A. Urb. 696. Cic. 50. Coss.---P. Corn Lent. Spinther. Q. Cæc. Metel. Nepos. but just changed his puerile for the manly gown : Cicero was invited to the inauguration feast, where, by eating too freely of some vegetables, which happened to please his palate, he was seized with a violent pain of the bowels, and diarrhea; of which he sends the following account to his friend Gallus. CICERO to GALLUS. "After I had been labouring for ten days, with a "cruel disorder in my bowels, yet could not convince those, who wanted me at the bar, that I was ill, be"cause I had no fever, I ran away to Tusculum; hav ing kept so strict a fast for two days before, that I "did not taste so much as water: being worn out "therefore with illness and fasting, I wanted rather to "see you, than imagined that you expected a visit from me; for my part, I am afraid, I confess, of all distempers; but especially of those, for which the "Stoics abuse your Epicurus, when he complains of "the strangury and dysentery; the one of which they "take to be the effect of gluttony; the other of a "more scandalous intemperance. I was apprehensive "indeed of a dysentery; but seem to have found be 66 66 nefit, either from the change of air, or the relaxa"tion of my mind, or the remission of the disease itself: but that you may not be surprised how this "should happen, and what I have been doing to bring "it upon me; the sumptuary law, which seems to in Cui superior annus idem & virilem patris & prætextam populi judicio togam dederit. -Pr. Sext. 79. it. Dio. 1. 39, p. 99. 46 66 66 A. Urb. 696. Cic, 50. Coss.-P. Corn. Lent. Spinther. Q.Cæc. Motel. Nepos, "troduce a simplicity of diet, did me all this mischief. "For since our men of taste are grown so fond of covering their tables, with the productions of the earth, "which are excepted by the law, they have found a way of dressing mushrooms and all other vegetables so palatably, that nothing can be more delicious: I happened to fall upon these at Lentulus's augural supper, and was taken with so violent a flux, that "this is the first day on which it has begun to give "me any ease. Thus I, who used to command my"self so easily in oysters and lampreys, was caught " with bete and mallows; but I shall be more cautious "for the future: you however, who must have heard "of my illness from Anicius, for he saw me in a fit of "vomiting, had a just reason, not only for sending, "but for coming yourself to see me. I think to stay "here, till I recruit myself; for I have lost both my "strength and my flesh; but if I once get rid of my distemper, it will be easy, I hope, to recover the 66 rest *." 66 King Ptolemy left Rome about this time, after he had distributed immense sums among the great, to * Ep. Fam. 7. 26. N. B. Pliny says, that the colum, by which he is supposed to mean the cholic, was not known at Rome till the reign of Tiberius: but the case described in this letter seems to come so very near to it, that he must be understood, rather of the name, than of the thing; as the learned Dr Le Clerk has observed in his history of medicine.-Plin. 1. 26. 1. Le Cler. Hist. par. 2. 1. 4. sect. 2. c. 4. The mention likewise of the dursgià án, or the strangury of Epicurus, and the censure which the Stoics passed upon it, would make one apt to suspect, that some disorders of a venereal kind were not unknown to the ancients. A. Urb. 696. Cic. 50. Coss.-P. Corn. Lent. Spinther. Q.Cæc. Metel. Nepos. purchase his restoration by a Roman army. The people of Egypt had sent deputies also after him, to plead their cause before the senate, and to explain the reasons of their expelling him; but the king contrived to get them all assassinated on the road, before they reached the city. This piece of villainy, and the notion of his having bribed all the magistrates, had raised so general an aversion to him among the people, that he found it adviseable to quit the city, and leave the management of his interest to his agents. The consul Lentulus, who had obtained the province of Cilicia and Cyprus, whither he was preparing to set forward, was very desirous to be charged with the commission of replacing him on the throne; for which he had already procured a vote of the senate: the opportunity of a command, almost in sight of Ægypt, made him generally thought to have the best pretensions to that charge; and he was assured of Cicero's warm assistance in soliciting the confirmation of it. In this situation of affairs, the new tribunes entered into office: C. Cato, of the same family with his namesake Marcus, was one of the number; a bold turbulent man, of no temper or prudence, yet a tolerable speaker, and generally on the better side in politics. Before he had borne any public office, he attempted to impeach Gabinius of bribery and corruption; but not being able to get an audience of the prætors, he had the hardiness to mount the rostra, which was never allowed to a private citizen, and, in a speech to the people, declared Pompey dictator: but his presumption had like to have cost him dear; for it raised A. Úrb. 696. Cic. 50. Coss.-P. Corn. Lent, Spinther. Q. Cæc. Metel. Nepos. such an indignation in the audience, that he had much difficulty to escape with his life *. He opened his present magistracy by declaring loudly against king Ptolemy, and all who favoured him, especially Lentulus, whom he supposed to be under some private engagement with him, and, for that reason, was determined to baffle all their schemes. Lupus likewise, one of his colleagues, summoned the senate, and raised an expectation of some uncommon proposal for him: it was indeed of an extraordinary nature; to revise and annul that famed act of Cæsar's consulship, for the division of the Campanian lands he spoke long and well upon it, and was heard with much attention; gave great praises to Cicero, with severe reflections on Cæsar, and expostulations with Pompey, who was now abroad in the execution of his late commission: in the conclusion he told them, that he would not demand the opinions of the particular senators, because he had no mind to expose them to the resentment and animosity of any; but from the ill humour, which he remembered, when that act first passed, and the favour with which he was now heard, he could easily collect the sense of the house. Upon which Marcellinus said, "that he "must not conclude, from their silence, either what * Ut Cato, adolescens nullius consilii,-vix vivus effugeret; quod cum Gabinium de ambitu vellet postulare, neque prætores diebus aliquot adiri possent, vel potestatem sui facerent, in concionem adscendit, et Pompeium privatus dictatorem appellavit. Propius nihil est factum, quam ut occideretur. Ep. ad Quint. Frat. A. Urb. 696. Cic. 50. Coss.---P. Corn. Lent, spinther. Q. Cec. Metel. Nepos. they liked or disliked: that, for his own part, and "he might answer, too, he believed, for the rest, he "chose to say nothing on the subject at present, be"cause he thought that the cause of the Campanian "lands ought not to be brought upon the stage in Pompey's absence." This affair being dropt, Racilius, another tribune, rose up and renewed the debate about Milo's impeachment of Clodius, and called upon Marcellinus, the consul-elect, to give his opinion upon it; who, after inveighing against all the violences of Clodius, proposed, that, in the first place, an allotment of judges should be made for the trial; and, after that, the election of ædiles; and, if any one attempted to hinder the trial, that he should be deemed a public enemy. The other consul-elect, Philippus, was of the same mind; but the tribunes, Cato and Cassius, spoke against it, and were for proceeding to an election before any step towards a trial. When Cicero was called upon to speak, he run through the whole series of Clodius's extravagancies, as if he had been accusing him already at the bar, to the great satisfaction of the assembly: Antistius, the tribune, seconded him, and declared, that no business should be done before the trial; and when the house was going universally into that opinion, Clodius began to speak, with intent to waste the rest of the day, while his slaves and followers without, who had seized the steps and avenues of the senate, raised so great a noise, of a sudden, in abusing some of Milo's friends, that the senate broke VOL. II. C |