Family life was on an even keel. On October 21 he assured his brother: “Our affairs stand as follows: domestically they are as we wish. The boys are well, keen on their lessons and conscientiously taught. They love us and each other.” Young Quintus seems not to have enjoyed his uncle’s attempts to teach him. He preferred working with his tutor, and Cicero, not wanting his development to be held up, did not press the point and withdrew.
Civic disorder and widespread corruption continued unabated and the streets of Rome were still unsafe. The only convincing center of power, however unconstitutional, was the First Triumvirate, but fate soon played a hand in subverting Caesar’s brilliant rescue operation at Luca. In June 53 Crassus and his seven legions (up to 42,000 men) invaded the Parthian Empire but came spectacularly to grief, tricked into defeat and death.
Misled by the enemy he marched his forces through barren terrain and was harried mercilessly by Parthian archers. Depressed by the death in battle of his son Publius and pressed by desperate, near-mutinous soldiers, he agreed, against his better judgment, to parley with the Parthian general, Surena. Once in his hands, Crassus was killed and his head and right hand cut off. His head was used as a grisly prop during a performance of Euripides’ Bacchae at the Parthian court. The legionary standards were lost, a terrible blow to Roman prestige, and thousands of soldiers were killed or captured. Only 10,000 survivors made their way back to safety. Luckily the Parthians were content with their victory and did not follow it up. Pompey’s conquests in the region were left intact.
A canny businessman and an able fixer, Crassus had bulked large in the affairs of the Republic. He was a man of few obvious convictions. If his career had a keynote, it lay in his rivalry with Pompey, the immovable obstacle to his own advancement. No friend of the optimates, Crassus supported radicals like Catilina and Caesar, but cautiously from the wings. His death was perhaps the most influential act of his career, for it threw the spotlight on the relationship between Pompey and Caesar.
Catastrophe for Crassus brought some good to Cicero. For years he had yearned for an appointment to the College of Augurs, a board of senior Romans responsible for ascertaining the gods’ opinion of intended public actions; they did this by examining the flight of birds, thunder and lightning and other signs. Cicero did not believe in augury and could see a certain illogicality in his ambition: “What an irresponsible fellow I am,” he confessed to Atticus. However, when Pompey and Hortensius recommended him for the vacancy left by Crassus’s dead son, Cicero was delighted. It was just the kind of honor that enhanced the standing of a distinguished elder statesman.
In August, Caesar’s daughter and Pompey’s wife, Julia, died in childbirth. (The infant, a boy, died a few days later.) She seems to have inherited all her father’s charm and both men in their different ways were devoted to her. This personal tragedy was also a political event of great importance, for it shut down a private channel of communication which (and it is one of the great ifs of history) might have preserved their alliance.
Many people realized this at the time. Pompey intended to have Julia interred at his country estate near Alba, but during her funeral procession the crowd hijacked the corpse and buried it in the Field of Mars. This show of emotion demonstrated the impact of her death on public opinion, which respected both Caesar and Pompey and regarded Julia as the living symbol of their friendship. Caesar, absent in Gaul, was moved by the news of her funeral rites and announced the holding of gladiatorial games followed by a public banquet in her name. This was an unprecedented honor for a woman.
The year 52 got off to a gloomy start. No officeholders had been elected in the confusion of the previous year. New Year’s Day fell on a market day, an unfavorable sign, and portents were reported. Wolves were seen in Rome and dogs were heard howling by night. A statue of Mars sweated. A storm with thunderbolts raged over the city, knocking down images of the gods and taking some lives. Then, on January 20, an event took place which lifted such a load of fear and loathing from Cicero’s mind and gave him such pleasure that in future years he regularly celebrated the anniversary of what he called the “Battle of Bovillae.”
Sometime in the early afternoon, Milo left Rome by the Appian Way. He was on his way to his hometown, where he was mayor and was due to preside at the installation of a priest on the following day. At about three o’clock he reached the small village of Bovillae a few miles outside the city when he saw Clodius coming from the opposite direction, returning to the capital from Aricia, a town a few miles farther south, where he had been addressing municipal officials. Clodius was traveling on horseback with three friends and was accompanied by about 30 slaves armed with swords.
Milo was in a carriage with his wife, Sulla’s daughter, and a relative. Behind them walked a long column of slaves and some gladiators, including two stars of the arena, Eudamas and Birria, who brought up the rear. The lines passed each other without incident, but as the two ends met the gladiators started a brawl with some of Clodius’s men. Clodius heard the noise and looked back menacingly. This was enough to provoke Birria, who hurled a lance at him, wounding him in the shoulder or back. More of Milo’s entourage turned back and ran up to join the melee. Clodius, streaming with blood, was taken to a roadside inn, and before long most of his entourage was dead or badly injured.
When Milo heard that Clodius had been wounded, he decided it would be more dangerous to leave him alive than to finish him off in the inn. When the deed was done, Clodius’s body was hauled out into the road and abandoned. By a curious coincidence, a shrine of the Great Goddess stood nearby, into whose mysteries Clodius had intruded in search of dalliance.
Milo and his wife resumed their journey, as if nothing had taken place. Sometime later in the afternoon, a passing Senator, traveling back to Rome from the country, found Clodius’s corpse and had it sent on in his litter. He himself returned the way he had come, presumably wishing to avoid becoming involved in what was certain to be a major scandal.
The body arrived at Clodius’s new house, centrally located off the Holy Way, a couple of minutes from the Forum. It was placed in the hallway and surrounded by distraught followers and slaves. Clodius’s wife, Fulvia (not the same woman as Cicero’s informant against Catilina), did not hold back her grief and showed his wounds to visitors. The following morning a crowd gathered outside the front door. Some well-connected friends, including two Tribunes, called. At their suggestion, the body was taken, naked and battered, down to the Forum, and placed on the Speakers’ Platform. The Tribunes then called an informal public meeting. They persuaded the crowd to take the body to the Senate House and cremate it there, in one final act of defiance against the powers-that-be. Benches, tables and other furniture, together with the clerks’ notebooks, were piled up inside the building, which was then set alight. The fire spread to the Basilica Porcia next door.
Rumors had leapt from house to house throughout the city and by then there were few doubts as to who was responsible for Clodius’s murder. The crowd swept to Milo’s house, but it was driven back by a hail of arrows. Crowd members grabbed the Consular fasces from their place of safekeeping in the grove of Libitina, goddess of the dead, and presented themselves at Pompey’s garden villa, “calling on him variously as Consul and Dictator.” They offered him the fasces as a sign of political authority. The political movement Clodius had led collapsed with his death. His power had been purely personal. After an orgy of destruction his supporters and street gangs could think of nothing better to do than ask Pompey, whom Clodius had bullied and undermined on and off for years, for justice.