisted by the tribunes of the people and Pompeius, should take care that the republic received no injury. And at last the senate appointed Pompeius consul without a colleague, who immediately published several new laws, and among them the one under which this trial was conducted, (see note on chap.1) and he now limited the duration of trials, allowing only three days for the examination of witnesses, and on the fourth day the accuser was only allowed two hours to enforce the accusation, and the defendant three hours to speak in his defence. Caelius endeavoured to arrest these laws by his veto as tribune, declaring that they were framed solely with a view to crush Milo, whom Pompeius certainly desired to get rid of; to effect which he even descended to the artifice of pretending to believe that Milo had laid a plot to assassinate him.
[12]: When Clodius was aedile, he instituted a prosecution against Milo for violence. Pompeius, Crassus, and Cicero appeared for him; and though Clodius's mob raised a great uproar, and endeavoured to prevent Pompeius from being heard, he made a long speech, lasting three hours, in his defence. The trial was adjourned from February till May, and does not appear to have ever been brought to a regular termination.
[13]: When Clodius was killed, his slaves fled, and left his dead body in the road; and it was brought to Rome the next day by Sextus Tedius, a senator, who was passing by and saw it; and then it was exposed to the view of the populace of the city. The next day the mob, headed by Sextus Clodius, carried the body naked, so as to show his wounds, into the forum, and placed it on the rostra; and then the tribunes harangued the people on the subject and wrought them up to such a pitch of the excitement, that, snatching up the body, they carried it into the senate-house, and tearing up the benches and tables, dressed up a funeral pile on the spot, and, together with the body, burnt the senate-house itself with the Basilica Porcia which joined it.
[14]: Cnaeus Pompeius.
[15]: Milo, as has been said before, was convicted by a majority of thirty-eight to thirteen, though Cato voted openly for his acquittal. He went into exile to Marseilles. Some years afterwards, A. U. C. 706, Caelius, when praetor, recalled him from banishment, and endeavoured to raise some public commotion in favour of Pompey, between whom and Caesar (who was in his second consulship) the civil war was just breaking out. But he and Caelius were both killed by the soldiers with whom they were tampering.